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Zelimir, may you find more peace in death than you could in life. Zelimir at fifty-one is the youngest at death since? From humble beginnings, the reign of King Kalojan promises great adventure. After two short reigns (I use twenty-five years as a standard for normal reign), will Jan's reign last longer than great grandfather's reign (forty-five years will only make him fifty-eight, younger than his grandfather). Thank you for the update and good luck King Jan, hopefully your regent will be wise.
 
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Interlude Twelve
INTERLUDE XII.
Legendary
28 January 2021


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‘Arthur of Britain. Fionn mac Cumhaill. Oddgeirr the Dane. High Prince Álmos. Iľja Muromec. Guan Yu.’ Ed Grebeníček indicated the various bas reliefs, illuminations and lithographic depictions of each of the heroic knights and kings in turn, with the name and culture of each of them underscoring each of the figures on the EnerGrafix slideshow. ‘Each culture in Europe has a heroic king or knight who has ascended from the prosaic realm of history into the more luminous and misty domains of hero-worship, legend and mythology. Wales, Ireland, Östergötland, Carpathia, Russia and China have these culture-heroes. Moravia has—’ here Grebeníček paused theatrically.

The response from the class was unanimous.

‘Kaloján the Valiant!’

A stylised image of the greatest Moravian king took the place of the six other culture-heroes on the screen, clad in (rather anachronistic) late-medieval plate armour and a crowned helm, a sword at his side, with a long, flowing beard of fiery red descending from his chin all the way down his chest and over his belly. Beside him was a steed of an equal fiery redness, tall, spirited and fierce in aspect.

Turning to the class with a rather coy smile, Ed Grebeníček asked: ‘Have any of you ever been to the corrie on Gerlachovský štiť? The Grotto of the King?’

Ľubomír Sviták was one of four in the class who raised their hands. Grebeníček called on him.

‘… and, Ľubomír? What did you think?’

‘It’s a long and really tough hike—but well worth it to see the view. And of course there’s the statue of Kaloján on the south edge of the cauldron,’ Ľubomír answered. ‘I don’t think it dates to the thirteenth century, though. Looks way too fresh and way too lifelike.’

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‘What?’ Grebeníček teased his student with a grin. ‘You don’t think the greatest of Moravia’s kings will rise from his stony slumber as the Day of Judgement approaches, and appear at our darkest hour to lead our armies in the battles of the apocalypse?’

‘Let’s just say I have yet to be convinced,’ Sviták answered the professor’s smile.

‘Well. That statue happened to have been carved in Bratislava, and moved to the corrie of Mount Gerlach during the nineteenth century, after the War of Reaction against Asturias provoked a strong surge of romantic nationalist sentiment that found its way into our artwork. But even as late as then, there could still be found households in the eastern part of the Slovak lands where the belief in the King Under the Mountain still obtained.’

He flipped to another slide on the EnerGrafix presentation, which showed up a cartoon caricature of an irate country bumpkin in a red beard, wielding a rusty bent blade and wearing a winged helmet.

‘Kaloján certainly cut an impressive symbol of Moravian nationhood, even in our satire. However…’

The next image he flipped to was an illuminated manuscript which showed a beardless young boy kneeling piously at an altar before a mitred archbishop. The Cyrillic script in the margins clearly referred to the boy as Ján Rychnovský.

‘… Although he is mostly known from the rather fanciful late-medieval Príbeh o pravom kráľoví, the historical Kaloján chrabrý turns out to have been an equally interesting figure. He was evidently a fairly active and rambunctious child, but not entirely without a contemplative side. We have historical records which suggest he took an active role in containing an outbreak of the “red plague” (that is to say, smallpox). There are of course numerous chronicles which detail his activity in defending his ally in Great Rus’ from invasions by powers to the east, as well as his leading role in defending the Orthodox faith in the second and third Adamite Wars.’

And then he flipped to a slide showing an oil painting from the seventeenth century, featuring a red-bearded man on a battlefield with a tear-streaked face of wild anguish and despair beseeching heaven in wordless supplication, as his arms caressed a fallen beardless youth lying upon the ground.

‘And then there was his human side. Kaloján was famously approachable by his troops, even the low-born ones. And his lifelong rivalry with the Count of Krems, Vratislav Kopčianský, has been recorded in enough petty detail that any modern reader with a son can see what he was like as a child. The “Soliloquy for Kuríg” is probably fictional, but given its presence in the Kronika Tórbranta he almost certainly did say this:’

The slide flipped once more, and the stone statue of Kaloján on Mount Gerlach was shown alongside the quote:

МЕЧ ИБА СЕКА · ТО ЧО СПАЯ · Е ВЕРА А НАДЕЙ А НЭГА ПРЕ НАШИХ БРАТОВ
The sword only severs. What binds are: faith, hope and tenderness toward our brothers.’​

‘A remarkable sentiment, particularly for a man who was largely concerned with hunting, hawking and roughhousing outside when he was young,’ said the professor.

‘But did he say this before or after the death of his son?’ asked Petra Šimkovičová shrewdly.

‘Excellent question, Petra. I believe he said it long before his son’s death. But assuredly the loss of Kuríg deepened Kaloján’s appreciation for the theological virtues… Now, we are going to study both the historical Kaloján, as well as the legendary Kaloján, because both figures are of crucial importance to our study of medieval Moravia.’

Ed Grebeníček flipped to a slide which showed the armoured illustration of the legendary Kaloján, and the illustration of the meek child Ján receiving the symbols of office from the archbishop.

‘Therefore, in this part of the class we will read both parts of the Príbeh and parts of the Kronika Tórbranta which treat with the reign of Kaloján chrabrý. And we will discuss their significance to the developments which came afterward…’

~ END OF BOOK IV ~
 
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When one mingles man, legend, and myth; what is factual is far less important than what is believed. Are you going to discuss the deposed prince? Did you have any idea of Jan's importance when you made the succession change? Thank you for updating.
 
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Zelimir, may you find more peace in death than you could in life. Zelimir at fifty-one is the youngest at death since? From humble beginnings, the reign of King Kalojan promises great adventure. After two short reigns (I use twenty-five years as a standard for normal reign), will Jan's reign last longer than great grandfather's reign (forty-five years will only make him fifty-eight, younger than his grandfather). Thank you for the update and good luck King Jan, hopefully your regent will be wise.

When one mingles man, legend, and myth; what is factual is far less important than what is believed. Are you going to discuss the deposed prince? Did you have any idea of Jan's importance when you made the succession change? Thank you for updating.

Zelimir's death was premature, and I confess to say that it was probably preventable if I'd made some different choices. During gameplay I underestimated drastically how much raw stress accompanies the paranoid trait. I also underestimated the difficulties of trying to murder my political opponents when my character is compassionate. I hate to say it, but there are times in CK3 when being evil helps drastically.

Big brother Radomir will show up again, yes. But he ends up being less important to the story than the king's uncles.

Honestly, I had no clue that (Kalo)Jan would be as important as he ended up being when I started playing him. Which is probably pretty accurate to how these things usually go: I think how effective and awesome he ended up being would have surprised most of his vassals as well.
 
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Still way behind. Will get there, eventually; but to keep up, initiating back-and-forth-reading protocol.

‘But did he say this before or after the death of his son?’ asked Petra Šimkovičová shrewdly.
Curious, as this was the question lingering in the mind when reading those words.

Although;
almost certainly did
is not the best type of claim to provide at a lecture, or rather, is highly problematic when hypothesising, making one to question the methodology-approach of the prof. But then again, the students are already within the aura of not-noticing-it, the grades depend on it, thus: carry on.
 
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Book Five Chapter One
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The Reign of Kaloján Rychnovský, Kráľ of Veľká Morava
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ONE
Rage of the Waters
3 September 1220 – 21 December 1220


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Y children: shall I tell you from the tales of Kaloján chrabrý, battle-begotten, battlefield-born? Shall I tell you of the red-bearded king, the right-believing? Shall I tell you of him, who stood the steadfast friend of the Rus’, and defender of the Orthodox in the Southlands?

How then shall I begin? Shall I sing a tune to the cadence of the love songs of Bohodar? Or shall I cry a lament to evoke the sorrows of Radomír? King and seed of kings, begotten of battle and born upon the field of battle, Kaloján surpasses them all: fair of feature, sound of body, strong of arm, keen of mind, bold and true of heart. Thousands of deeds he did which were worthy of praise in song.

Yet, in those days, my children: he was a child, just as you are. I tell you truly: Ján was the younger son. He was named for the disciple whom Jesus loved, and both of his parents loved him deeply. Yet the heir of Želimír the King was Radomír, his elder son with Živana the Queen.

Now, Radomír was tall of frame, handsome of mien and sharp of mind. But his heart was as hard as Pharaoh’s. Although he spoke as a learned man and a master of the law, yet he had within him no love for his fellow men. Želimír the King made many attempts to correct him, as did his mother Živana, but to little avail. When it became clear that Radomír was set in his ways and could not be moved, his father sent him into a monastery—where perhaps God could do what his father could not. In this way Ján was set in place to become king.

But soon after, Želimír, betimes taken with fevers of the brain, went wild wood: and his life ended in a fit of madness. The fatherless Ján then took the throne at the tender age of thirteen. But even at thirteen, the lad bore the marks of an extraordinary life.

One day, the young boy was at play. With him were his companions. And these were Vieroslav, and Vratislav, and Bohuslav, and Vlastimila.

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They played upon the edge of Lake Chomoutov, north of the kingly city. Now in those days there were still rusalky who haunted the banks of rivers and the edges of lakes, and a small group of them on the other side of the lake, with their sharp and greedy eyes, saw the new king at play. The youngest one, who had spotted the children, spoke to the others:

‘It is king-flesh that spells about upon the shore of our lake—king-flesh of a Christian name! We have now this chance to lure him; we should seize it. Oh, we should seize him, my sisters! An were we to cause his mother this grief, the whole kingdom would be overturned. And, oh! Then what a feast of man-flesh would be ours, my sisters! Let us not miss this chance!’

‘Wait,’ said the eldest rusalka, more subtil in mind and with greater understanding. ‘Sister, dear—the king-flesh is not yet awake to desire. Our voices are beautiful—but they work only upon men. Our voices are beautiful—but they hold no snare yet for a child. Find among his companions one who has tasted of Adam’s fruit. Our voices are beautiful—sing to the older one, softly. Our voices are beautiful—draw him into the water. After him, the king-flesh will follow, and then we may feast!’

The sisters all agreed to this devilish plan. And so the youngest rusalka, the one with the keen eyes, she began to sing… but softly, so that only the oldest of the boys might hear. And her voice, Vieroslav heard. It was only a whisper on the edge of his hearing. But it was strong enough to sway him.

Poor Vieroslav, grown in body but not in wisdom! For what young man, full of blood and life, upon hearing a song of such beauty, will not be stirred? And his heart throbbed with longing in him, and he followed the voice… into the water. And his fellows playing alongside, knew not wherefore he went out into the lake. Even Ján thought it was merely a game, and that he was spelling by himself in the water.

