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Men-at-Arms

SPREY

PUBLISHING

The Czech Legion

1914–20

David Bullock

•

Illustrated by Ramiro Bujeiro

Men-at-Arms • 447

The Czech Legion

1914–20

David Bullock

•

Illustrated by Ramiro Bujeiro

Series editor

Mar tin Windrow

THE CZECH LEGION

1914–1920

INTRODUCTION

he title ‘Czech Legion’ first evoked international excitement in

1918, when this remarkable body of troops gave the Western Allies

hope that a new Eastern Front could be opened against the

Central Powers, while also seizing 6,000 miles of Russian territory along

the railways from the Volga to the Pacific. The term was then set in

concrete by the international press for three generations, and only

recently has the more proper term ‘Czechoslovak Legion’ come into

vogue in the West.

The Republic of Czechoslovakia, the new country that came into

being in November 1918, was a fusion of two ethnic groups, the Slovaks

as well as the Czechs. Moreover, the new state incorporated several other

ethnicities, including Hungarians, Germans, Ruthenians, Poles and

Jews. The latter three groups were represented among the volunteers

who served individually or in small units with

other national armies, from the United States and

Canada to Serbia, as well as in the larger national

Legions that fought in France, Italy and Russia.

The term ‘Legion’ in this connection was

originally coined by the Czech Committee in

London in autumn 1914, and in fact the legionaries

tended not to use it, referring to themselves instead

as ‘Brother Volunteers.’ However, after their return

from Europe and Russia in 1919–20 the word

‘Legion’ took hold, becoming a reference of

honour and an accolade that distinguished these

expeditionary forces from the new Czechoslovak

Army that had formed at home.

This book is a brief summary of the story of the

100,000 men who served in the expeditionary

Legions: 10,000 in France, 20,000 in Italy, and

70,000 in Russia. They were volunteers from

every corner of the world – farmers, craftsmen,

students, intellectuals, deserters from the Austro-

Hungarian Army, and soldiers of fortune. All were

imbued with a sense of adventure; and, above

everything, all were patriots fighting to place the

state of Czechoslovakia on the map of Europe.

Understanding that only the defeat of the Central

Powers could achieve that cherished goal, they

were among the most steadfast and determined

of all the volunteers for the Allied forces.

TOWARDS NATIONHOOD

From their advent in the European heartland in the 5th century AD

until the final cataclysmic events of World War I, the Czechs and Slovaks

struggled to survive against more powerful neighbours and,

periodically, to create a nation of their own. Briefly united as peoples in

the Moravian Empire from the 9th century until that empire’s

destruction at the hands of the Magyars in the 10th, the Czechs and

Slovaks then went their separate ways. Thereafter the Czechs developed

their own Bohemian kingdom, while the Slovaks fell under the yoke of

the Magyars and the newly established kingdom of Hungary. In the 950s

AD the Bohemian kingdom became a fief of the Holy Roman Empire

under Otto the Great.

The ‘Golden Age’ of Czech history occurred from 1342–1378,

centred on the reign of Charles IV of Bohemia. This king created the

archbishopric of Prague, built the ‘New Town’ that made Prague into an

imperial city, founded Charles University, and reconstructed the royal

seat at Hradcany Castle. However, chaos followed his death, and two

Protestant reform movements challenged Papal and Imperial authority

in the early 1400s, the ‘Hussites’ and the ‘Taborites.’ Jan Hus perished

at the stake in 1415, his followers taking up his name and joining

a Protestant fundamentalist group known as the Taborites. These and

other Czech allies, including a majority of the Bohemian nobility who

sought to reduce the growing ‘German’ power of the Empire, rose in

rebellion against the emperor in 1420. Led by the formidable Czech

hero Jan Zizka, a one-eyed warrior who had fought against the Teutonic

Knights at Tannenberg, the Hussites in their armed and fortified ‘war

wagons’ repeatedly thrashed internal enemies and the Imperial forces

sent against them; and although this epic chapter finally ended in

internecine strife in 1434, the Hussite religious movement survived as

the Reformed Church of Bohemia.

