In 2016, 150 years will have passed since the Austro-Prussian War. Near the fortress of Hradec Králové, the decisive battle of this conflict took place, with Austria losing. The fortress was besieged and its immediate surroundings were flooded. Using eyewitness accounts and historical realities, the author describes the until recently-rarely revisited life of the civilian populations in the besieged fortress.
Based on available sources and literature, this paper seeks to describe the relatively little-known process of separating the area of the newly-established Czechoslovak Republic from the Austrian-Hungarian currency, which tended towards inflation in 1918. The Finance Minister Alois Rašín flawlessly secured a financial operation which placed the Czechoslovak currency on a solid foundation.