But as Vieroslav went further and further out, a shadow of fear began to grow in the young king’s heart. He saw the water come up to Vieroslav’s knees, and then his shoulders, and then over his head… and Ján took alarm.

‘Vieroslav! Friend Vieroslav! Stay thy feet! Turn back!’

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But so rapt by the rusalka’s roust was Vieroslav, that he would give no heed to his friend upon the shore—instead there was in his sight only the water, and in his hearing only the song, and in his heart only the desire to be bathed in its beauty. Seeing that his friend would not hear him, Ján leapt at once to his feet and dove headlong into the water after the White Croat youth.

The rusalky too had already leapt into the water like hounds after the scent of fowl, though the youngest kept singing beneath the waves. Off they swam upon the hunt, with the scent of Vieroslav in their noses! They found him beneath the water, and they laid hold of him with their slender fingers. The roust of the rusalka was no longer alluring and beautiful, but cruel and mocking. Their hair was no longer like spun gold, but algae-green. They grabbed his wrists and they grabbed his ankles, and they bared their teeth, awaiting their prey to drown.

Ján was upon them! With fists and feet he drove them away from his friend. And the knuckles and toes of the young boy were sharp, and his limbs strong and vigorous. Under attack by the boy, the rusalky loosed Vieroslav, who began to swim upward. Upon seeing the younger king-flesh in their grasp, though, the wicked water-spirits redoubled their rage, and soon were holding Ján fast beneath the waves. The king found himself struggling for breath. Soon he would drown. Soon his mother would add her salt tears to the bitter waters of Lake Chomoutov!

But within Vieroslav’s chest there beat the heart of a man—the heart of a true man of Užhorod! The same heart which had betrayed him to the roust of the rusalka, now stirred him to pity at the sight of his friend, struggling against the water-spirits’ vile clutches! The son of the White Croats had still the strength of his body! And at the scabbard on his girdle, he had still a blade of steel! Back down dove Vieroslav, the knife’s point gleaming beneath the waters!

The rusalky released Ján, in fright at the steel of men. And Vieroslav did battle with the rusalky beneath the waves of Lake Chomoutov. The steel of men was tried against the claws and teeth of the rusalky that day. The hot blood of men beating within Vieroslav’s veins was tried against the deathly cold of the water-maidens. Oh, the rage of the waters! They claimed a young man, that day of sorrow. Vieroslav fought, and Ján went free. But Vieroslav was lost beneath the waves, the bitter waves of the lake!

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~~~​

The young king Ján drew nigh drowning himself. He cast up on the shores of Lake Chomoutov more dead than alive. But by the grace of God, he survived. Being well-brought up in the ways of piety, Ján gave thanks to his Creator when he came to, and then wept freely at the lakeshore for his drowned friend. He summoned the kancelár and bade him erect a stone cross on the shore, nearest where Vieroslav had gone into the water. The Cenotaph of Vieroslav still stands on the shore of Lake Chomoutov—the locals still tend it, and the White Croats still come there to pay respects to the heir of Siloš who succumbed to the lures of the rusalky.

From that time, there arose an enmity between Kráľ Ján and Vratislav—between the young son of Želimír Rychnovský and the young son of Ladislav Kopčianský. Vratislav began to mutter against Ján, and to revile him.

‘Why is it that Vieroslav died, and not Ján?’ said Vratislav. ‘Ján was the one the rusalky wanted. Vieroslav could actually fight them. The only thing Ján has is a pretty face!’

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From that day on, blaming Ján for Vieroslav’s death, Vratislav Kopčianský tormented Ján in various ways—including by calling him ‘Pretty-Boy Ján’, ‘Sissy Ján’, ‘Pansy Ján’ and other such cruel epithets. It got to the point where Ján could no longer bear it, and he ran to his mother and complained to her of it.

‘And what is the matter with having a pleasing appearance? Only if it becomes a stumbling-block to others is it a sin!’ advised Queen Mother Živana. ‘Ján, you must be more forbearing! Learn to possess your soul in patience, and bless them who persecute you! Christ will draw near, not the beauty of the face, but rather the beauty of the heart—wherefore polish the mirror inside you!’

And Ján took this advice to heart. Indeed, rather than answering Vratislav with blows or with taunts of his own, Ján adopted for himself the name of ‘Pretty-Boy Ján’… or ‘Kaloján’, which is from the Greek moniker ‘Kaloïōannēs’. Finding the slight robbed of its edge, Vratislav quickly abandoned it, but the name stuck, and everyone—even the adults at court—began to call the young king Kaloján.

This was not the only time during his childhood that young Kaloján came near to death. One time he was walking with his companions near Horné Lipová, not far from Olomouc, when Vlastimila spotted a large stone cliff. She crowed with exultation, and ran to the tall rock, and began to climb.

‘Come after me, Ján, if you dare!’

Did Kaloján back down from such a dare? Of course he did not!

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One foot above the other, Kaloján scaled the rock face at Horné Lipová. Now, the rusalky at Lake Chomoutov had for their master the Devil, who saw in Kaloján a mighty king and follower of Christ whose downfall would be his glory. The Evil One saw Kaloján ascending the heights, and he sent forth demons among the trees and rocks, and one of them perched upon the rock just under where Vlastimila was, and she did not see him.

But the demon leapt out of the rock and down at Kaloján, who took such fright that he lost his grip, and he lost his footing, and he tumbled down the rocks. Once more the grace of God saved him, for at the bottom he hit a soft clod of dirt rather than a stone, and rolled away from the stone face with nothing more than a few bruises.

But it was months before either Vlastimila or any of his other companions could get him to speak again, for Kaloján had stared into the face of a demon of hell, and could not recover from the sight of it for that time.

The trials of young Kaloján at the hands of the rusalky, and at the hands of the demons, and at the hands of Vratislav Kopčianský, did not weaken or dispirit the young king. For just as steel is tempered and hardened in the fire of a forge, so too was Kaloján’s steel strengthened and refined by these struggles. For God had much more in store for His servant Kráľ Kaloján, and these small troubles would prepare the young king for far greater.

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Thank You for the update. Today has been a good day as I have learned something new (rusalky). I thought about the Greek Sirens. The Rusalky seem to be more about drowning while the Sirens are more shipwreck. I wonder how independent the Germanic, Slavic, Frankish and Greek myths and legends are and how intertwined the stories and songs. With the near drowning and rock climbing, it must have been an agonizing play session. The older brother was sent to the Church and is no longer eligible for the crown? At this point, who was the heir?
 
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Thank You for the update. Today has been a good day as I have learned something new (rusalky). I thought about the Greek Sirens. The Rusalky seem to be more about drowning while the Sirens are more shipwreck. I wonder how independent the Germanic, Slavic, Frankish and Greek myths and legends are and how intertwined the stories and songs. With the near drowning and rock climbing, it must have been an agonizing play session. The older brother was sent to the Church and is no longer eligible for the crown? At this point, who was the heir?

Well, the Germans have the Näcke / Lorelei, who also live on rivers and lure men to death by drowning.

Kaloján is a bit of a daredevil by personality. He paid for it, too.

At this point, Queen Vlasta of the Pecked Nose is the player heir. I don't know how or why she reverted to Adamitism.
 
Book Five Chapter Two
TWO
Ride
8 April 1221 – 17 September 1224


I.​

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N those days, my children, Kaloján had not yet taken the vows of kingship, nor had his head been anointed with oil, for he was yet too young. The state rested not yet in his young hands. The kniežatá and vojvodcovia who had sworn their oaths of fealty to Želimír the King debated among themselves what to do about this mere boy whose mettle as king had not yet been tried. Some doubted the late king’s wisdom in having selected Ján to succeed him. Others saw the field open for their own assay.

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Živana the Queen Mother sought to bolster her younger son’s rule. On one occasion, when Ján was younger, she invited all of the noteworthy men of the realm to a feast in her younger son’s honour, but she did not tell her son himself. She kept her work a secret, until the king began to grow suspicious of his mother—who hid from him her plans for the feast. Ján feared that his mother was hiding something terrible of her own… but great was his love for the woman who bore him upon the battlefield, and loath was he to intrude upon her or trample upon her rights. And so he left his mother alone until the very day of the feast came.

There had been dancing, there had been song! There had been wines from the Moravian south, fine wines undiluted! There had been roast pigs whole upon spits, and game fowl of every kind! There had been games and laughter! What joy there had been that night, what merriment!

In truth, Živana had wanted to know if Ján bore any mark of her late husband’s madness and evil suspicions. But from his behaviour at the feast, she could see for herself that her son was honest and true and upright, and possessed a very proper love of a son for his mother.

‘A true king for Moravia have we here,’ spoke his mother to him when the feast was over. ‘Sweet and proper and kind, every whit worthy of the blood of Bohodar, and every whit worthy of the crown that awaits him!’

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But in private council, the king’s šafár Prisnec, knieža of Bohemia, glowered darkly and spoke to the other noblemen. ‘And are we meant to follow this mere boy, with no trace of a beard upon his face? Are we meant to follow a brat hiding behind his mother’s skirts?’

‘It would be far better,’ Ján’s grandmother Kostislava agreed, ‘if one of my other sons were to take the throne. Zvonimír, perhaps?’

Živana, the Queen Mother and regent for Kaloján, heard this. In a rage, before the night was out, she sent a dozen men against her own mother-in-law on account of her treason. Kostislava’s castle and manors in Znojmo were seized, and she herself was held under guard in her home in Olomouc. Živana held them in her younger son’s name until he could claim them for his own.

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The king’s kancelár, Rostislav, also heard this exchange—and said nothing. Rostislav had been bosom friend to the former king, and it was not lightly that he heard this talk against Želimír’s wishes. But few knew better than he, how far the former king’s madness had taken him in his last years. Had his rede truly been sound? Doubts beset the mind of the lord of the East. Would the realm be better off under Želimír’s brother, than under his son?

But a single stone cast from a mountain path can cause a rockslide. So too the Queen Mother’s seizure of Znojmo sparked a great uprising, with twenty thousand flocking to the rebel banners. And foremost among them, flew those of Bohemia.

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To the new king’s banner flocked many from all over Moravia, and Nitra, and Užhorod. Thirteen thousand were all together swayed from within the realm. And to their young kinsman’s call, came also five thousand men of Milčané beneath the banners of Vojvoda Wizlaw, and eight thousand men of Sliezsko beneath the banners of Vojvoda Henrík. From Beaumont to aid the rightful King of Veľká Morava, came even three hundred Frankish knights, each of them in shining armour and bearing lances straight and proud! And at their head, bearing the king’s standard high, was Kolman the Monk!

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Now, my children—when you hear the name Kolman the Monk, what do you think of? When you hear the name does your mind perhaps drift to the icon of Saint Kolman, the sweet ‘little dove’ of Ireland who spread the Gospel in Francia and in Burgundy? When you hear of a ‘monk’, do you think of a sweet and gentle old man with a long flowing beard in a black cassock?