In 1526 an Ottoman army destroyed the army of King Louis II of

Hungary at the battle of Mohacs. As a consequence, the Habsburg

dynasty based in Vienna was able to incorporate the Slovak portion

of Hungary into the Holy Roman Empire, and Czechs and Slovaks

would remain under Habsburg rule during nearly 400 more years. The

Reformation period of 1517–1648 once again pitted the Protestants of

various reformed creeds against the pope and emperor; it was the

Czechs of Bohemia who in 1618 opened the first phase of what would

be known as the Thirty Years’ War, but they were decisively defeated

at the battle of White Mountain on 8 November 1620. The greatest

achievement of the Czechs and Slovaks in these centuries perhaps lay

merely in the survival of their language and folk traditions.

Two phenomena coalesced in the first half of the 19th century to

produce a national revival of the Czechoslovaks: a tide of nationalism

within the European empires, and the Romantic cultural movement.

Nationalism defined the basis of a people by their language and their

distinct cultural traits and affinities, while Romanticism helped nourish

the dream and inspire the call to action. Both Czechs and Slovaks rose

during the almost Europe-wide ‘Year of Revolutions’ in 1848, and both

1 See Men-at-Arms 409,

The Hussite Wars 1419–36

were crushed at the point of the bayonet. The new Habsburg emperor,

Franz Joseph, determined to rule as an absolutist, but Austrian defeats

in Italy in 1859 and by the Prussians in 1866 compelled him to strike an

accord with the Hungarians. In 1867 the Dual Monarchy or Austro-

Hungarian Empire was established, creating in effect two kingdoms

ruled by a common emperor. Each half of the Dual Monarchy, however,

strove to stifle the growing nationalism of its subject peoples – the

Austrians repressing the Czechs, and the Hungarians the Slovaks.

Nevertheless, while the Austro-Hungarian regime was reactionary in

spirit it was not totalitarian in method, and progress towards a realized

national consciousness was patiently maintained.

Contacts between Czechs and Slovaks intensified during the 1890s,

especially at the intellectual level; students at the University of Prague

formed the Czechoslovak Union, and in 1898 began publishing the

journal

Hlas

(‘Voice’). The most important of the new political entities

to arise was the Czech Progressive Party founded by Professor Tomas

Garrigue Masaryk in 1900. Masaryk – who would become the ‘George

Washington’ of his country, and the first president of independent

Czechoslovakia – was well suited to the role. Born in Moravia to a

working-class family in 1850, he had a Czech mother and a Slovak father.

In 1882 he was appointed to a professorial chair at the University of

Prague, where he became influential in intellectual circles before serving

two terms in the Austrian Reichsrat (parliament). The Progressive Party

that he founded sought national autonomy within the Empire while

adhering to parliamentary procedures, rejecting radical solutions, and

promoting universal suffrage.

Two other men were instrumental in the political realm in the years

immediately before World War I. Edvard Benes, who would become the

second president of Czechoslovakia, was born in Bohemia in 1884; in

1912 he became a professor at Charles University in Prague, and

espoused the theory that the Czechs and Slovaks shared essentially

the same ethnicity. His ideals were embraced by his student Milan

Stefanik, a Slovak son of a Lutheran pastor. Born in 1880, Stefanik

Art card honouring two men

who were instrumental in the

foundation of Czechoslovakia:

Prof Tomas G. Masaryk, first

president of the Czechoslovak

Republic, and American President

Woodrow Wilson. Some 40,000

Americans of Czechoslovak

descent are believed to have

served either in the volunteer

legions or in the Allied national

armies, and President Wilson

himself remained warmly

sympathetic to Czechoslovak

national aspirations. In the

centre, a legionary stands

victorious, at his side the Lion

of Bohemia and at his feet the

stricken Germanic eagle.

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