Gold 40 ducat Břetislav I. 2011 Standard

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Břetislav I.

Břetislav I, nicknamed Czech Achilles by the chronicler Kosma, (between 1002 and 1005 - 10 January 1055, Chrudim) was a Bohemian prince of the Přemyslid dynasty who ruled Bohemia from 1034 to 1055.Břetislav soon proved to be a very strong and self-confident ruler, and after consolidating and securing his domestic position and gaining his first successor, he began to expand his power towards Polish territory. Between 1038 and 1039 he captured Kraków and Hnezdno, and proclaimed the first known Bohemian law (the so-called Břetislav Decree) over the grave of St. Vojtěch. He subsequently took Vojtěch's remains to Bohemia. He apparently hoped that since they had helped secure the archbishopric in Hnězdno, they would do the same service for Prague.

But his anti-Polish campaign attracted the attention of the Roman king (and later emperor) Henry III. The rise in power of a neighbouring monarch, and moreover of his vassal, could not be tolerated by the young Henry III, nor could the elevation of Bohemia by the establishment of an archbishopric or even by its elevation to a kingdom.

He sent the exiled Piast prince Casimir I. to Poland with a detachment of his warriors, and at the same time demanded of Bretislaus that he should return the Polish booty and that his soldiers should withdraw from Silesia, which the Bohemian prince had previously conquered almost unopposed. With this ultimatum he tried to provoke the prince into a fight, for which he had prepared himself well. In 1040, Henry III marched into Bohemia with an imperial army. It was his second Bohemian expedition (he first came here at the will of his father in 1033 and defeated Prince Oldrich). Now Henry's troops advanced in two streams, but their invasion was repulsed at the Battle of Brůdek in the Bohemian Forest. Henry had to acknowledge the situation. Bretislav's ally was the Hungarian king Peter Orseolo, who occupied the southern frontier of his Bohemian neighbour, allowing him to send Moravian troops to defend Bohemia. Bretislav offered to negotiate with Henry in person, but the king was eager to avenge his military defeat. In the following year, he avoided the border interference, penetrated quite easily into the interior of the country, and besieged Bretislav at Prague Castle.

When Bishop Šebíř and many of the grandees proved amenable to compromise, the prince submitted to Henry III in order to prevent further devastation of his country. Then Bretislav I went to the imperial assembly in Reims, where the leading princes were present. He was pardoned, took a fief tribute and an oath of allegiance.He allegedly accepted Bohemia and two other territories (it is believed to have been the Silesian Vratislav and Hlohov regions) as a fief. However, this was mainly a formal submission. Henry III needed Břetislav as an important ally. In the following years, Břetislav was already a firm and highly valued ally of Henry, whom he supported especially during the campaign to Hungary.

In 1042 the emperor marched with Bretislav to Hungary, where they intended to dethrone Samuel Abu and reinstate Peter Orseol, who had been in Bavarian exile since 1041. The expedition was unsuccessful. Nor did the expedition of 1043 bring about a change on the Hungarian throne. It was not until 5 July 1044, at the Battle of Menfö, that Samuel Abu was beaten to the punch and the Hungarian grandees began to defect en masse to Peter the Venetian again. Peter Orseolo was restored to the Hungarian throne in Székesfehérvár. Samuel Aba was imprisoned and then executed.