Domažlice

Domažlice lies among the hills of western Bohemia on the old road toward Regensburg. King Ottokar II founded the fortified royal town and its castle in 1265 near an older settlement. The frontier with Bavaria was guarded by the Chods, free Slavic farmers who settled in the surrounding district, giving it the name Chodsko. The town was pledged to Bavaria for much of the period from 1331 to 1419. Under Hussite rule German inhabitants were expelled, and in 1431 Prokop the Great defeated a crusading army near Domažlice. The town changed hands repeatedly in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and declined after the Thirty Years' War. By the later eighteenth century innovations in textile production helped it recover.