h whom he came to an agreement after the usual fighting. Thereupon
Ottokar turned his attention to the heathen Prussians, who were supposed
to be getting ripe for conversion to Christianity. He defeated them in
several battles, which made his task much easier, and founded a strong
city, named Koenigsberg after him, to keep the Prussians from
back-sliding.

It is interesting to note that Ottokar's policy brought him into a
certain degree of contact with England. The Holy Roman Empire was making
very heavy weather at the time, the German Electors being thoroughly at
variance amongst themselves, and so it came about that after a period of
intense anarchy euphemistically called the "Interregnum," two rivals
were put up of whom neither could be said to have occupied the throne.
These rivals were both foreigners to Germany, one being a Spaniard, the
other Richard of Cornwall, second son of King John of England. Ottokar
thought fit to support Richard, who in return did little things to
oblige Ottokar, such as investing him with other people's lands and
fiefs, and all went well for a while. Ottokar had extended his dominions
considerably, had brought a number of smaller States, some of them
German, under his sway and virtually controlled all Central Europe from
the Baltic to the Adriatic Seas. He had beaten the Hungarian King Bela
and his friends, Daniel Romanovic the King of Russia and Prince of Kiev,
a Prince of Cracow and odd assortments of Serbs, Bulgars, and
Wallachians, most handsomely at Kressenbrunn on the plains of the River
March.

Ottokar's political conception of the part which Bohemia should play in
Central Europe is particularly interesting. By conquest, alliances and
understandings with his neighbours he had acquired a preponderating
influence in the councils of Europe. The power he had concentrated round
the Slavonic nucleus of his native country lay almost entirely in
German-speaking districts, so that a situation arose in which Count
Luetzov finds some analogy between the policy of this P[vr]emysl Ottokar
and that pursued by the Austrian Government from 1815, when the
Habsburgs finally abandoned the notion of a Holy Roman Empire, to 1864
and 1866, when Prussia took the first decisive step towards reviving the
same idea under the title _Deutsches Reich_. There is a good deal in
Count Luetzov's contention, and this subject might well be taken up by
some leisured student of history. It seems to me that the histo