Not so this Kolman the Monk! This Kolman was a black dove of war. Fire and the keen edge of steel were his Gospel, and his vow of obedience was taken and discharged upon horseback. He bore the name of ‘Monk’, because his father had been a monk—one who had abandoned his vows and taken a wife. A grim fate, to be the son of a monk! Black indeed was his beard, black and wild was his hair, and his face was grim and fierce in aspect, for he had proven his mettle in the first war with the Adamites. Not for no reason was Kolman the Monk Želimír’s maršal, and the first of Kaloján’s knights!

Yet Rostislav did not commit his men one way or the other. In those days, there were still holy fools who stayed in churchyards in Podkarpatská. One of them, Miloboj of Snina, approached the knieža of Podkarpatská as he left church one Sunday, and told him:

When Maramoroš takes the field
The realm’s true king shall be revealed.
’​

Rostislav, who ruled from Maramoroš, heard this and marvelled. However, he did not go back to the church to pray about this riddle. Instead he pondered on his own. If ‘the realm’s true king’ had not yet been revealed, surely that meant that Kaloján was not the true king? So Rostislav reasoned to himself. Because of this, he chose at last to commit his knights and his men-at-arms to the banners of the Bohemian rebels. But Rostislav was very much mistaken in this riddle’s meaning.

To the south and to the west marched the men of Podkarpatská, five thousand in all, until they came to the village of Zolonta, upon a plain west of the Apuseni foothills. Zolonta was then ruled by the Hrabství of Bihor, outside of the Moravian realm.

Kolman the Monk led the armies of the king to Zolonta, to meet Rostislav in battle. Across the field of battle Kolman called:

‘False friend to the former king, stand and face your judgement!’

‘Dare you call me false, you monk’s son?!’ cried Rostislav in rage. ‘A true friend to a friend not in his right wits, will not accompany him into the wild wood! I come to await the true king of these lands, for it was revealed to me that when I take the field the true king of Moravia will be known!’

‘Then know this, Rostislav!’ Kolman cried aloud, his brow clouding with the wrath of war. ‘I shall drag you to Olomouc in chains behind my horse, and you shall kneel before the realm’s true king!’

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The two men departed, each to his army, and prayed together with them. Was God with upright Rostislav? Or was God with the wrathful Kolman? Was God with Zvonimír or with Kaloján? At Zolonta it was decided; at Zolonta it was revealed.

As the armies met at Zolonta, the heavens broke open with a deafening sound, and a dove descended from amid the clouds, crying out with a heavenly song. Each army, which had been ready to fight and shed blood for their chosen king, stayed their hands and glanced up with wonder. The white dove which appeared over Zolonta flew over both armies… but then lit upon the king’s banner, and settled there.

Marvelling with awe, the black dove glanced up at the white dove seated upon his vane. And even sitting in his saddle, he was ashamed for the harsh words of judgement he had shouted across the field at a fellow Christian. He thrust the vane into the earth at Zolonta, and he leapt from his horse and knelt down in prayer, asking: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me!’

Rostislav too beheld this marvel, and saw the dove light upon the king’s banner, and he knew at once that he had been in the wrong. He too leapt down from his horse and knelt before this sign from the heavens. His prayer echoed that of Kolman the Monk: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me!’

Man by man, knight by knight, the two armies which had come to fight—knelt down before the true king’s vane, which the spirit of the Lord had selected among the two. A priest appeared with an altar, and he served the Liturgy and administered the Gifts to all men—rebel and loyal—and reconciled them to each other. After the Liturgy had ended, Rostislav went up to Kolman the Monk and said:

‘Forgive me, my brother! If you would drag me to Olomouc in chains by your horse to kneel before the true king, whom God has appointed, I shall go with you, with not one word of complaint.’

‘No, forgive me, my brother!’ Kolman the Monk bowed to Rostislav. ‘Many and harsh were my words of judgement upon you. You are indeed a true friend of the former king! An you go to Olomouc with me, it shall be as a free man, upon your own horse, in full honour as knieža.’

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And so indeed it came to pass that Rostislav, despite having declared for the rebels, went back to Olomouc without a single drop of blood shed, and knelt before Kaloján—after having repented and recounted the wonders that attended the field at Zolonta. Despite his rebellion, the kind-hearted young king received Rostislav’s belated oath of fealty with gratitude. Indeed, even today where the vane of Kolman the Monk was thrust into the earth, there now stands an Orthodox Church where the Moravian general’s namesake—the Irish monk, Saint Kolman the Wonderworker—is venerated[1]!


[1] Other historical accounts say that Kolman Munk captured Rostislav after winning a battle at Zolonta, and brought him back to Olomouc as a captive. Regardless, most sources agree that Rostislav’s capitulation to Kaloján was quick and relatively bloodless, and Kaloján’s forgiveness of Rostislav Koceľuk and public decree setting him at liberty came quickly enough that many modern-day historians are still apt to credit the ‘miraculous’ account of the meeting of the armies at Zolonta.
 
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UT this wonder, the bloodless surrender at Zolonta, the knieža of Bohemia refused to believe, when he heard of it. Indeed, Prisnec’s brow blackened and his heart hardened, and he sent his knights and his men-at-arms into Jihlava to take the castle from the young king.

Kolman the Monk once more called up the king’s armies, Moravians and Slovaks and Silesians, and they marched upon Jihlava to do battle with the rebellious Bohemians. Kneeling to pray before battle, Kolman the Monk led the charge.

Začalo sa úsvit červený,
A búrlivý Anjel Smrtí
Jazdil s vojskami Moravy[1].


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There followed a great din and slaughter in battle, as Kolman the Monk rode into the fray with a lance in his mighty hand, and he smote left and right of him with thundering fury. He built up a wall with the bodies of fifteen score of his Czech foes, who dared in their arrogance to rebel against God’s anointed. That day, the son of the monk fought with the strength of forty men, such that long afterward men compared him in song to Saul the King, and to Samson! But Prisnec still held over half of his men in reserve, and bade his time in sending them against the King’s champion and tutor, Kolman the Monk.

Kaloján had arrived in Velehrad to be vested with the crown and the sceptre. He knelt before Miroslav, the Archbishop of Moravia, with all humility and gentleness before God’s appointed pastor upon earth, to receive the flock of Moravia into his earthly care and keeping. This he did in the sight of God and man, and although with a child’s innocence he bent his neck to God, when he stood up it was as a man fully grown. And although he still had a child’s limbs, and no beard upon his face, within his breast there beat the heart of a lion.

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At Velehrad he went at once to the Archbishop’s stables, and leapt upon the back of the first horse that he saw. It was a fine roan animal, with white tips upon its coat like frost. He took a footman’s spear in hand, the first one that he saw. This was not so fine: for it had a crack in the haft. But he took it in his hand and couched it like a lance, and—without doing on helmet or armour—shot out of the Archbishop’s stables like a thunderbolt from the stormy heavens. And thuswise did he ride. From Velehrad to the marches of Bohemia, it would have taken an ordinary rider four days. But Kaloján, who was guided by the hand of God, to uphold the law of the realm and put an end to the war being fought in his name, was no ordinary rider. And between his youthful legs there strode no ordinary horse.

On the first day and through the first night, Kaloján flew with his horse across the Highlands, leaving a column of dust in his wake. He made it to the high peak of Javořice, whence he was seen by three of Bohemia’s most fearsome knights[2], who rode out into the field to meet him.

The youngest and greenest of the brothers, who was still as powerful as ten ordinary men at arms, did upon his breast a fine suit of mail all of white, and upon his head a helmet of silver, leapt upon a fine white stallion fourteen hands high, and went to meet the king. Kaloján saw the White Knight coming upon him at a distance as he made the descent from Javořice that morn, and rode to meet him in battle upon the Bohemian side, although the king had upon him no helm and no armour, and in his hand was only the spear of a footman with a crack in the haft. Beneath him was the splendid roan, however!

Kaloján met the White Knight upon the plain, and locked in a deadly contest the two of them jousted for twenty passes. All of the villages nearby heard the clangour and wondered if the weather wasn’t turning stormy. Kaloján and the White Knight fought until both men were grazed and bleeding and exhausted, but neither one could unseat the other. As the morning sun had ridden a quarter of its course in the sky, the White Knight flung down his lance and cried aloud,

‘I yield me! Alone I cannot best you. Pretty-Ján, you are a true king, and I shall swear you my oath.’

And thus Kaloján took the oath of the White Knight, and happily named him among the first rank of his zbrojnošov. But the White Knight gave him the following rede:

‘Lord and Kráľ, I beseech you: stay here, catch your breath, dress your wounds! For my brother, who is also my brother-in-arms, lies in wait for you on the road. He has three times my own strength. I know I risk losing my own head for telling you this, but I would rather die than see you come to grief!’

Kaloján smiled upon his new brother-in-arms, and spoke: ‘O bold White Knight, what manner of king would I be if I left off here? I am bound for Doudleby, and I shall make it there by sundown. God guides my hand: I do not fight for myself, but for the law of the Czech people and for an end to the bloodshed.’

‘Then at least allow me to wash your horse down before again you ride!’ begged the White Knight.

This Kaloján allowed, for the splendid roan was beginning to show his wind. But the splendid roan was not yet dry before he sped off again on the road to Doudleby. It was not long before the second brother rode out to meet Kaloján.

The middle brother had mounted a fearsome palomino of sixteen hands, and done on a mail of brazen colour, topped with a golden-yellow tabard, and upon his head he strapped a helm of brass, which was burnished so bright it looked to be gold. Now this middle brother was indeed a cunning and fierce warrior, and he did have the strength of thirty men-at-arms. Upon the edge of the forest, the Gold Knight rode out to meet the young king. Remember, my children: Kaloján had no armour upon his back, nor a helm upon his head, and he bore in his hand only a footman’s spear with a crack in the haft. But at least he had the splendid roan beneath him!

Along the edge of the forest Kaloján fought with the Gold Knight for forty passes. And, my children, what a din they made! Crows took flight from the tops of the trees! At least three villages away the people were convinced that a storm was upon them! The chariot of the sun rode over the crest of the sky, but neither man could unhorse the other though both were bleeding and panting and out of wind. At length the Gold Knight flung down his lance and cried:

‘I yield! You are too strong for me! Only a true king could fight me like this. Let me swear you my oath!’

Again, Kaloján gladly welcomed the Gold Knight with open arms, and took his service among the first rank of his zbrojnošov. But the Gold Knight had this more to say:

‘Lord and Kráľ, I beg you—don’t go on without staying and resting and catching your breath. You have faced my younger brother and won. You have faced me and won. But my elder brother has three times even my strength. Though I risk my neck in saying this, I would rather die than see you come to grief.’

But Kaloján simply smiled at his new zbrojnoš and told him: ‘What manner of king would I be if I stopped here, O brave Knight of Gold? Doudleby yet awaits me by sunfall! God guides my hand, and I don’t fight for myself alone but for the law of the Czechs, and for an end to this bloodshed!’

