70 PIAST
lying mainly within the Polish orbit, Silesia played an important part in the con-
struction of the kingdom, and in the politics of its fragmentation. Its native
princes traced their origins to the senior line of the Piasts. In the fourteenth cen-
tury however, it opted in the main for the Bohemian allegiance. Apart from the
minor duchies of Cieszyn (Teschen) and Swidnica (Swidnitz) which continued
to be contested into the sixteenth century, the whole of the province was
renounced by Casimir the Great in 1340. Thereafter it passed in 1526 with the
rest of the Bohemian kingdom into the hands of Austria, and in 1740 into the
clutches of Prussia.
Poland's relationship with Bohemia was of capital importance. As the senior
partner of the two leading kingdoms of the West Slavs, Bohemia played an
important role in Poland's cultural and political development. Politically united
at an early date under the Great Moravian Empire, and familiar with the Latin
Christianity and with the German Empire at least a century in advance of the
Polanians, the Czechs acted as the principal filter through which knowledge of
the Western world reached Poland. It was from Prague, in the persons of
Dubravka and Vojtech, that the Poles first adopted the Christian religion. It was
from Prague that they learned the subtleties of the German association,
Bohemia having become an invested electoral kingdom of the Empire. It was
through the Czech language that they received practically the whole of their
political, religious, and social vocabulary. Some historians have stressed that at
this stage the Poles and Czechs should not be seen as separate nations. In the first
half of the eleventh century, there was a real chance that a united West Slavonic
state might have been permanently established under Czech or Polish leader-
ship. Yet familiarity did not prevent the usual spate of neighbourly wars. Rather
it imparted a rather special flavour to their mutual relations, where each of these
Slav brothers would meddle in the most intimate aspects of the other's internal
affairs at the least hint of weakness. It was in such a moment of weakness, in the
triangular dynastic struggle of Piasts, Premyslids, and Slavniks, that Mieszko I
first turned the Silesians and Vistulanians from their Czech allegiance in 990. In
1003, Boleslaw Chrobry captured Prague, and was briefly raised to the
Bohemian throne. He held the province of Moravia as far as the Danube and
Tisza until 1017. Twenty years later, the Czech king replied in kind. Seizing on
the opportunity presented by the great pagan rebellion of 1035-7, Bretislav cap-
tured Cracow and Gniezno, and carried off the body of St. Wojciech. He held
Silesia till 1050. In the wars between the Poles and the Empire, the Bohemian
kings often sided with the Empire, raiding deep into Poland and inviting Polish
raids in return. In the period of fragmentation, they established their suzerainty
at various times over Silesia, Wielkopolska, Malopolska, and even over
Mazovia. In 1300, Vaclav II already King of Bohemia and Prince of Malopolska,
was crowned King of Poland at Gniezno. He ruled in person till his death five
years later. His son, Vaclav III, was murdered on his way to succeed his father
in Poland. This brief episode of Czech supremacy attracts little attention from
Polish historians. In the eyes of outsiders, however, it is seen as one of the few