exile, and their property confiscated. The country was devastated by the
imperial hordes, and its population was reduced from 3,000,000 to 800,000
during the Thirty Years' War.

In 1627 Ferdinand II. greatly curtailed the administrative rights of
Bohemia, yet he did not dare to deprive her entirely of her independence.
In his "Renewed Ordinance of the Land" Ferdinand declared the Bohemian
crown to be hereditary in the House of Habsburg, and reserved legislative
power to the sovereign. But otherwise the historical rights of Bohemia
remained valid, notwithstanding all subsequent arbitrary centralising
measures taken by the Habsburgs. Bohemia's rights were repeatedly
recognised by each succeeding Habsburg. Legally Bohemia is an independent
state to-day.

The heavy persecutions inflicted upon Bohemia had a disastrous effect upon
her intellectual life and national development which were completely
paralysed until the end of the eighteenth century, when owing to the
humanitarian ideals of those times, and as a reaction against the
Germanising centralistic efforts of Joseph II., the Czechs again began to
recover their national consciousness. This revival marked the beginning of
the Czecho-Slovak struggle for the re-establishment of their independence.
The movement was at first literary, and only in the forties became
political. It was a continuous struggle against reaction and absolutism,
and if the Czecho-Slovaks to-day can boast of an advanced civilisation, it
is only owing to their perseverance and hard endeavours, and not because of
any good-will on the part of the Austrian Government which put every
possible obstacle in their way.

2. _The present Austria-Hungary_ is primarily a dynastic estate, for the
crown was always its supreme political driving force, although at present