The Iron King - When Czechia dominated Europe - Battle of Marchfeld, 1278

📢 Narrated by David McCallion

🎼 Music:
EpidemicSound
Filmstro
Storyblocks

Credits:
Shield and Coat of Arms of the Holy Roman Emperor (c.1300-c.1400) - Heralder & Tom Lemmens (2013)

📚 Sources and citations:
Pavlac, Brian A. (2001). "Battle of Marchfeld (August 26, 1276)". In Jeep, John M. (ed.). Routledge Revivals: Medieval Germany: An Encyclopedia. Routledge.
Clauss, M. (2010). Rogers, Clifford J. (ed.). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology: Volume I. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Oto Luthar - The Land Between: A History of Slovenia (2008)
Wilson, Peter H. - Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire (2016)
Karl-Friedrich Krieger: Rudolf of Habsburg. Darmstadt (2003)

#medieval #documentary #history

[HistoryMarche]

Many thanks to my Patrons! You guys keep making these videos possible!

[TihetrisWeathersby]

Medieval Czech history is underrated, Especially Charles IV King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor

[ThutUPB]

Fun Fact 1: Ottokar's son Wenceslaus II. was on the brink of creating an even larger powerhouse by becoming the King of Poland and then acquiring the crown of Hungary for his son. Imagine a union of these three kingdoms... He got a 'little' help by the discovery of silver in Kuttenberg in Central Bohemia which made Bohemia the largest producer of silver in Europe at that time. He unfortunately passed away of tuberculosis only 34 years old...

Fun fact 2: If you are a King of Bohemia and you must go to war, don't do battle on August 26th. Ottokar II. died on that day and exactly 70 years later John the Blind died fighting the English at Crecy.

[TheStrategos]

Ottokar was a formidable and shrewd ruler. Very impressive career. This video was a first rate lesson in grand political strategy. This Rudolph of Hassburg was clearly no slouch either.

[JakubKordik]

I will always remember, how my medieval history teacher at university compared Ottokar II. and Rudolf I. by using a mafia terminology. He said, that Ottokar was like a mafia don who expected to be treated with respect and obeyed, but when others recognized his authority, he had no intention to humiliate them or to closely interfere in their affairs. He respected some general rules and was chivalrous. On the other hand, Rudolf was just like a gangster. At the beginning, he started with almost no property and that was why he wanted to have absolute control over everyone and everything and had no problem to get his hands dirty, when he gained the throne. Later, many nobles were frustrated by that and thought that Ottokar would have been a better choice, but it was already too late…

[JaromirHorak-lunx]

Note that Ottakar was originally the younger brother, probably destined for a church career. This was a fairly common case of ambitious and successful medieval monarchs who came to the throne unexpectedly as second sons, as a replacement for a suddenly deceased crown prince (think Henry VIII of England and his brother Arthur)

[marekpogany]

Thanks for your good work. My favourite King from Bohemia, the economic ingenuity.

[SakiniCZ]

Czech checks HistoryMarches new upload, and cheers after seeing that there is another piece of Czech history, well done sire. I just wandered the area and ruined castles where prince Ottokar and his father Wenceslaus I. fought each other, what a neat addition this video is.

[Sanjn]

Here leaving a comment as a sacrifice for the algorithm but in reality because I love your videos.

[RiderofRiddermark]

Learning about the struggles of Ottokar, Rudolf and the Hungarians is always so fascinating to me, because most of it happened in the area where most of my extended family lives. Marchegg, Kressenbrunn (today Groißenbrunn), Dürnkrut and Jedenspeigen are just ordinary villages I pass through when driving the car to visit family.
The battle of the Marchfeld is still remembered annualy, with Dürnkrut and Jedenspeigen organising a big Medieval Faire every summer. There's music, tumblers, jousting, the reconstruction of a small crusader camp including a field chapel, and most years a reenactment of the battle.
When you drive down the road connecting the two towns and look up on the hills to the west, you can see a huge stone monument depicting a charging knight at the spot where Ulrich von Kapellen crested the ridge with his flanking maneuvre.

[Jaycobb]

Czechia is just underrated and too unknown for what a major role we played in history and even now

[dontmindme]

This guy founded my city, so it's really cool seeing his career in a video like this. Thank you for your hard work

[vattghern]

You know what? 5:22 I really appreciate that you've shown correct borders of hre, without Silesia which would be part of hre since 1346 only.