‘Then at least let me bathe and tend your horse before you ride away!’

Again Kaloján allowed this. His horse was visibly panting and sweating and aching by now, even though it was a splendid beast. But Kaloján rode off, for he was determined to make it to Doudleby by nightfall.

He made his way into the forest through the afternoon. But it grew dark in the wood, unnaturally so. For the last of the brothers, a massive brute battle-hardened, who had fought and slain ninety men-at-arms at once, was now his foe. The eldest brother did upon himself a mail of black iron, and a tabard of sable-black, and his helmet too was of black iron, and he mounted a monstrous destrier with a coat of pure black, standing eighteen hands high. And off he flew like a raven in flight, descending upon the king with intent silent and deadly. And here was Kaloján, with nothing upon his back but his clothes, nothing upon his head but his hair, and nothing in his hand but a cracked footman’s spear! True, he had the splendid roan, but even the roan by now was bellowing with exhaustion.

In the midst of the forest, when Kaloján met the Black Knight, there arose such a horrible sound that even the eagles launched themselves from the treetops in fright, and all through Southern Bohemia every village within fifty miles of that forest feared that Judgement Day had arrived. Not even when he faced the rusalky had Kaloján felt in such threat of his life! He fought harder than he had ever fought anyone before. The Black Knight and Kaloján fought fearsomely together, with deadly strokes that would have severed spines from backs and heads from shoulders of men of lesser strength and skill, for sixty passes that evening. Only when night was about to fall did the Black Knight fling down his lance.

‘O true King Pretty-Ján,’ the Black Knight rumbled, ‘you have bested both of my brothers—they of the White and of the Gold. And now you have fought me to a halt, and I cannot defeat you. Till the hour of my death, I shall serve no other master but you. Will you take my oath?’

Gladly did Kaloján do so, despite being weary and bleeding and aching upon every part of his body by now. When the Black Knight rose from kneeling and loosed his hand from the king’s sword, he said:

‘I know how you answered my two brothers, that you must make it to Doudleby by sundown. Only let me perform the same service for you and your horse that they did, that in blessing and safety you may arrive thither.’

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~~~​

Safe and sound did Kaloján arrive outside Doudleby that night of the second day, to meet an army of two thousand Moravians who had assembled there in his name. The camp was taken with fright when they beheld riding behind him the fearsome knights of Bohemia—the White, the Gold and the Black—but when the knights told the Moravians how the king had fought them each to a draw despite his lack of armour, and that they had sworn fealty to the new King, the camp was reassured… somewhat. The king slept soundly that evening, and the heroic roan that had borne him there was taken to the stables to rest. Upon the following morning, the castellan of Doudleby was shocked to see the vane of the Rychnovský lion flying at the enemy siege camp.

The castellan sent a messenger down, to have words with the camp commander. The herald returned in a great fright, for he said:

‘Kaloján the king’s son is here! He rode out from Velehrad to the peak of Javořice two days ago. He fought the Three Knights of Bohemia and bested them all yesterday. And he swears he will take this castle today!’

But the castellan boxed the herald’s ears, and shouted at him: ‘You fool! You senseless clod! What man could take a castle within a day, even if he were the greatest warrior on earth?’

It was too late, though. The castle garrison upon the battlements had already seen the Rychnovský vane, and had already seen the young king upon his horse riding to the front of the siege camp, and they began to take fright. Many of them fled their posts. Still others, having never been given the opportunity, went out to offer their allegiance to the king before them. But it was clear even by midday that the castle would not have enough men to guard against the king’s two thousand.

The gates of the castle swung open, and the king’s men poured through. The few archers who were left upon the battlements shot their arrows into the king’s army, and the king’s archers shot back. Kaloján took the Three Knights and fought his way across the courtyard to the keep. The White Knight swung his spear and slew five at a stroke; the Gold Knight swung his spear and slew fifteen at a stroke; and the Black Knight swept his spear in deadly arcs that slew forty-five at a stroke!

Kaloján ascended the stairs in the keep and made his way up to the quarters of the castellan, who took his sword and swung it at Kaloján. Kaloján took the spear which had the crack in the haft, and blocked the stroke of the sword… but the spear split in two. Now Kaloján had what looked like a javelin in one hand, and a stick in the other, and with these he fought against the castellan. The castellan backed out upon the battlements, and Kaloján pressed him back. When the castellan saw the White Knight, the Gold Knight and the Black Knight coming out of the keep onto the battlements, he took fright and launched himself between the crenellations… and plummeted to his death on the hard earth below.

‘The castle is ours!’ cried Kaloján.

