BOHEMIA[1] (Ger. _Bohmen_, Czech _Cechy_, Lat. _Bohemia_), a kingdom and crownland of Austria, bounded N.E. by Prussian Silesia, S.E. by Moravia and Lower Austria, S. by Upper Austria, S.W. by Bavaria and N.W. by Saxony. It has an area of 20,060 sq. m., or about two-thirds the size of Scotland, and forms the principal province of the Austrian empire. Situated in the geographical centre of the European continent, at about equal distance from all the European seas, enclosed by high mountains, and nevertheless easily accessible through Moravia from the Danubian plain and opened by the valley of the Elbe to the German plain, Bohemia was bound to play a leading part in the cultural development of Europe. It became early the scene of important historical events, the avenue and junction of the migration of peoples; and it forms the borderland between the German and Slavonic worlds. _Geography._--Bohemia has the form of an irregular rhomb, of which the northernmost place, Buchberg, just above Hainspach, is at the same time the farthest north in the whole Austro-Hungarian monarchy. From an orographic point of view, Bohemia constitutes amongst the Austrian provinces a separate massif, bordered on three sides by mountain ranges: on the S.W. by the Bohmerwald or Bohemian Forest; on the N.W. by the Erzgebirge or Ore Mountains; and on the N.E. by the Riesengebirge or Giant Mountains and other ranges of the Sudetes. The Bohmerwald, which, like its parallel range, the Sudetes, has a general direction from S.E. to N.W., is divided by the pass of Neumark into two parts. The northern part (Czech _Cesky Les_) attains in the massif of Czerkov an altitude of 3300 ft., but the southern part (Czech _Sumava_) is at the same time the highest and the most picturesque part of the range, including on the Bohemian side the Osser (4053 ft.) and the Plockenstein (4513 ft.), although the highest peak, the Arber (4872), is in Bavaria. The beauty of this range of mountains consists in its pure crystalline torrents, in the numerous blue lakes of its valleys, and above all in the magnificent forests of oak and pine with which its sides are covered. The pass of Neumark, called also the pass of Neugedein, has always been the principal approach to Bohemia from Germany. It stretches towards the east, above the small town of Taus (Czech _Domazlice_, once called _Tuhost_, i.e. the Fortress), and is the place where some of the bloodiest battles in the history of Bohemia were fought. Here in the first half of the 7th century Samo repulsed the invading hordes of the Avars, which threatened the independence of the newly-settled Slavonic inhabitants; here also Wratislas II. defeated the German emperor Henry III. in a two-days' battle (August 22 and 23, 1040). It was in the same place that the Hussites gained in 1431 one of their greatest victories against a German army of crusaders, and another similar German army was vanquished here by George of Podebrad.