Otto soon showed that it was not for the sake of the wife and son of his old friend that he had come to Bohemia. Under pretence of investigating some old charter of Ottakar’s, Otto sent German soldiers to Prague to find out the places where Ottakar’s bailiff had kept the royal treasure. These soldiers entered one of the chief monasteries, and there discovered a large chest which had been used by many people during the war as a storehouse for food, clothes, and other property. This chest the Germans at once broke open and plundered of its contents; and then, as if determined to offend the national feeling to the utmost, they rushed into the chapel of St. Wenceslaus and rifled the tomb of the saint. These outrages were followed by a yet more daring act of violence. Otto suddenly entered Prague by night, seized the queen and prince in their rooms, while still half dressed, and carried them off to a fortress, where he set German soldiers to guard them, and would permit no Bohemian to see them. Some Bohemian nobles demanded the release of these captives, and Otto promised to set them free; but he broke his promise. Kunigunda, indeed, by a series of ruses, succeeded in escaping from her imprisonment and taking refuge in her own special dominions at Opava; but her boy remained a prisoner in Otto’s hands. In the meantime the soldiers, who had been brought in by Otto to carry out his tyrannical purposes, began a series of plundering expeditions on their own account. The unfortunate peasants fled from their fields and took refuge in the woods, leaving the lands wholly uncultivated. Even worse calamities fell on the towns. The large-minded policy of the two Ottakars and of Wenceslaus I. now proved a source of evil and division. They had tried to induce Germans and Bohemians to live together in towns, established under German municipal laws, and often peopled in the first instance by German immigrants. But these enlightened kings had not been able thereby to stifle race-hatred and jealousy; and the German settlers now looked upon the wild soldiers of Otto as their allies against the native Bohemian citizens. They invited the leaders of the plundering parties into the towns, and with their help expelled the Bohemians. Prague was the only city strong enough to resist this Germanising process; and Tobias, the Bishop of Prague, tried to rally the faithful nobles of the kingdom round Kunigunda. This effort was a desperate one; and, even when Otto left Bohemia for a time, his viceroy, the Bishop of Brandenburg, carried his ruthless policy still further, plundering the clergy and treating the remonstrances of Bishop Tobias with scorn and insolence.