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Within three days, the new king had been crowned, ridden the length of the vysočina from the east to the west, fought and beaten Bohemia’s three strongest knights, and taken the castle of Doudleby in a single assault.

~~~​

When Prisnec heard of the loss of Doudleby Castle, he flew into a rage. He ordered his men to assemble in Hradec, and then did on his own armour, retrieved his own spear and horse, and led his men forward to battle, striking at Silesia as his first target. His knight, Kojata Abovský of Hradec, led an advance party south through the Morava Valley and attacked Olomouc.

Olomouc had not seen battle for more than a hundred years, thanks to the pacific reign of Letopisár. But now there was thunder and fire and steel enough, for Kojata Abovský struck southward burning as he went, and was only stopped outside the gates of Olomouc by the king’s kinsman, Vojvoda Henrík. Six thousand Silesians were drawn up by the walls of Olomouc, as the garrison watched from the walls and, seeing and smelling the burning in the distance, prayed God for the victory of the Silesians.

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Zealous for their homeland were the Silesians, and desirous of return. Seeing how the fields were burning in Kojata Abovský’s wake, and knowing whence he had come, who cannot understand the Silesians’ pain? Who cannot understand their rage? Vojvoda Henrík needed to say nothing, in order to spur his knights to a gallop against their foes!

The Silesians flew upon their enemies with wrath and wood, and dashed them to pieces in fury against the walls of Olomouc. Vojvoda Henrík vaunted aloft the severed head of Kojata Abovský, and handed it up to the garrison of Olomouc—bidding them set it as a warning to any who would disturb the king’s peace or the peace of the Morava Valley. Prisnec, however, was still ensconced behind the Beskids in the Silesian lands. Kolman the Monk met with Vojvoda Henrík outside Olomouc and conferred with him about the next sally.

‘One of the king’s armies is bound to cross Prisnec’s holdings from the west,’ Kolman reded the Silesian vojvoda. ‘And the men of Milčané are on the return march from battle in the east. If we send a scouting force of two hundred across the Beskids, and an they hold Prisnec in place, even as a nail upon which a cloak hangs, we shall crush the rebellious Bohemians like grain between a pair of millstones!’

‘God willing it shall be soon,’ Henrík sighed. ‘I am sick at heart to think of my homeland burning!’

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[1] ‘A red dawn broke, and the stormy Angel of Death rode with the armies of Moravia.’
[2] The identity of the Three Knights is a matter of significant debate. One interesting theory holds that the White Knight stands for the common priesthood of Bohemia (the ‘white clergy’), the Gold Knight stands for the nobility of Bohemia, and the Black Knight stands for the Church hierarchs and monastics (the ‘black clergy’). Another theory holds that the three knights represent the three hues of the device of the Přemyslovci: white for the field, gold for the talons, pinions and beak of the eagle, and black for the body and feathers of the eagle. A more prosaic explanation is that the Three Knights are historical figures who come from Bohemia: perhaps the King’s close military advisors Ľutomisl, Vlastislav and Blahomír, respectively. The tale of Kaloján and the Three Knights, however, became one of the most popular of the Príbeh.
 
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VEN when the trumpets sound upon the Last Day, my children, the brave charge of the Six Knights at Vysoký Breh shall not have been forgotten.

Kráľ Kaloján was still leading his own army up from the south of Bohemia. Kolman the Monk awaited his pupil the king, but knew that by the time the king arrived it would be too late for the Silesians. Prisnec would be away and gone with all of Silesia’s goods by then. And so he selected Six Knights to lead a charge—to hold Prisnec’s armies in place while the Moravians from the west, and the Sorbians from the east, moved in to catch him in a vise.

The knights Kolman selected were: Vojtech Silverhelm[1], Saul the Former Adamite, Róbert the Redbeard, Jaromil the Whip, Knieža Bohuslav of Nitra, and Vladan the Young. And the Six Knights, and their armigers, and their levies, two thousand men in all, marched all the way to the south bank of the Odra. The forces of Prisnec, who numbered over ten thousand, met them upon the Odra.

‘The king depends upon us,’ Saul the Former Adamite, the eldest of the knights there, spoke to the others. ‘Our numbers are few, and the Česi are many. But we must hold the foe at the bank! We must hold them here, before the gates of Vysoký Breh!’

The Moravian knights and their armigers and levies arrayed themselves before the gates of Vysoký Breh upon the south bank of the Odra. Two thousand against ten thousand Bohemians stood. In six sections they stood, each behind a knight’s banner.

Začalo sa úsvit červený,
A búrlivý Anjel Smrtí
Jazdil s vojskami Moravy.


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For ten days and for ten nights, true to the king, the Six Knights held the gate of Vysoký Breh against the Bohemians, cutting off their passages north and west.

Saul the Former Adamite, bold and stout of heart, fought with the strength of twenty men, and waded forward among the rebel Česi, swinging his lance about him left and right in a great slaughter. He was spotted among the Bohemians by Kornel Abovský, he who was Kojata’s younger brother. Kornel, who had grieved aloud the death of his brother for many days past, flung himself at Saul in a rage, and the two of them fought for fifty passes between them that second day, trading stroke for stroke, blow for blow, scratch for scratch and bruise for bruise. Though Saul had put aside his former hatred of God, nonetheless out of his devotion he refused to wear armour upon his back, and even so he held Kornel at a standstill all through the second day. At last Saul took a mighty blow to the head, and fell into a swoon, and had to be dragged back to the gate of the town by Jaromil the Whip, who smote Kornel Abovský a mighty blow upon the head and forced him back to Prisnec’s camp.

As the third day of battle dawned, five hundred of the Moravians had fallen or fled. Vladan, the youngest of the Moravian knights, went out to do battle with the Bohemians. Taking his lance in hand he rode into the Bohemian line, smiting about him left and right in a great slaughter, and fighting with the strength of thirty men. He was spotted by a mighty giant of a man among the Bohemians, Borivoj Přemyslovec, who rode at Vladan in a fury. So great was their thunderous clash that men standing ten ranks back fell into a swoon. The two of them fought for a hundred passes, both on horseback and on the ground, trading blow for blow, stroke for stroke, bruise for bruise and scrape for scrape until the two of them could barely stand. At length Borivoj Přemyslovec smote Vladan the Young across the pate with his lance, and blood spewed from the wound, and Vladan had to be borne back by Róbert the Redbeard behind the gate of the town, who valiantly held the giant off of him long enough to find the gate.

By the time the seventh day of battle had dawned, so fierce and terrible had been the fighting, that over a thousand of the two thousand Moravians who had arrived at the Odra had been killed or fled. Saul and Vladan, and Jaromil the Whip and Róbert Redbeard, all had been taken out of the fighting. And so it was that only Knieža Bohuslav and Vojtech Silverhelm were left standing before the gate of Vysoký Breh, with less than a thousand men between them, still fending off over six thousand Bohemians under the command of their own Knieža.

‘Who would have thought it?’ asked Bohuslav of the silver-helmed knight at his side. ‘That a Mikulčický would stand thus, side-by-side with the Rychnovských’s sworn man, holding the same gate?’

Vojtech Silverhelm turned toward the Nitran lord, and spoke: ‘One and the same lord do we serve on earth, and one and the same Lord in Heaven. What else can we be, if not comrades and brothers?’

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The tenth day of the battle dawned, and only a handful of Moravians were left at the gate. Prisnec called out to Bohuslav and told him:

‘Yield yourself! In God’s name yield yourself! Surely you can see that defiance is hopeless? We have already won the battle. There is no loss to you in owning an honourable fight and an honourable defeat.’

Bohuslav was about to make answer, but Vojtech strode in front of him.

‘As long as I draw breath, thou shalt not lay hand upon my brother, the Knieža of Nitra! So swears Vojtech of the Silver Helmet!’

‘And to that oath doubly I swear,’ said the Knieža, ‘that not one hair of this silver-domed fellow-knight who stands before you shall you touch, ere you answer to me while I live—so says Bohuslav of Nitra!’

The two of them fought alone within the very gate of Vysoký Breh itself. Although they were surrounded upon every side by the Bohemians, they began building a wall with the bodies of their foes between them, and it took forty Czechs each to subdue the two knights—one Moravian, one Nitran, but as dear to each other now as brothers. But in the end both were taken. The Knieža of Nitra fell in a swoon, while the Silver Helm was merely knocked into a daze.

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The Bohemians had little reason by now, however, to savour their victory. Though it had cost the Six Knights dearly, they had served the purpose they had set forth with, as a nail to hold the Bohemians in place while the two armies of Kolman the Monk closed upon them like millstones upon grain. In vain did Prisnec attempt to flee the trap that he had sprung, for the Bohemians sought not to ford the Odra at Vysoký Breh but instead to run for the forests of Nisa, back toward the Bohemian march.

At Otmuchov, there Kolman the Monk lay in waiting. The army of Kaloján was marching northward at speed—all Kolman needed to do was strike, and the king would lead the victorious besiegers of Doudleby in behind. Knieža Prisnec sought to evade the trap by holding the two armies apart, and so he left half of his men behind at Breh. But this turned out to be a worse idea, for the two halves of his army were not as strong as one whole and directed! The pincer closed. The men of Milčané overran the half of the Bohemians who were left at Vysoký Breh. And at Otmuchov, Kolman the Monk overtook the forces led by Prisnec upon the edge of the Nisky Forest.

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The arrows flew thick and the clashing of iron upon wood thundered up and down the edge of the forest as the two armies struggled, each to overcome or break through the other. Neither one could gain the upper hand, for Kolman the Monk had spread his knights too far, and sallied too boldly against the enemy. There were points where the Bohemians came close to breaking through. In particular, there was one knight among the Bohemians, Hromislav Velehradský, who could not be overcome. He waded through the Moravians with slaughter, and his mace-arm was drenched in Moravian blood. But then, up from the southeast, one of the men saw the golden lion vane in the distance.

‘It’s the Kráľ! Kaloján is here!’

Indeed it was Kaloján with the White Knight, the Gold Knight and the Black Knight at his side. Main glad was Kolman the Monk to see his liege and pupil at the head of the army, and with three of the most fearsome Bohemian riders having joined him. The men of Kolman’s army also took heart, and one of them, emboldened by the sight of the king’s vane in the distance, made a hard run at Hromislav of Velehrad, and fought with him thirty passes upon horseback, at last making a fearsome thrust with his lance that smote Hromislav clean out of his saddle.

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The rebel Bohemians lost heart. The more so when the men of Milčané, victorious at Vysoký Breh, swept down upon their lines from the northeast. What few were still standing broke away in a rout directly to the west, surging through a gap in the lines which Kolman had left. Of an army of ten thousand, at the battles of Vysoký Breh and Otmuchov, Prisnec had lost five-and-seventy hundreds, and was left with merely a quarter of his men limping through the forests of Nisa back toward Bohemian lands.

Kolman the Monk approached Kráľ Kaloján after the battle, took him by both shoulders and fathomed him warmly.

‘Of late you were a wilful, wayward and rambunctious child, but look at you now! You lead men with courage and skill, and you sway men to loyalty by your mere presence.’

‘That, Kolman, I learned from you!’

‘I give the armies of your state, O Kráľ, into your hands.’

‘May God in His wisdom guide Us.’

Kaloján then lifted high the banners of the Moravian state and of the Rychnovských together, and all around him twenty thousand men lifted their voices in a great roar. Moravians, Nitrans, Silesians, men of Užhorod and Maramoroš, and—yes—Bohemians, all of them bent their knees in obeisance to the youthful king.

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Bezďez Castle

The armies of the king, now united into a single whole, once again crossed the mountains into the north of Bohemia in pursuit of the rebel Prisnec. The last battle between Kaloján and his rebellious Bohemian cousin took place by the upland fastness of Bezďez, amid the lime trees. Here at last was Kaloján’s true mettle as a wielder of the sword and as a lord over men revealed, by the grace of God.

Kaloján knelt in prayer, facing to the east along with all of his men. He prayed a psalm of David, asking for deliverance from his enemies and for the salvation of his people, including for the Bohemians who had been led into rebellion. The king would not have even his own enemies forsaken by Jesus, but entreated the Saviour for the souls of the Bohemian people which were as dear as his own brothers. To these were the prayers to the Theotokos added by the White Knight, and the Gold, and the Black.

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As they were praying, who should show up at his side but the knights from Beaumont—Baudouin and Adémar? The two Frenchmen also knelt and prayed in their own manner to the Lord, before taking their places in the line against the Bohemians.

That day the thunder shook the earth, the ground trembled, the heavens split open, and the Frankish knights Baudouin and Adémar, as well as the three Bohemian knights of White and Gold and Black, distinguished themselves greatly in the battle. Unfortunately, Baudouin was unhorsed by a Hungarian mercenary whom Prisnec had called in. And Adémar was slain by an unknown knight. But when the battle was over, it was clear to all that God had indeed favoured the young king, and Prisnec himself came to his senses and bent his knee to the victorious Kaloján—at last forswearing his attempt to place Zvonimír upon the throne and giving to the young king the fealty that had been his due from the start.

