e in 1815 the long-suppressed
national aspirations of Bohemia began to revive. The national movement,
however, at first only found expression in the revival of Bohemian
literature. The arbitrary and absolutist government of Prince Metternich
rendered all political action impossible in the lands ruled by the house
of Habsburg. In spite of this pressure the estates of Bohemia began in
1845 to assume an attitude of opposition to the government of Vienna.
They affirmed their right of voting the taxes of the country--a right
that was due to them according to the constitution of 1627. To obtain
the support of the wider classes of the population, they determined in
1847 to propose at their session of the following year that the towns
should have a more extensive representation at the diet, that the
control of the estates over the finances of the country should be made
more stringent, and that the Bohemian language should be introduced into
all the higher schools of the country. The revolutionary outbreak of
1848 prevented this meeting of the estates. When the news of the
February revolution in Paris reached Prague the excitement there was
very great. On the 11th of March a vast public meeting voted a petition
to the government of Vienna which demanded that the Bohemian language
should enjoy equal rights with the German in all the government offices
of the country, that a general diet comprising all the Bohemian lands,
but elected on an extensive suffrage, should be convoked, and that
numerous liberal reforms should be introduced. The deputation which
presented these demands in Vienna received a somewhat equivocal answer.
In reply, however, to a second deputation, the emperor Ferdinand
declared on the 8th of April that equality of rights would be secured to
both nationalities in Bohemia, that the question of the reunion of
Moravia and Silesia to Bohemia should be left to a general meeting of
representatives of all parts of Austria, and that a new meeting of the
estates of Bohemia, which would include representatives of the principal
towns, would shortly be convoked. This assembly, which was to have had
full powers to create a new constitution, and which would have
established complete autonomy, never met, though the election of its
members took place on the 17th of May. In consequence of the general
national movement which is so characteristic of the year 1848, it was
decided to hold at Prague a "Slavic congress" to which Slavs o