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| | A Brief History of the Czech Lands |
 | | One day, as the story goes, the Czech nobles refused to be ruled over by a woman, Princess Libuše, any longer; she told them to follow her horse till it led them to Přemysl, her husband-to-be, ploughing in a field. |
 | | When, however, a 14th-century chronicler writes that “German speech is commoner than Czech almost in all towns and at the court”, this may be taken as referring in particular to the speech habits of the upper nobility and prosperous burghers. |
 | | In 1878-9 the Czechs recognised the failure of their policy of passive resistance by returning to the Bohemian diet and the Reichsrat, joining a government coalition under Count Taaffe along with the German clericals, aristocrats and Poles. |
| users.ox.ac.uk /~tayl0010/history.htm (4944 words) |
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