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But the realm was not at peace.

Having seen the riotous disorders of the realm to his south, the Pán of Věluň Miloslav made bold to launch an attack upon Moravia from the north, in a bid to seize the town and castle of Krakov away from Moravian suzerainty. Thereupon Kaloján made a speech to his assembled nobles.

‘Now do you see the dangers which face us when we stand apart and fight amongst ourselves? I cannot hope to rule this realm only by the sword—my brothers, I also need your unity and amity amongst yourselves, with each other!’

Thereupon the Moravians and Bohemians swore again and again to be reconciled, one to the other, and together they marched northward to defend castle and town of Krakov from the Poles of the north.

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[1] Some historians have speculated that Vojtech Silverhelm was related to the Bohemian White Knight. Advocates of the thesis that the Three Knights were historical may here have some justification. Ľutomisl Struma did have a son named Vojtech who served as a zbrojnoš under Želimír.
 
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I love the new style. Within a lifetime, the deeds of great men can grow into legends. Over eight centuries, truth, legend and myth merge intertwine into a ball that is harder to unravel than Gordian's Knot. Thank you for the update.
 
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Jan, boy-king and mythic-warrior, shall stalk Olomouc's enemies like a lion on the savanna. Thank you for the update.

I love the new style. Within a lifetime, the deeds of great men can grow into legends. Over eight centuries, truth, legend and myth merge intertwine into a ball that is harder to unravel than Gordian's Knot. Thank you for the update.

Quite so! I had definitely attempted to forge Kalojan's era into something of a Matter of Moravia, in the style of Arthurian legend or the Song of Roland. I felt it was kind of appropriate, too, given we had just had a king who was holding knightly tournaments in the Frankish style.
 
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Book Five Chapter Three
THREE
Wreath of Bronze
5 December 1224 – 14 January 1227


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ANY feats of heroism worthy of glory in song were done in the war of succession which accompanied Kaloján’s rise. But the dispute over Krakov with the Pán of Věluň was decided in a single battle. Although the armies of the king were not quick enough on the march to save the castle at Krakov from siege and seizure, still they were able to meet Miloslav’s knights and men upon his return. There followed in Věluň a great bloodletting, as Kolman the Monk led the Moravians into battle against the returning Věluňian Poles and hacked them to pieces in their ranks. Pán Miloslav was forced to a surrender on the spot—for now he faced the fury of a Moravia united, and no longer riven along its western quarter.

Miloslav had been forced to his knees. But, my children, Kaloján was troubled.

And what troubles a man, who fears no other man? And what unsettles a knight and brings him low, who managed to fight three of Bohemia’s best knights to a halt in single combat? Why, a woman, of course!

In the late Bohemian uprising, Kaloján was compelled to call upon the aid of his Sorbian kinsman Wizlaw. It so happened that Wizlaw invited the new Kráľ to dine with him on the road back to Praha, and Kaloján was most pleased to accept. Young, carefree, beardless Kaloján was seated as the guest of honour in the hall at Míšeň, when Vojvoda Wizlaw struck at him with the deadliest weapon imaginable.

A brimming glass goblet of wine was poured for the Kráľ. And the hand which handed it to him was a soft, slender, warm, flawless white. As was the arm it belonged to. As was the woman to whom the arm belonged. Why, how stingy it would be to call her ‘fair’! Her beauty was of the Slavic type: round cheeks upon a round face, with a slightly-upturned nose, her head wreathed with a braid of bronze. In the Kráľ’s smitten eyes she was as worthy of reverence as the Panagia!

The wine in his goblet was untouched, but Kaloján still felt drunk upon this sight! This snowy pulchritude bore herself in every movement and gesture with simplicity and sincerity and grace. My children, how could Kaloján see her, and not love her? However, as open and clear as she was, she couldn’t hide from Kaloján a certain melancholy. This noble beauty was labouring, so seemed it to Kaloján, under some long and hopeless sadness. But just as an icon of the Mother of the Lord at the Cross expresses upon her face a sorrow so complete that one’s heart cannot but be moved by it—so too was Kaloján stirred to a deeper love in sympathy by this young woman’s sorrow.

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‘What woman is she?’ asked Kaloján of his host, indicating the one who had served him wine.

‘Bohumila is my guest. Your own vassal and kinsman, Kráľ—the Vojvoda Svätopluk of the Opolanie—is her elder brother,’ answered Wizlaw. But he marked Kaloján’s gaze, and added: ‘Put any thought of her from your head, Kráľ! Her brother has already promised her to another man: I wot not whom.’

Wizlaw’s rede, however, fell upon ears only half-hearing. Had this wondrous girl’s betrothal been to her liking? Evidently not! Kaloján could not help but continue to gaze at her, as a mountain astronomer toward the Pole Star. And he swore to himself a vow: that he would free her from a shackle that she had not chosen for herself.

Many sleepless weeks did the Kráľ spend, haunted by Bohumila! The beauty and the sorrow of her face could not be banished from him; still less could the touch of her soft white hand upon his in Wizlaw’s hall! Kaloján stood from his bed and knelt before the Panagia to keep himself from sin, and he prayed and prayed to her and to the Lord Christ for Bohumila, for her kin, and for the unravelling of the unwanted knot which tied her. But—was it the Lord’s doing?—the prayer transformed itself into a plan.

For the world, though, the Kráľ would not have trespassed unknowing or unwelcome upon the presence of this beauty! Thus, the first task he set himself, was to learn more of her—Bohumila, this wondrous girl who had taken captive his heart! Kin she was, of Silesian blood[1], and her brother vojvoda of the Silesian March. Of course, he would not approach her eldest brother Svätopluk for this task. But, praise be to God—she had also a second elder brother, named Daniel!

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The young king Kaloján rode to Praha and made himself known to Daniel. Unfortunately, the young man—who was himself only about a year or so older than the king—seemed more than a bit agitated and distracted when he received the king.

‘Daniel—what troubles you?’ asked the king solicitously.

Daniel laughed bitterly. ‘An it were a mere matter of steel and sinew, I would have no trouble! But what do you think? Because I supported my uncle Prisnec in this late rebellion rather than you, the Rychnovských place no trust in me—not for gold, not for honour! O Kráľ, for standing against you in arms, I know you bear me no love! But I beg you, as a man of honour—speak a good word in the ears of Vieroslav and of Henrík, and assure them of my credit?’

Kaloján stroked his beardless chin before he spoke. ‘I bear you no grudge for standing against me in the open, upon the line of battle! And yet… what says your uncle of you? Were you steadfast in your oaths, and attentive in your service to him?’

Daniel straightened his shoulders, and Kaloján beheld in his eyes the same earnestness that his sister bore so well. ‘I never once fled before my lord’s face!’ he declared. ‘I fought against you fairly and with courage, and slew many foes! And whether in victory or in retreat: my body stood between my uncle and whatever peril faced him!’

Kaloján placed his hands upon the shoulders of his once-foe, and fathomed him. ‘In that case, Daniel, you may be assured of my good word to our kin: whenever and whereforever they ask it of me!’

My children, Kaloján would have done, and indeed did, the same for many who opposed him. Understand that as yet, he had asked nothing of Daniel to win the favour of the woman who had taken his fancy. But such was the heart of the Moravian king, that he paid respect to all respectable, and opened his hand in giving to all regardless of their desserts. But toward the Kráľ, Daniel now felt a deep sense of gratitude, and spake with him freely. It was natural that the two of them would begin to have speech together about his kinfolk. Of these, Kaloján was main eager to hear more about his beautiful younger sister, Bohumila.

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‘Alas, poor Mila! My sister is intended for a Frankish boy who was, when last I saw him, a mere babe in linen wrappings. But Bohumila has no desire to leave Moravia, and still less to live among the devotees of the Pope in schism and the Latin Mass.’

‘So that is the way of things!’

‘Sad to say, it is,’ sighed Daniel. ‘Not that I too wouldn’t like to see Mila well-wed, but she has told me she will flee to a nunnery rather than bow to the Pope in Rome at a husband’s behest. And though in this her will is set against our brother’s wishes, still I am loath to blame her for it.’

Whereupon Kaloján set his face more firmly to his purpose: to free Bohumila from this shackle.

In secret, the Kráľ began to sneak out of Praha and make his way to Míšeň under cover of night. In guise as a servant, or climbing up the wall when all others were asleep, he would leave letters at her door or at her window. In these letters he unclasped his veneration of her, his knowledge of her plight, and his desire to aid her in any way she deemed fit. He signed these letters Jágerský.

For seven days Kaloján had no reply from her, though he knew that she took the letters and read them. At length, however, there appeared upon the sill of her window a missive in a woman’s hand, which was addressed—

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Pre Jágerského: It startles and frightens me, that you know as much of me and my family matters as you do, and further that I know not what drove you to woo me like this. Are you indeed the man you claim to be? Because you come both to my door and to my window I must assume you are welcome here in Míšeň. Wherefore: come to me in the open, that I may see you and know who you are! And do so, if your heart is true, by this means. Tomorrow in Míšeň my kinsman Wizlaw will host a dinner, and I shall propose that we hear some book: let your voice first be heard. This way I shall know your intentions.’

And the epistle was signed simply: ‘Bohumila’.

Kaloján then went openly into the feasting-hall at Míšeň and was welcomed at once by Wizlaw, who was surprised and delighted to see the king of Moravia among his guests. Wizlaw once again gave Kaloján the seat of honour, and once again wine was poured, and food was served, and music and dancing were had. But as the night’s repast wore on, Bohumila stood from her seat and asked:

‘Uncle, might we hear some book now, that we might benefit from some useful knowledge? For I know the clerk is in the hall tonight.’

Kaloján marked that her eyes were searching the room, among all the men there assembled. The beardless youth stood up boldly and proclaimed:

‘That is an excellent idea, Wizlaw. Have the clerk bring forth Holy Writ, and let him read from the First Epistle of John—the third chapter.’

And so the clerk read from the Scriptures: ‘My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him. For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight. And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment. And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.

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It was clear that whomever Bohumila had expected—it had not been the young king! But now it was Bohumila’s turn to feel her gaze fixed upon the red-headed youngster who had been given the crown, and to be stirred within her heart in love for him. Bohumila had grown nearly resigned to the idea of being married off outside the Moravian realm and into the schismatic realm of the Franks. But now—not only had the king of that realm himself offered her the chance to escape, but had also proclaimed his love to her! As the clerk read to the guests in Míšeň the words of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist John, this namesake of his held her gaze the whole time.

Though the roof and the walls were Wizlaw’s, still there were within and beneath them a young man in love, and a young woman in love. Although not bound by gift or dowry, Kaloján and Bohumila swore again and again their belonging one to the other, with ties no less binding or holy. Between them they vowed that Kaloján would have none but Bohumila, and Bohumila, none but Kaloján.

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The two lovers began to speak of escape. And although Kaloján bore no ill will toward his host in Míšeň—still the ties of love and honour which now bound him were too dear for him to do anything else. He began to make plans to spirit her away from Míšeň.

But for a youth and a maid to make their escape together—they needed a swift horse. And Kaloján’s spirited roan, the one which had borne him from Velehrad to Doudleby in two days, had sadly taken a deadly blow at the battle of Bezďez. He had long not known where or how to replace him. My children, how dispirited the king must have felt—how helpless, despite the crown upon his head!—as he made his way back to Praha from Míšeň, without his love at his side!

God seemed to be upon the side of the Kráľ once again, however. There had been a stock fair in Praha that winter, and Bohuslav of Nitra—the king’s šafár—had made a purchase of several hundred beasts for the royal stables. Unfortunately, as the king approached, the grooms were having trouble with a particular one.

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The proud, mettlesome sorrel steed of fifteen hands, its veins surging with wild and hot Armenian blood, struggled and fought with and trampled every groom which drew near it. It was not as tall or heavy as some that Kaloján had seen, but it was at least three times as fierce! The sorrel had already bloodied seven of the king’s best grooms, who stood holding and nursing their trodden heads and limbs as far away from the animal as possible. Kaloján also noted the intellect of the beast. Whenever the grooms drew too close to catching and wrangling him, the sorrel bounded off zigzag like a coney.

‘I have heard tales of horses like this,’ Kaloján remarked. ‘There is a lineage of coursers from Asia Minor which is capable of taking towns at a stride, and moats at a leap!’

