29.1.1180 - The "peasant" prince Soběslav II died in exile.

The Bohemian prince Soběslav II surrounded himself with noble people, which earned him the nickname "the peasant prince". He died abroad on 29 January 1180, where he had to flee after an unsuccessful battle.

Soběslav II did not have an easy life, he had to leave Bohemia as a twelve-year-old boy when his father Soběslav I died. He was succeeded not by his first-born son Vladislav of Olomouc, but by his namesake Vladislav II, who was the nephew of the deceased ruler.

Soběslav II did not return to the Bohemian lands until he was a young man of twenty, in 1148. He planned to take advantage of the fact that Vladislav II was abroad and wanted to gain power in Bohemia. But he failed to do so and was imprisoned in the Přimda Castle, located on top of a rocky ridge above the town of the same name in the northern part of the Bohemian Forest.

"It served as a royal prison where, among others, the later King Přemysl Otakar II was forced to stay. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the castle was often pledged to noble families, especially the Lords of Švamberk. The unmaintained castle fell into disrepair in the 17th century.It was an uninhabited ruin in the 17th century," says the website of the castle, which is the oldest stone castle in Bohemia.

Soběslav managed to escape only two years later. He again took refuge in Germany because he was supported by the local ruler, Frederick I Barbarossa. However, Soběslav did not give up and in 1161 he tried to win Olomouc. However, he ended up in prison in Primda, where he was kept for twelve years. "Seeing that he could not resist the power of the king's servants, Soběslav began to negotiate with the king, asking nothing but a sum commensurate with his condition.which, although secured by word of mouth, was soon turned into a rigid and twelve-year prison sentence in the castle of Primda," reads one of the volumes of the Moravian Matrix.

In 1173, however, he was released by order of the emperor. Vladislav II voluntarily renounced the throne after 33 years of his reign and wanted his first-born son Bedřich to take over. The emperor's decision was different, however, and he made Oldřich prince of Bohemia. In the end, however, he had to hand over the government to Soběslav II because he could not secure the support of the Bohemian nobility.

Not much is known about Soběslav's rule, except that he relied on the peasantry. Eventually, even Barbarossa, who had disputes with the Pope, turned against him and Soběslav II was drawn into them. When the prince invaded Austria in 1176, he definitely antagonized Rome. This was immediately exploited by Frederick. He bribed the emperor and won Bohemia as a fief. But Sobeslav tried to regain the throne in 1178 and 1179.

"A decisive battle was fought near the town of Prague, in which Soběslav was completely defeated, so that once again the strong castle of SkáLu he had to flee, but after 11 months of albeit futile attempts, he was finally forced by hunger to go to a foreign land, where he was forced to flee on 20 April. January 1180, he died without descendants," says the Moravian Matrix.

Sources: www.hrad-primda.cz, Matica Moravská, wikipedia