A drunken uncle at a birthday party, only worse. It’s an embarrassing scene in the novel The forest of expectation (1949) by Hella Haasse. The young French prince Charles d’Orléans is introduced to Wenceslaus, king of Bohemia and Roman-German king, whose cousin he will marry. The king is shit lazarus. Haasse notes: “It was common knowledge that those who wanted to confer with Wenceslaus had to come before breakfast to the emperor; only then was he sober enough to know what he was doing.”
However, little Charles presented himself well after the morning meal, and the conversation went off the rails. Haasse writes: “’A handsome boy, a beautiful child,’ cried Wenceslaus, screeching. “He must drink: wine, wine!” […] He spoke French like a street grinder, coarse in sounds and words, richly interspersed with unintelligible Polish exclamations and expletives.”
The romancière knew her sources. From it, the Bohemian king emerges as a sadistic idler. His nickname was ‘the Lazy’ – and that was actually quite mild if we are to believe all the stories about this ruler.
Pope’s irritation
Wenceslaus was born as the eldest son of Emperor Charles IV. He was crowned King of Bohemia at the age of two. At the age of fifteen, his father made him Roman-German king. After Charles died in 1378, Wenceslaus was single king of the Holy Roman Empire. He also refused to be crowned emperor, to the irritation of the pope.
However, Wenceslaus had other things on his mind. Charles IV had not bequeathed all his lands to his eldest son. Regions such as Brandeburg, Görlitz and Moravia went to (half) brothers and cousins. Some of these relatives supported Wenceslaus, others wanted his life.
In 1394 the king was even imprisoned for some time. He had made it a bit bad, because a year earlier he had Saint John Nepomucenus tortured and drowned in the Vltava. (Reason: the priest refused to reveal the confessional secrets of Wenceslaus’s second wife.)
Due to dynastic thunder, Wenceslaus had no time to discharge his duties as Roman-German king
Because of all this dynastic thunder, Wenceslaus had no time to discharge his duties as Roman-German king. In 1400, the princes of the German Empire were fed up. They concluded that Wenceslaus “ynen unnüczen, versümelichen, unachtbaren entgleder und unwerdigen” king and deposed him.
In Bohemia, Wenceslaus continued to have problems with the nobility. In 1402 he was imprisoned again for some time and in 1419 he was expelled from Prague by heretical Hussites. He died of a heart attack that same year. It is actually quite logical that someone is drinking with so much stress in their life.
In addition to being an alcoholic, Wenceslaus was also paranoid and cruel. He let his dogs loose on people who displeased him. They would even have killed his first wife. It is therefore not surprising that his second wife had a lot of worries to share with her confessor.