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Updated: May 17, 2025
Boleslav seems to have considered it futile to continue quarrelling with his western neighbour, especially as the usual trouble continued in the east, in which direction the Prince proposed to extend his dominions. By 955 we find Germans and Bohemians allied against the Magyars, who had acquired a habit of ravaging Western Europe once a year.
I doubt whether any historian can be absolutely unbiassed; a warm-blooded man and you must be that if you would record the doings of your fellow-men is bound to feel sympathy with or dislike for one or other actors in the far-off pageant of history. I frankly admit myself biassed in favour of Brother Boleslav the hearty heathen, and somewhat bored by that saintly lady Ludmilla.
She argued about free love and freedom in general like a bigoted old woman, declared that Boleslav Markevitch was a better writer than Turgenev. But she was diabolically cunning and sharp, and knew how to seem a highly educated, advanced person in company.
Boleslav of Poland had died, his sons quarrelled over their heritage, and their dissensions gave the neighbours an excuse for interfering. One of these neighbours was King Stephen of Hungary, afterwards called "the Saint." He had only recently been converted from paganism, but he took part in this Polish dispute just as if he had been a ripe old Christian monarch of some standing.
There are legends of a first duke, Piast by name. A dynasty which bore his name continued in Poland until 1370; in Silesia, until 1675. Miecislas I. was converted to Christianity by his wife, a Bohemian princess. He did homage to the Emperor Otto I. . Boleslav I. aspired to the regal dignity, and had himself crowned as king by his bishops.
Besides Bohemia itself the power of Boleslav II extended over Moravia, present-day Slovakia, a great part of Silesia, including Breslau, districts of Poland nearly up to the town of Lemberg, with a frontier touching that of the Russian rulers of Kiev.
They met their match on the Lechfeld, near Augsburg, and were utterly defeated in one of the most sanguinary and decisive battles fought during the Middle Ages. According to Count Lützow it appears that a Bohemian contingent of a thousand men formed part of the victorious army. Boleslav himself, with the greater part of his troops, remained to guard the frontiers of his country.
In this instance King Henry II intervened on behalf of Boleslav III, who had stooped to becoming a vassal of the German King, with the title of Duke. After the usual fighting, Boleslav III was restored to his country for a short period in which he distinguished himself by wholesale assassination of his opponents. He eventually died in Poland as prisoner of Boleslav the Brave.
Boleslav, by this time very weary of his pious brother, sat up with a few friends of his own way of thinking, waylaid Wenceslaus, and killed him. This happened in 935, and the 28th of September is still kept sacred to the memory of St. Wenceslaus by those who feel inclined that way. My sympathy with Boleslav does not blind me to the fact that he did wrong in killing his brother.
You could not well let it fall into the hands of Brother Boleslav, the hefty heathen; he would have been incapable of appreciating the beautiful legend of how the young mother, filled with anxiety on the flight into Egypt, prayed that she and her Child might be turned black while their exile lasted.
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