A Grand Little Country

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23275, 18 February 1939, Page 9 (Supplement)

A Grand Little Country

Bohemia Has P Her Part

ONE of the pathetic events of 1938 was the virtual disappearance from the map of independent nations of the little country of Bohemia. It is remarkable to realise that the British princess who was once its queen was tlio ancestor of every crowned ruler in Europe to-day except King Zog. It came about through the marriage of Elizabeth, daughter of James the First, to Frederick the Fifth, the prince who was made King of Bohemia. Only Protestant Stuart

It would need many columns to give the tables of the descent from Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia of all the royal rulers of Europe, but briefly it can be explained by the Tact that she. was the mother of Sophia, who married George, Elector of Hanover, and was summoned to the throne of England because she was the only Stuart who was still a Protestant. Thus did the Georges come to reign, and it is the • marriage of their descendants into German families that made George the First and Sophia tho ancestors of eight living rulers.

Tho other three European sovereigns trace their descent from Elizabeth through her Roman Catholic son Charles, Count Palatine, whose daughter Charlotte married Philip of Orleans and was the grandmother of the Emperor Francis the First. From Francis and his moro famous wife Maria Theresa descended another Maria Theresa, who was the mother of Victor Emanuel, made by Garibaldi, the first King of modern Italy. Thirty Years' War Thus it has come about that the present King of Italy, who bear 3 his grandfather's honoured name, can, like our own King George, trace back to King Alfred through two unhappy Queens: Elizabeth of Bohemia and Mary Queen of Scots. Mary's tragic story we all know, but the tragedy of Elizabeth's life is not so familiar. Married at 16 to Frederick the Fifth, she went to live at Heidel-

berg. Five years later Frederick, being a leader of the Protestants, was chosen by the Bohemians as their King. . The choice was the cause of the awful Thirty Years' War, in which Roman Catholics and Protestants almost made Central Europe a wilderness. A year and a day after Elizabeth was crowned at Prague her husband lost a battle and his throne, with the result that the Winter King and Queen, as they were called, were flying from place to place in poverty, eventually finding shelter in Holland, where Frederick

died in 1632, leaving her with sons and daughters who left her for the Church of Rome. Sophia, the youngest, kept her faith, and so did Rupert and Maurice, the famous leaders of Charles Stuart's armies in our Civil War. n Very poor and lonely, Elizabeth stayed in Holland till the Restoration, when our Parliament voted her £IO,OOO to enable her to pay her Dutch creditors and follow Charles the Second to London. There, two years later, this long-suffering Queen passed away, and was laid, to rest in Westminster Abbey.