oleslav was always expecting of
them. He became so unpopular among his own people, who were called upon
to finance him in his troubles with his brothers, that they invited
their Duke's cousin, Prince Vladivoj, brother of Boleslav the Brave of
Poland, to intervene. Vladivoj died young, so his brother took charge
of all that had been the Bohemian realm, and incorporated it with his
own; Boleslav of Poland, it is said, even contemplated making Prague the
capital of his Empire. There is no trace of anything he did for the
city, so we must assume that he did not carry out his intention: he was
probably prevented by the inevitable friction with the Germans, who
always found some excuse for putting down any attempt at founding a
strong Slavonic Empire. 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. Meanwhile,
what with his cantankerous brothers, with Polish ambitions and German
ill-will, Bohemia was having a sorry time.

In all this unseemly wrangling among the members of the P[vr]emysl
family I find only one bright spot of human interest, and that is the
little affair of Ulrich and Bo[vz]ena. All three brothers, Boleslav III,
Jaromir and Ulrich, the last surviving P[vr]emysls, were childless, and,
failing heirs, their inheritance would pass to Poland, to the children
of Dubravka. A P[vr]emysl successor was wanted; Ulrich and Bo[vz]ena
provided one. It is undoubtedly true that Ulrich was already married
when he encountered Bo[vz]ena, the beautiful village maiden, while she
was washing the family linen at the village pump. It was a picturesque
event, this meeting of the young prince and the village maiden, and has
been satisfactorily illustrated by a patriotic Bohemian painter. You
will find highly coloured reproductions of that artist's work in a shop
window on the Narodni T[vr]ida, all illustrating events in the history
of the P[vr]emysl family, and when you see what Bo[vz]ena looked like
you will not blame Ulrich. Anyway, Ulrich married Bo[vz]ena. How he
managed this without causing complications is not our affair; the
ancient chroniclers were satisfied; they insist on the legality of this
union, an