Moravian

The Moravians are the West Slavic people of the Morava river basin, the easternmost Czech land. Their tribe founded a principality in the late eighth century that became Great Moravia in 833. Under Rastislav, Cyril and Methodius translated the liturgy into Slavonic; in the 890s Svatopluk I ruled an empire from Bohemia to Silesia, before Magyar invaders overran it in 907.

After Lechfeld in 955 Moravia passed to the Bohemian Přemyslids, with a Polish interlude from 999 to 1019. Přemyslid princes ruled until 1197, when it became the Margraviate of Moravia; the Mongols raided it in 1241. It joined the Bohemian Crown in 1348. Hussite wars divided it until George of Poděbrady reunited the Czech lands in 1458; the Habsburgs inherited Moravia in 1526.

Protestant nobles faced the Counter-Reformation. In the Thirty Years' War the Swedes took Olomouc in 1641 while Brno held out and became the sole capital. Prussians invaded in 1741–1742 and 1758; in 1782 Austria merged the margraviate with Austrian Silesia into Moravia-Silesia under Brno.