Moravia

Music inspired by the composer's

homeland, Moravia.

This composer is Leos Janicek, and we'll hear Moravian dances featuring the rhythms and harmonies of Moravian folk music.

Here's a recording by the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Libor Pecek.

¶¶ Thank you.

The Austrian emperor had fled to join his Russian allies further north.

There, in the hills of Moravia, the two emperors gathered their forces.

About 85,000 Austrian and Russian soldiers, with Tsar Alexander himself riding among them.

They were young, confident, and eager for battle.

His hope of entrapping the Mongols in the defiles of Glatz proved vain, for the latter's reconnaissance warned them of the trap.

Instead, under cover of a mobile screen, they laid waste Moravia to create, according to their method, a desert which would guard their flank.

Their purpose accomplished, they turned south to join Sabutai, ready to fall upon the flank of the Austrian forces should the Ember remove to the aid of Hungary.

But while they had been fulfilling this final phase of their mission of security, Sabutai had wiped out the Hungarian army.

Knowing his ambition and that he had now the means to further it, we should expect the next few years to be fruitful of achievement.

Instead, history loses sight of him completely for 10 years.

Apparently he lived unobtrusively on his Moravian estates, a circumstance that in one of his ambitious and forceful temperament can only suggest that his breach with the Archduke, now the Emperor Matthias, had been serious.

His reappearance on the stage took place in 1617, when Archduke Ferdinand, the Emperor-to-be, was engaged in a minor campaign with Venice.

I, I don't think serious people dispute that.

Um, you know, it's, uh, also too it-- Another thing that changed, brutal as the wars with the Turks were, you know, the Turks basically, the Turks would probe, they'd, uh, see what avenues of assault ingress were available and again, on the frontier and especially in Transylvania and Moravia, these were few and then, um, they'd exploit those breaches when they had overwhelming force on their side.

When they met resistance, uh, you know, uh, that couldn't be overwhelmed, they'd, uh, they'd frequently evade and, and shelter behind fortifications, you know, uh, in, in anticipation of, of a counterattack.

You know, in, in, in the Hungarian theater though, and, you know, in what became the, the Bohemian theater, the order of the day was, I mean, it-- this was in part, although not completely, you know, a sectarian war, a holy war even.

Despite the rather doubtful support of some of the princes, the emperor found a good many German nobles ready to fight against the Slav king, and his army was sufficiently strong to cause the capitulation of Vienna and force Ottokar to come to terms.

The latter consented to do homage for Bohemia and Moravia, to renounce his claims to Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, and a double marriage was arranged between a son and daughter of each monarch.

There is a story that this homage was to take place privately in a tent, and that during the ceremony the tent collapsed, revealing the proud Ottokar, magnificently dressed, on his knees before the pauper Count of Habsburg in his plain leather jerkin.

Such an incident, however, is not only totally improbable, but quite unnecessary, as an explanation of the speedy failure of the present agreement.

This was shown more especially in the case of Tyrol, which fell vacant with the death of the only son of Margaret Moltash, and which he confirmed in the hands of the Austrian Habsburgs.

For his own family, he gained by purchase and diplomacy the Margravate of Brandenburg, which brought with it a second electoral vote, the principal aim of his ambitions.

Silesia, Moravia, and Bohemia were already his.

Luxembourg and Limburg were in the hands of a brother with the promise of reversion to Bohemia.