The end of the village Mladá
1341 – 1905

A postcard released in the year 1930 for the special occasion of celebrating 1000 years since the founding of the village Mladá. The celebration took place on the ruins of the village, that was expropriated in the year 1905.

In the forests that lined the northern horizon of Milovice was the village of Mladá, which was documented as early as the mid-14^th century. It’s founding is tied to a legend about Mlada, the daughter of prince Boleslav I. At the beginning of the 20th century, Mladá was the largest village in the eastern part of the Benátecké dominion, with 107 houses housing 700 inhabitants. There was a Baroque church of St. Catherine with a rectory and cemetery, a two-grade school and 2 pubs.

The village green with a marching military. A postcard from the year 1906.

The first news about the founding of the military training grounds have reached Mladá in the summer of 1903. Soon a commission consisting of representatives of the imperial and royal treasury and the Länderbank arrived in the village. The first calls for the sale of rural properties were not very successful. There was a widespread opinion among the locals, supported by the priest Frydrych, that the village would be preserved and the peasants would only sell a small part of their land to the army.

The building of the municipal school in Mladá, an image from the year 1905.

Josef Frantál, the head teacher of the school in Mladá.

A futile fight for the village of Mladá sprung up. Representatives of the village were sending out requests and protest to all sides, yet in vain. They even travelled to reason at the ministry of war in Vienna, however they returned with no acquired result. Deputy governor Karl Maria count Coudenhove on 30^th of April 1904 released a declaration of the founding of the military training grounds, in which were highlighted the benefits of the selected location of the new training grounds, which would count for the eviction of only a singular village.

Buildings from Mladá, picture from the year 1905.

The village split into two irreconcilable camps. With the selling of their property mainly agreed homeowners and farmers with smaller lands. They hoped that they would make it out benefiting. In the beginning, the redemption committee actually offered higher prises in hopes of attracting more sellers. The owners of larger households also did not want to sell their homesteads, as in the area there were no fields of a similar size for sale. As a compensation for their grounds, they demanded that the army builds a new village within the region. Army however did not agree to this proposal.

A combined postcard from 1907, when the innkeeper Janoušek, the last resident of Mladá, had to leave the village of Mladá.

The soldiers moved into the acquired cottages and from the August 1904, an artillery training involving live rounds took place within a close proximity to the village. At the same time, soldiers marched and trained even on fields, that were still owned by farmers. During this, parts of the harvest was destroyed, which the army did not compensate the owners of the fields for. With this psychological pressure, the army managed to force a few more families to move out.

Colorised postcard of the abolished village Mladá from the year 1908. At that point, some buildings were already destroyed by artillery fire.

The prices offered in the next rounds of redemption were no longer so favourable, they were derived from the previous sale of land by the Länderbank. The property owners complained that it was not possible to purchase an adequate estate for the estimated money. In addition, they were accused by the redemption commission of asking for disproportionate prices for their estates. On November 30, 1904, the Governorship in Prague announced that the land not yet redeemed would be expropriated at a price set by the state.

Artillerymen of the 8^th Corpse in Mladá in 1908.

There were 26 families in Mladá who refused to leave their homes. The forced eviction of Mladá took place on October 16, 1905. Mladá was surrounded by a cordon of the 36th and 92nd Infantry Regiments, with dragoons on horseback waiting in reserve. The gendarmerie, assisted by the army, loaded the movable property of the citizens of Mladá onto wagons and transported it beyond the borders of the military training ground, to the village square in Lipník. The eviction was accompanied by heartbreaking scenes. Only the innkeeper Janoušek was allowed to remain in the village, who ran an officer’s casino and a store for the troops until 1907.