crown, and was assassinated. With his death, the whole Přemyslid dynasty died out.
The city was officially founded in the mid-thirteenth century and became one of the most important trade and power centres in the region. In the Middle Ages, it was the biggest town in Moravia and competed with Brno for the position of the capital. Olomouc lost finally after the Swedes took the city for eight years (1642–1650).
In 1454 the city expelled the Jews of Olomouc, as part of a wave of anti-Semitism also seen in Spain and Portugal. The second half of the fifteenth century is considered the start of Olomouc's golden age. It hosted several royal meetings and Matthias Corvinus was elected here as King of Bohemia (in fact antiking) by the estates in 1469. In 1479 two kings of Bohemia (Vladislaus II and Matthias Corvinus) met here and concluded an agreement (Peace of Olomouc of 1479) for splitting the country.
Participating in the Protestant Reformation, Moravia became mostly Protestant. During the Thirty Years' War, in 1640 Olomouc was occupied by the Swedes for eight years. They left the city in ruins, and it became second to Brno.
In 1740 the town was captured and briefly held by the Prussians. Olomouc was fortified by Maria Theresa during the wars with Frederick the Great, who besieged the city unsuccessfully for seven weeks in 1758. In 1848 Olomouc was the scene of the emperor Ferdinand's abdication. Two years later, Austrian and German statesmen held a conference here called the Punctation of Olmütz. At the conference, they agreed to restore the German Confederation and Prussia accepted leadership by the Austrians.
In 1746 the first learned society in the lands under control of the Austrian Habsburgs, the Societas eruditorum incognitorum in terris Austriacis, was founded in Olomouc in order to spread Enlightenment ideas. Its monthly journal Monatliche Auszüge was the first scientific journal published in the Habsburg empire
