Kingdom of Bohemia

The Kingdom of Bohemia was the Czech state of the Middle Ages from 1198 to 1918, an elector of the Holy Roman Empire and for long stretches its ruling house. Ottokar I bought the royal title in gold from emperors who needed Bohemian spears, and his grandson Ottokar II, the Iron and Golden King, ruled from Austria to the Adriatic before falling against Rudolf of Habsburg at Marchfeld in 1278. Under the Luxemburgs the kingdom became the Empire's heart: Charles IV, king of Bohemia and emperor both, built Prague's New Town, its stone bridge and its university, the first north of the Alps, and issued the Golden Bull that fixed the electors' rights. Jan Hus preached reform in Bethlehem Chapel, was burned at Constance in 1415, and his followers' chalice armies under Zizka beat five crusades with war wagons and handguns. The Hussite wars bled into the long Jagiellon peace, then in 1526 the childless king died at Mohacs and the estates elected Ferdinand of Habsburg: Bohemia stayed Habsburg for four centuries, through White Mountain in 1620, which beheaded its nobility, through 1848 and Sarajevo, until the Empire's fall in 1918 let the Czechs take Prague for Czechoslovakia.