‘But this one’s no better than a bloody rabbit[2]!’ swore one of the wounded grooms.

‘Let me have a try,’ said the king.

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Gingerly, tenderly, the young king drew near the animal. Back flicked the sorrel’s ears. Down bent the sorrel’s head. The king froze. My children—what would you do? An angry horse of war stared down the king as he placed one foot beside the other and angled himself toward it! The king did not use crop or net. One hand bore a lead, and the other a small sack of barley. Hours crept by as the sun coursed the heavens, and the king drew nearer the beast step by gentle step.

Twice the beast charged him and the king barely escaped being trampled and bloodied himself. But with patience and gentleness Kaloján’s hand found the sorrel’s mane, and the sorrel did not rear or kick. Soon enough the king had managed to bridle and saddle the beast, and was riding the fifteen-hand steed, which went about with him as tame as you please.

‘And what shall we name you?’ asked Kaloján. ‘“Handsome”?’

The sorrel gave an angry shake of its head.

‘“Highland Runner”?’

A derisive snort.

‘What, then? Iwis, you don’t want to be called “Bloody Rabbit”?’

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My children—to the king’s total surprise, the perverse sorrel tilted his head and blew a contented breath! Evidently it had enjoyed wreaking the havoc it had among the grooms. And so thereafter the swift-footed sorrel Armenian steed of the Kráľ was known as Krvavý Kralík!

Kaloján now had Krvavý Kralík—and he needed a way in and out. He went twice again in secret to Míšeň, to plot with Bohumila the area around Míšeň and a course for their sortie for the best chances of flight without notice, the swiftest to and out of the Sorbian town, the best to bear Bohumila back across the Ores and safe into Bohemia. Kaloján as well took the chance to exchange further tokens and assurances of love with his beloved.

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As the day drew near, fear and doubt began to grip the heart of Bohumila. Alone in her room and without the comfort of Kaloján near her, she fretted. In each shadow, in each glance amiss, in each phrase or sentence that her host Vojvoda Wizlaw uttered to her, she found further reasons for dread—dread that her beloved had been discovered. At last she could contain herself no longer, and she placed the tip of her quill upon a sheet of vellum and upon it poured forth all her trepidations, seeing it borne off to her beloved.

The letter very nearly fouled the whole plan. Were it not for some deft thinking upon the part of their chosen courier, a Sorb who had been Bohumila’s wet-nurse at one time, the letter might well have been found by men loyal to her eldest brother, and the whole plot would have fallen through.

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‘It is merely a letter for my poor mother, who lives in the Ores,’ Bohumila’s sworn woman had said. After that, she had been left alone to deliver it. Kaloján was not happy to receive it, however. He forbore from making any answer, but he prayed to Christ and to the Panagia that his love would recover the strength of heart to send him no further letters until the appointed day came.

Krvavý Kralík bore Kaloján across the Ores and across the Sorbian lands toward Míšeň, and there he awaited his love at the chosen place, a lonely glade along which lay a stream. By moonlight—here it was his turn to feel the fear grip his heart—he saw first the figure of one man, in mail, with a blade at his side. Had they been found out? Was this a man sent by her brother to thwart them?

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No! There was Bohumila herself under the moon! She ran into the waiting arms of the king, who kissed her and fathomed her, and led her by the hand to the side of his horse, and took her thereby to the nearest wooden Sorbian kirk where they swore their true vows to each other before God, and then escaped into the glade by night to seal their love in the time-honoured way. What man, what woman, does not know the custom?

In such way was Queen Bohumila of the Moravian Lands rapt away from her brother and the machinations of the Franks, by the love of her husband, King Kaloján.

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[1] In actuality, Bohumila Rychnovská-Nisa and her brother Daniel were half-Moravian and half-English, with a generous Welsh admixture on the distaff side (Bohumila was clearly the one who named her children). Her mother, Mildþrýþ Byrhtnoþsdohtor, was a Wessex-bred noblewoman descended from a long line of the kings of Hwicce.
[2] In Slovak: krvavý kralík. Any putative linkage between the name of this Armenian sorrel and that of Chìtù-Má, the horse of Lü Bu during the Three Kingdoms Era in China, may be seen as purely coincidental.
 
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That's actually "bloody rabbit", "bloody hare" is "krvavý zajac".

Cheers, @Silverbow! Funny story: it was actually 'bloody rabbit' in the draught, but I changed it to 'hare' because it sounded a little too Elmer Fudd. But if it's actually more correct that way, it can certainly be changed back.

Beautiful love story. King Jan, definitely sets his own path. What noble would not be overjoyed to marry his little sister to his liege rather than a distant Frankish Papist Toad? Thank you for updating.

Thanks, @Midnite Duke! (Honestly, yeah - what nobleman wouldn't want their sister to upgrade from son-of-count to actual king regnant? But it still cost me 30 opinion with Vojvoda Svätopluk for some reason.)
 
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Book Five Chapter Four
FOUR
Under Ruin
17 January 1227 – 25 September 1230


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ALOJÁN could not contain himself for joy. His beloved Bohumila was now at his side as queen! The feast he threw at Bohumila’s reception was a massive and boisterous occasion, with the doors to the Great Hall at Olomouc being flung open to all and sundry. Kaloján ordered that the royal pantries and granaries be opened to the widows and orphans, and that his servants take any surplus left and cart it into the countryside for the bowers to feed themselves and to plant for the following year. And even to this joy still more was added, for soon Bohumila’s belly began to show with the living fruit of their love.

Kaloján did not allow himself to think of the tragedy that might have unfolded for her, had he not managed to bring off their plan and bear Bohumila to the kirk that night. On the other hand, Bohumila herself became restless, and was overcome with disquiet, and her nights were plagued with grue. The king did not leave her side, but stood by her to defend her with his body.

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‘I shall stay wakeful for you,’ Kaloján held his wife’s hands. ‘And I shall watch into the night, and no devils of the wainscots shall approach your bed while I am sitting by.’

‘I am grateful,’ Bohumila told him. ‘But then, how will you sleep?’

‘Until your nightly horrors pass, I shall not sleep,’ Kaloján told her, ‘and when they do, I shall sleep the better knowing you and our child are well.’

In this wise, easier in mind did she sleep the sounder. And neither dreams of monstrous evil nor mares of the midnight hour came to disturb her while Kaloján stood by, with his sword in its scabbard upon his lap. In peace and safety did Bohumila thus deliver herself of their first child: a healthy girl of rosy complexion, whom they named Kvetľana[1].

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But the East Franks, who had been cheated of their prize by Kaloján’s elopement with Bohumila, sent several warriors of the shadow to the castle of Olomouc to work their deeds of night, in one last attempt to take Bohumila for themselves. It was to their deadly loss, that they came while her lawful husband was standing guard.

A thrust, and a slice, and two of the kidnappers fell where they stood. Three others fled from the room where Bohumila lay together with her newborn daughter, when they knew themselves to be discovered, and at that by an expert swordsman!

Bohumila snuggled soundly against her husband’s waist that night long after they left, and for many nights thereafter, assured of her husband’s love for her and of his watchful eyes.

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Faithful to his fair lady was Kaloján, and to his horse Krvavý Kralík was he a steadfast friend. In illness he saw to it that the mettlesome sorrel who answered to no other man was well cared-for, and stood himself by to reassure the beast as men better practised in the art of healing approached. And in health Kaloján rode with his mount and trained together with it: such that man and horse were as haft and blade of a single deadly weapon upon the battlefield, united in purpose and will.

Kaloján had kept the two pieces of the footman’s spear he had used to spar with the White Knight, the Gold Knight, the Black Knight and the castellan at Doudleby. Many are the tales of knights in the West who were to their weapons true, or some to their steeds, but never to a woman—such a man was not Kaloján! To lady and to horse was he faithful, but his hands were deft and dexterous with many a different weapon: spear and lance, halberd and mace, staff and sword. If the young king had any preference at all, perhaps it was to the sword, for it was the sword which he had used to defend Bohumila from her nightly assailants.

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In these days, Moravia touched upon the lands of the Franks across the river Ohře, who were once again busily building up the empire of their founder-king Charles. The ambitions of the Franks were not forgotten in Moravia, for long had Frankish kings and Frankish bishops and Frankish priests sought to divide the Slavs, to establish lordships over them, to subjugate them and reduce them to slavery. Now Staviteľ Chrámu, he had married a French queen! The Rychnovských had long sought wives from the West: Swabian, Lombard, Danish and Saxon as well. None of our ancestral rulers bore any hatred to the Franks. But Kaloján was not a fool, and he watched his western borders with care.

Kaloján once led a band of Chodové along the Ohře. The Chodové—hardy, rugged mountain men originally from the Silesian Highlands—had been hired by Kráľ Prisnec, the king’s great-great-great-grandfather, specifically to watch the westward marches for treachery from the Franks and Austrians. Understand, my children: that these men were no cowards, but men who for seven generations taught their sons to live in the wild and to face the enemy with boldness and entire disregard for their own lives.

The young king and the men of Chod had been patrolling the river all day, after a long week. All of them were main weary and longed for their beds. It so happened that they were north of one bend in the Ohře, and one of the scouts caught sight of an old gord. The gord had long been abandoned, for it stood upon contested ground. Still:

‘Comrades—here we shall stay the night!’

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Now although the Chodové feared no earthly foe, still this gord made them hesitate. The stockade had fallen along two of the corners. They could clearly see that the thatch roofs were moldy and leaky in some places. And within the enclosure they could still see the remains of stone and wooden plinths.

‘The devils are still in this place,’ said one of the Chodové.

‘Has this place seen a human shadow since before Saint Methodius trod here?’

Such were the whispers that attended Kaloján within the enclosure. Several of the old buildings within the stockade were still standing, and although all of them were a bit draughty three of them were still in good enough condition to house the king and the Chodové for the night.

‘This gord has been long abandoned,’ said the Chod captain. ‘We should see if the former masters left any hidden silver or gold.’

‘You’re right,’ Kaloján told them. ‘Anything we find, we shall split evenly between us!’

The search began. There was nothing of note within the other buildings. However, there was a cellar.

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‘I’m not going down there,’ said the Chod captain, crossing himself. The cellar led down below the plinths, where once had rested the idols to demons. ‘My body shall always stand before yours upon the field of battle, O Kráľ. I don’t fear the foe that can slay the flesh, but what good is steel against those that can attack the soul?’

‘The demons cannot harm us unless we agree to harm ourselves through sin,’ spoke the Kráľ sagely. ‘Very well—I shall descend. But still, we shall split evenly between us anything that I find!’ For such was the generous nature of the king.

And down went the Kráľ amid the damp and the roots and the dark, as though he were going early into a grave. But from this tomb, the king of one-and-twenty years emerged a whole man. He emptied his pockets and scrip and hems of silver, and split everything he found among the Chodové. And the captain of the Chodové pronounced the Kráľ at once to be the most fearless and most lion-hearted of the commanders to whom he had ever sworn oath.

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Kaloján returned from the patrol to his Bohumila, and at once took her to their rooms and knew her. Who can speak rightly with words, of the tenderness between a young husband and a young wife? Again conceived she, and there was held a feast in Olomouc in celebration of their second child as yet unborn. The lack of wine proved taxing upon the king’s patience, though the silver he had taken from the gord on the Ohře proved enough for the local wine-haulers to quench the thirst of his guests! Even so, Kaloján willed it, that never should his armies go this close to want.

This celebration, which was of his and Bohumila’s second child, soon proved also to be the occasion of woe on account of another. At the back of the hall, Kalojan saw two men come to blows. He had the two of them hauled forward, and it proved to be that the younger of them—was none other than his cowled elder brother, Radomír. The other, a yellow-bearded man of elder years, was still seething and frothing with wood, and lashed out at the monk:

‘I will have satisfaction from your hide, you filthy snake! For well I know that the girl that my wife bore is none of my getting!’

‘What is the meaning of this?’ asked the king.

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It thereafter came out that Radomír the monk, had seduced and befruited their cousin Viera of Lehnice, who was married to this man Krístof of Ukria. Sordid indeed, and the king ordered his monastic elder brother to make the right restitution to Krístof. But the king fretted himself instead over the fate of Viera’s daughter by Radomír.

