Prague must have been a fair city in those days when Ottokar II rode out of the gate to meet Rudolph of Habsburg. Although the ban of the Empire and the interdict of the Church were upon their King, the people of Prague, clergy and laymen, accompanied him to the city gate with prayers and tears. When news of his death came to Prague the bells of one hundred churches tolled out on that 26th of August, the Feast of St. Rufus, a day destined to be of ill-omen to Bohemia's Kings. * * * * * The shadow of the hand of Habsburg hung darkly over the southern frontiers of Bohemia. Rudolph, the first Habsburg Emperor, began the famous tactics of his house, gaining power by matrimonial alliances. His son Rudolph was to marry Agnes, daughter of Ottokar II, whose son Wenceslaus II was to marry Gutta, the Emperor's daughter. Wenceslaus II was a minor when he succeeded his father, and suffered considerably under his guardian and cousin Otto of Brandenburg, who, in pursuit of an all-German policy, even imprisoned the young King. Anarchy reigned in Bohemia when young Wenceslaus, at the age of twelve, nominally assumed the reins of government. The actual ruler of the country, however, was Zavis of Falckenstein, an able man but of doubtful morality; there was some unsavoury story concerning him and Ottokar's widow Kunhuta, whom Zavis eventually married. Then again the young King had Zavis done to death in treacherous manner, while the condition of Bohemia as an ordered State went from bad to worse. Strange to relate, the country flourished economically--became, indeed, very prosperous--the increase of wealth being largely due to the fact that workings on the silver mines at Kutna Hora had been resumed. Towards the end of the reign of this Wenceslaus, whose rule was mild, matters improved somewhat. Bohemia became a sort of city of refuge, and neighbouring States, Hungary and Poland, being in a worse state of anarchy than any others, invited King Wenceslaus to reign over them. Bohemia and Poland thus became united for a while under one ruler, Wenceslaus, who had himself crowned King of the latter country at Gnesen. Hungary was given in charge of the King's son Wenceslaus, who was crowned as King of that country and resided some time at Ofen. Wenceslaus had taken a Polish Princess to wife after the death of Gutta, and had thus reinforced his connection with a Slavonic neighbour, but Germanism was in the ascendant in Bohemia and the hand of Habsburg was stretched out over it. It was yet some centuries before the power of the Habsburg should become absolute in the lands of the Přemysl dynasty, but that family's light was nearing extinction. Whether good or bad, the rulers who sprang from the soil, from the peasant stock of Libuša's choosing, had been of the people and had on the whole served their people's interests. With Wenceslaus III murdered by an unknown assassin