It Is 700 Years Last Premyslid Died

4 August 2006, 16:49 - History
King Wenceslaus III of Bohemia was killed during his military trip to Poland in Olomouc on hot August day seven hundred years ago. He planed to solve the problems with internal quarrels in Poland and wanted to claim his hereditary rights to the Polish throne.

It was his father who gained Polish crown. Wenceslaus II, who ruled Bohemia from 1278-1305, died of tuberculosis in most glorious years of his reign. He was planning to invade Austria after successful attacks on several neighbouring countries. Most of the historians say those years were characterized by prosperity and modernization.

Successor of Wenceslaus II, his son Wenceslaus III, took power in his fifteens. With his death on August 4, 1306, Premyslid dynasty, that ruled Czech countries for almost five centuries, died off in male line.

All circumstances of the murder are surrounded by mystery and so far it is not clear who was the murderer. What we now is that the crime was made by knife in the residence of canonry dean in Olomouc. The town should be his last stop in Bohemia before attacking Poland.

Nobody knows if it was political or personal murder. Historians have dozens of potential murderers. It is quite clear that central Europe suffered from chaos in the first years of the 14th century. That is the reason why some of the historians say competing dynasty, Hapsburgs, tried to usurp Czech throne. Other explanation comes with the assumption that the murder was ordered by Czech aristocracy whose members complained that Wenceslaus III was not able to reign the kingdom and that he spend large sums of money in rich sprees.

Young king – he was only sixteen years old when he was killed – gained power only fourteen months before his death. He also was the king of Hungary (1301 - 1305) in his childhood.

After his death, having no successor, and after a series of dynastic wars and legal chaos, a Luxemburg dynasty, to which Charles IV – one of the most famous Czech statesmen in the history – belonged, captured the Bohemian crown.