A monk’s daughter! Through no fault of her own, the poor girl would go through life plagued by devils on account of her father’s sin. When the feast ended, Kaloján made up his mind to undertake a penitential pilgrimage on the behalf of Radomír’s daughter, that her soul might be spared some of the ills that would attend her later in life. The Moravian king chose as his destination Alexandria, the queen of Egypt’s cities—and the desert within which the Church Fathers first faced the devils in holy solitude.

He did not do so, however, until his wife had been delivered of their second child. This one was a boy—and the doting parents named the king’s heir Kurík[2]. Once his wife was able, the queen led her husband by the hand out into the wilderness, where she demanded to be loved in the manner of harts and hinds in spring. And the king took her and knew her, and for a third time she was befruited.

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The king then set off upon his pilgrimage. He journeyed to Egypt by way of Italy and a sea-passage from the great city of Venice, and while he was in that city he made generous contributions from Moravia’s coffers to the Venetian churches. Indeed, there is still a stone in the wall of the annex at the Roman Catholic Church of San Giacomo dell’Orio, which bears a Slavonic inscription from King Kaloján, dedicated to ‘the infant Mateja’ and of ‘my unborn third child’.

The ship bore him across the Middle Sea from Venice to Alexandria, and while at sea the pilgrims experienced a sudden storm. Many of them went belowdecks, but Kaloján went to the prow and knelt down in prayer to the Lord. He then took the helm of the ship and steered it through the waves to calmer waters, and their passage was thenceforth uninterrupted. But from this he soon discovered that he was not the only man of Moravia aboard! One of his vassals, Bohuslav the lord of Pannonian Vyšehrad, had taken passage to Alexandria upon the selfsame ship!

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Bohuslav was a man of very diminutive stature, but Kaloján found to his delight that the man’s soul was much more impressive than his figure. Kaloján had rarely encountered a man of greater humility, forbearance and spiritual wisdom as Bohuslav, who had read all of the anecdotes and Sayings of the Desert Fathers in preparation for his journey. The Kráľ benefitted greatly from Bohuslav’s conversation even long after they made berth in the city of Saint Mark.

Together with his prayerful knight and vassal Bohuslav, Kaloján made pilgrimage the monastery of Saint Catherine, the height of Mount Sinai, and the caves in the desert where the great Fathers had lived and fought their spiritual warfare against the devils. He returned from thence much enlightened in spirit and freer of heart. But the true warfare against foes both visible and invisible was yet to arrive at Kaloján’s door, at home.

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[1] This is a Slavicisation of a Welsh name: Gwenllian.
[2] This is also a Welsh name: Cwrig. On account of a transcription error in some versions of the Príbeh, the name of the king’s son is sometimes elsewhere mistakenly rendered as Kuríl (Курил), a Middle Moravian form of the name Cyril.
 
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Book Five Chapter Five
FIVE
To Starodub’s Aid
1 October 1230 – 16 August 1231


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ITHIN one week of his arrival from Alexandria, Kaloján was struck with a bolt from the heavens. The red plague, that unseen ravager of cities and thief of lives, had affixed its bitter signs to the flesh of Kolman the Monk, Kaloján’s trusted teacher and maršal of his armies. He was placed in seclusion, and only the priest was admitted to him. Death stalked closer and closer to his door. There was not long, iwis, for the maršal and son of a monk to repent and make a clean life for God to see.

Bohumila, with her own hands, went to administer to him[1]. But she was not able to stop the progress of the dread illness, which was lifting the skin off of his flesh in large sheets. Instead, she used the arts of Božena in order to save the rest of the court, the garrison and the servants. For Kolman himself, though, there was little that could be done.

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As he was nearing the hour of his death, Kolman the Monk sent for his liege. Kaloján went in and knelt at his teacher’s bedside. Kolman was separated from him by a screen meant to ward off contagion. But Kolman’s words to Kaloján came through clearly, and he listened to them all.

‘My king,’ he told Kaloján, ‘of the feats of your mercy and chivalry and courage, I have heard enough to make even the most exacting of teachers proud. God shall be merciful to you.’

‘May He grant it!’ said Kaloján. ‘And may He grant you an easy passing and a good defence before the dread judgement seat!’

‘Little is easy for me now,’ Kolman gave a weak laugh. His pain was deep, but his soul was evidently at peace. ‘But a good defence? The priest comes to me daily to ensure that, and I am shriven whiter than the highest Tatra peaks. Promise me one thing, Kaloján.’

‘Say the word, my maršal, and I shall do it.’

‘I know that forgiving all men is not beyond you,’ Kolman told him. ‘But be not too proud to accept forgiveness from others for the wrong you do.’

‘I shall!’ Kaloján answered him.

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In this wise passed Kolman the Monk from this life, having suffered the red plague. However, no broader outbreak reaped further lives, for Bohumila had known her art, and she had stopped the flesh-destroying devil in its tracks. The queen came to her husband and told him:

‘Would you consider, milord, making my brother Svätopluk the maršal of the realm in Kolman’s place?’

‘This is the same Svätopluk who betrothed you against your will to a Frank,’ Kaloján reminded his wife.

‘My wits are not so slow as that,’ Queen Bohumila smiled to her husband. ‘I do remember all. But I remember also that my brother has been your faithful vassal this whole time, and that his abilities upon the field of battle are head and shoulders above those of any other strategist. Would you not at least consider him to take Kolman Munk’s place as maršal?’

Kaloján pondered the matter deeply. Though little love he bore Svätopluk for his treatment of his sister, the Kráľ had to own that Bohumila spoke merely truth when she described him as an adroit knight and a commander capable of sallies and of feints. Kaloján watched him upon the training-ground. Svätopluk understood movement and height, the depth of the line, the range of his bowmen—and he knew the right formations in every manner of terrain.

Kráľ Kaloján felt both the duty he owed to the realm and that he owed to the blood weighing heavily upon him, as well as Kolman the Monk’s dying words moving his heart. Forgiveness, and the willingness to be forgiven, moved Kaloján at the last to appoint Svätopluk to his ruling council in Kolman’s stead.

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And not a day too soon!

It was nearing Christmastide, when the first poor wretched souls began to drift into Olomouc. First it was a sprinkle of elderly men, women and children of Rus’ who turned up. Then the sprinkle became a trickle, and the trickle into a steady stream. The better-to-do ones showed up in Olomouc Castle, and one of them made bold to appear before the Moravian king.

‘O Kráľ,’ quoth the woman before him, ‘we are men and women of Starodub, which belongs to the Knyažestvo of Černigov. Starodub has come under attack from the northeast. The Knyaz’ of Karačev has laid claim to not only our grad and its villages, but also the whole of the principality, and he lays waste all before him!’

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‘And the prince has done nothing?’

The woman scoffed. ‘If you speak of the Knyaz’ of Černigov—why, he is nothing but a coward! The men of Černigov, if such you could call them, made one head-on attack upon the Karačevites, but when repulsed, tucked their tails between their legs and fled[2]! Since then they would not lift one finger for Starodub as we were overrun. They were too busy running away and saving their own skins! And if you are speaking of the Veliky Knyaz’… well, I know no ill of him, except for the fact that he is just a little boy of nine. Some help has been forthcoming from Mozyř, but the men are too few and they arrive too late!’

‘The Veliky Knyaz is my nephew, by my sister Volimíra,’ Kaloján told the woman. To say sooth, Kaloján pitied and sympathised with the boy. It had not been so long ago that Moravia had come under attack by the Poles, while he was yet young and they fancied him weak. What a carrion-bird this prince of Karačev must also be, to pick on the defenceless! ‘What must be done, to aid your town and its people?’

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The Starodub woman shook her head sadly. ‘You need feel no compunction. You are Moravian. We are Rus’. The fault of this evil lies squarely with us, for we are many and divided, and our princes are seduced by greed and pride. Until among us there shall arise a single strong, God-fearing, righteous Tsar—then, O Kráľ of Moravia, then we shall be at peace! But until that day…’ she shrugged eloquently.

‘Yet who knows when that might be?’ Kaloján cried aloud. ‘My own nephew fights an enemy alone without the support of his own princes! The poor and the afflicted seek shelter within my realm! Justice is trampled before my eyes! Must I turn away from this?’

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And so, Kaloján at once declared himself for his nephew, Veliky Knyaz’ Vseslav, and set off upon the march with all of Moravia’s hosts as well as the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre, toward Starodub against Knyaz’ Yaroslav of Karačev.

The Moravians rallied to the king’s banner at Sliezské Ratibor, where they were sorted into four armies by the King’s brother-in-law, Vojvoda Svätopluk. For the sake of haste, the Moravians marched across the width of Galicia-Volhynia through Tarnov before portaging up into the lands of Great Rus’. It was in these days that the Queen, Bohumila, gave birth to the king’s second daughter, Svetluša.

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Upon the march, Kaloján had with him a great brotherhood of his retainers: the White, Gold and Black Knights of Bohemia, as well as Knieža Bohuslav of Nitra, Vojtech Silverhelm, Saul the Former Adamite, Róbert the Redbeard, Jaromil the Whip, and of course his new maršal Svätopluk Rychnovský-Nisa. The Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre rode alongside them. There was great cheer and high spirits upon the march eastward, for they were going to the aid of Ruthenia, defending a town of the Rus’ from the greed of the quarrelling princes, and furthering the cause of Christ in the Slavic East.

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But it came to pass, that the king’s brother-in-law Svätopluk, Vojvoda of the Silesian March, quarrelled with the Gold Knight of Bohemia, he with the strength of thirty men. Who knew what might have happened if the two of them came to blows—both fearsome and formidable knights that they were? For the Gold Knight insisted that for their cause to be just under God, the retaking and defence of Starodub should take the first priority. And Svätopluk, on the other hand, saying that God would hate a long and drawn-out war, advocated for taking the fight with Moravian steel to the foe at once.

‘Brother! Good knight!’ cried Kaloján, placing his body between the two. ‘We must fight the foe, not one another! Besides, they have moved off from Ryľsk and Putivľ and is moving back toward Starodub. Rest assured that if we do defend Starodub, we shall indeed meet the Karačevites in battle.’

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The Gold Knight and Svätopluk needed some talking-to to get them to back down, but eventually their quarrel was settled, and the Moravian army resumed its march to Starodub. The town was built upon a long plain, and the single oak tree which rose above its ramparts was matched in height only by the domes of the kirk. When these made themselves plain to the eyes, Kaloján and his knights could see already two armies in the field. Both of them were flying blue vanes—upon one there was a drawn bow, and upon the other there were two outstretched eagle wings.

‘Surround them!’ Kaloján ordered. ‘Defend the men of Mozyř!’

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A pri hradbách Starodubu,
Ozvalo sa veľké búchanie hromu,
A muži Moravy a Ruska
Zniesli a zviazali Karačeva!

Forth rode Kráľ Kaloján and the White, Gold and Black Knights, making great slaughter around them, and behind them rode the sworn friends Vojtech Silverhelm and Knieža Bohuslav, each with his weapon in hand and each fighting the enemy with the strength of twenty men. Vojvoda Svätopluk stood by the banner, directing the outward formations. The battle was over quickly, for the Moravians quickly flanked the men of Karačev from both sides and surrounded them. Yaroslav, seeing his position was hopeless, lifted aloft a white banner of parley, ending the battle and the war between Mozyř and Karačev.

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In the First Adamite War, the bogatýri of Great Rus’ had come to the aid of Moravia in order to save the Queen Mother Živana’s soul from heresy. Through Živana’s younger son, now, the Moravian zbrojnošov had come to return the favour. In good earnest it could be said, that the fast friendship between Mozyř and Olomouc was won that day, upon the fields outside of Starodub. For gladly did the men and women of Starodub who had been left adrift in the Moravian crown city return to their country, singing now not only the yearning for a righteous Tsar, but of the bravery and selfless goodwill of Moravia’s Kráľ.

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[1] A majority of scholars of the Príbeh agree that the Queen was the one who saved the court from the ravages of the red plague, though from the fact that her title is not mentioned, it has been put forward by a small minority of textual analysts that Kaloján kept a court physician, a different person who was also named Bohumila.
[2] For reasons which are unclear, medieval Moravian sources tend to be rather harsher in their judgements of the character of certain groups or principalities of Rus’ than others. Černigov’s princes, for example, are often characterised as cowardly in Moravian historical texts, and those of Galicia-Volhynia almost always as villainous, treacherous backstabbers. These are often explicitly contrasted to the Principality of Turov, to which the wonted Rus’ capital of Mozyř belonged, and which is usually treated with sympathy, or the various polities like Polotsk and Smolensk which formed White Rus’.
 
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