PRESERVING RENAISSANCE CHATEAU MOKROSUKY
In a beautiful valley of southwestern Bohemia, only seven miles northwest from the charming royal town of Susice, a view of a small Renaissance chateau of Mokrosuky suddenly appears before your eyes. Not even the miserable condition, into which it was brought in the last sixty years, can silence a quiet and compelling voice of the testimony of pain and glory of ages, inscribed into its walls.
The stronghold of Mokrosuky had been probably already built in 1421, when the Tábor Hussite commander Jan Žižka of Trocnov lost his eye during the second conquering of the nearby castle of Rabí. In 1579, it was bought by a wealthy knight Volf Gothart Perglar of Perglas from Václav Vintíř of Vlčkovice and he built a Renaissance stronghold here. His son, Václav Otakar Perglar of Perglas joined the Czech uprising of the estates between 1618-1620 and when the catholic army was advancing to the South Bohemia the soldiers of a famous Spanish warrior in imperial service, Don Baltazar de Marradas, were billeted in Mokrosuky. During the seizures after the Battle of White Mountain Václav Otakar Perglar achieved remission, but he did not save the estate - in 1628, it was sold to another of the famous contemporary warriors, Don Martin de Hoeff-Huerta, who outfitted his regiment from its yields. Eventually, it was bought by Humprecht Račín of Račín, whose brother, Arnošt Vojtěch Račín of Račín, merged it with the manor of Hrádek by Sušice.
If a landscape, though beautiful, loses its character together with the demise of these silent witnesses - and hundreds of them have already disappeared in our country - it also loses something essential of its identity which is again today, thanks God, our common European identity.
For thirty years, our blacksmiths and gunsmiths have been keeping the old Czech tradition of production of swords, which belonged to the most famous weapons in Europe from the fifteenth century. They dedicated their whole life to it, by the sweat of their brow, in the heat of forges and in the middle of the rattle of hammers, in order to imprint the shape of the malleable metal to it. Who of us does not have the look of the landscape, where we are born, live, love and die, in the soul? We are not able to look impassively any longer at the work of destruction, wherever it may be - if we were silent, even the stones would cry!
We decided to put our shoulder to the wheel of saving this small Renaissance treasure, which in its simplicity does not have a chance of great help, in order to preserve it for the future and open it to visitors and meetings of fans of medieval and Renaissance arms, armour and historical fencing.
With each weapon that our forges offer to you you get a double guarantee: a beautiful and high quality weapon, coming from the famous centuries-old tradition of Czech handmade armourer's work, and also strong awareness that you helped save the endangered Renaissance chateau, which will be hospitably opened to you as well. It certainly is not today, at the time of collapsing securities, a negligible satisfaction.
