The Ashes of Bohemia

When two of Rose and Augustine and Josephine and Benjamins children get married they become horrified as army men kidnap their neighbors young son, Joshua, declaring them unfit parents and sending Joshua to work in a woolen factory and spinning mill. Emotionally crushed, Pavel and Karolina are forced  to accept the absence of their young son, as Queen Maria Theresa of Bohemia sends twenty-thousand troops to regain control of the town and the people.                                                                                                                                                                 Reigning from Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria the fair minded Queen Maria Theresa has her own problems  dealing with Catherine the Great of Russia, Fredrick the Great of Prussia and her daughter Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, as her people rise up against her for better living conditions and basic necessities, they become even more and more powerful, creating fear and wars among the reigning Royalties of all the countries in Europe.              Bohemia is invaded again and again as Pavel and Joseph discuss the problems each men face with being forced in and out of servitude and their own families and children's survival, and amazingly Joshua returns to Ceske Budajovice as a member of the Queens notorious army.                                                                                   Members of European Royalty are at their wits end, trying to stop their increasingly powerful subjects and decide to hold a mutli-nation congress, called the Congress of Vienna.  With dignitaries and Royalty from every sitting Monarchy and union the delegations debate ways to try to end the fighting and bloodshed by redesigning boundaries and dividing nations in the process.                                                                                                         With terrible poverty, uncertainty and mayhem everywhere Frantisek and Anna, and Pavel and Karoline and their neighbors hear about a foreign land that is giving away free farmland to anyone who is willing to farm it.  They discuss the painful decision to leave their beloved Bohemia for the unknown and uncertainty of journeying to a new land.