Kingdom of Bohemia

The Kingdom of Bohemia was a Central European state centered on the historic region of Bohemia in what is now the Czech Republic, elevated from a duchy to a kingdom in 1198 when Ottokar I secured hereditary royal status for his Premyslid dynasty from the Holy Roman Emperor, and governed from its capital at Prague. The kingdom reached a height of power and cultural achievement in the fourteenth century under Charles IV, who as both King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor founded Charles University in Prague in 1348, the oldest university in Central Europe, and made Prague one of the great capitals of medieval Europe. Bohemia became a center of religious upheaval in the early fifteenth century with the Hussite movement, inspired by the reformer Jan Hus, and later, following the 1526 election of the Habsburg Ferdinand I as king, became bound increasingly closely to the Habsburg monarchy, a relationship cemented after Bohemian Protestant nobles were defeated at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620. The kingdom continued to exist as a Habsburg crown land, formally retaining its royal title, until it was absorbed administratively into the Austrian Empire and later Austria-Hungary, with its distinct kingdom status finally ending with the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918 and the formation of Czechoslovakia.