Refresheth land and folk.

Vienna and the memorable Wartburg in Thuringia were the acknowledged
centres of taste and good breeding. They were the courts of last
resort in all questions of style, grammar and versification.

It will not be necessary to follow the growth of Vienna in detail
during the last six hundred years. The dangers to which the city was
exposed from time to time were formidable. They came chiefly from two
quarters--from Bohemia and from Hungaro-Turkey. Charles IV. and Wenzel
favored the Bohemians at the expense of the Germans, and preferred
Prague to Vienna as a residence. The Czechish nation increased rapidly
in wealth and culture until, having embraced the doctrines of Huss, it
felt itself strong enough to assert a quasi-independence. The Hussite
wars which ensued in the fifteenth century ended in the downfall of
Bohemia. But the Austrian duchies, and even Bavaria and Saxony,
did not escape without cruel injuries. More than once the fanatic
Taborites laid the land waste up to the gates of Vienna. The
Reformation, a century later, did not take deep root in Austria. At
best it was only tolerated, and the Jesuit reaction, encouraged by
Rudolph II. and Matthias, made short work of it. The Thirty Years' war
gave Ferdinand II. an opportunity of restoring Bohemia to the Roman
Catholic communion. The victory of the White Hill (1620) prostrated
Bohemia at his feet: the Hussite preachers were executed or banished,
the estates of the nobility who had taken part in the rebellion were
confiscated, and the Catholic worship reinstated by force of arms. So
thoroughly was the work done that Bohemia at the present day is, next
to the Tyrol, the stronghold of Catholicism. But Ferdinand's success,
complete to outward appearance, was in reality a blunder. The Czechish
and the German nationalities were permanently estranged, and the