[college]

Not only some of the highest quality content on YouTube but also some of the most prolific, this channel uploads so often and without the quality suffering because of it. I enjoy the range of content as well. Lots of different theaters of history on display

[neschopak]

One of my favourite videos from you so far. Even though I knew the outcome of that battle, it was really tense to watch. Awesome job you did!
Just one side note at that flanking maneuver done by Rudolph. At that time such move was seen as unchivalric -- battles were and should have been fought "head on" and may the strongest player wins. In fact, many knights and nobles at Rudolphs side refused to be part in that said attack, becasuse in theirs POW it was breaking of chivalric code of honor and they did not want to be part of it. So we can say, that Habsburgs were cheating...kind of :)

[styx]

Austrian and Czech History is something that’s so great.
Please more of that.

Especially the History of the Babenberger.

[stzawadzki]

history is often as interesting and well documented as "Western", but doesn't get that much love.

[jakubpluhar]

This goes to show just how influential and prosperous Bohemia, moravia and silesia has been throughout history. It was the border to the west and to the east, Prague being more or less the heart of Europe where a lot of commerce happened and we had many silver mines and even created the dollar because our currency was called "tolar" and we made so many of these coins that nearly everyone across Europe decided to just use it as the official currencies instead of the dozens of other coins that were minted from all over.

The downfall of Czechia came when we offered the throne to a tiny little Austrian family called "Habsburg" that we catapulted into power and Emperor status and they eventually managed to become one of the most powerful across Europe, leading many different kingdoms. And of course they have zero shame so after a few generations they started to supress and opress the Czechs big time. They almost even wiped the Czech culture completely were it not for a couple of famous people that brought about a resurgence.
Germans have always been kind of an issue in Czechia, they tended to be higher status very often and so Czechs was relegated to the country side more or less.
And then a man with an ugly moustache decided that the Czech Germans should actually be Germany's even though we invited them centuries ago to populate the mountainous borderlands. Of course the fact that in the "sudetenland" was the vast majority of industry and massive fortification lines totally has nothing to do with why the mustache man wanted that land.

And then we got betrayed by our own allies at Munich. We were forced to accept to give that land to Germany, we weren't at the conference and we were threatened by the Allies not to defend ourselves, we'd be seen as the "Agressor" and bad guy if we dared to defend our well fortified mountainous borders, with the 1.2M conscripts that appeared out of nowhere when the government started "mobilization". It's hotly debated just how much would change if we weren't forced into letting ourselves get conquered and occupied. And what would have happened if the Allies actually even helped in our war with Germany, it's definitely possible that there would be no WW2, Germany was afterall much much weaker than the Allies thought and our forts and military technology were nothing to scoff at.


anyways I ranted when talking about ourselves
I'm still pissed at the Habsburgs, allies and especially Soviets which took us from a modern, prosperous republic down into shithole territory that's 50 years behind Germany or even Denmark. The absolute worst part of WW2 was Soviet occupation, what I find horrible is that not a single Axis country had to face Soviet occupation, instead the USA groomed them into regional powers while giving up on the entirety of the East who suffers this sort of shit every single century.

[jakubpluhar]

As a Czech.... You are absolutely an awesome human being. Thank you so much for shining a light on "poor, little crappy Czechia" as people see it.
It's clear that the modern age has been a gigantic misservice for us Czechs, with our history greatly overshadowing today.
There's 2 very good reasons for why.
#1 Catapulting the little Habsburg family into power, leading to opression.
#2 The betrayal of the Allies in Munich
#3 Soviet occupation. Were it not for these 3 things Czechia would likely be just as good as Germany, France and etc. and honestly it's possible we'd have a lot of great things that Germany doesn't have. We'd be basically a southern Nordic country lol. A little paradise on earth

[JosefHertl]

An interesting point - in Bohemia in our chools we are taught that Otakar only lost his last battle because he was betrayed by his nobles. I mean in Bohemia only the most knowledgeable historians will argue that Otakar lost because he had a weaker army and weaker strategy. It feels like a nation-wide lie meant to mask that even the Iron King (here his alias is actually "Iron and Golden King") could be defeated by an outsider from Austria.