When Princess Libuše passed away after many years of just rule, conditions at Vyšehrad began to change rapidly and irreversibly. Her once-respected female retinue lost its privileged position in the council, and the men, led by the widower Přemysl, began to mock the unmarried maidens openly and secretly. The ambitious Vlasta, who used to be the princess’s right hand, bore the end of the matriarchy heavily. Unable to stand the men’s arrogance, one day she gathered kindred and angry women from all over the land on the steep opposite bank of the Vltava. Under her command, the girls built the pride of female resistance, the mythical and impregnable castle of Děvín, from where they were to carry out retaliatory actions in a long and ruthless Maidens’ War.

At the castle, the women trained in archery, fencing, and wild horseback riding. Under the influence of Vlasta’s magical and intoxicating potions, they forgot pity and their own families, and their hearts turned to stone towards men. It quickly became clear that the men had cruelly underestimated their determination. Relying on their beauty and boundless cunning, Vlasta’s retinue began luring tardy and arrogant warriors into traps. More than once, the maidens ambushed traveling retinues from hiding, plundering and looting. Although Prince Přemysl initially warned the men with restrained words, inspired by ominous dreams of goblets filled to the brim with blood, the young and arrogant noblemen ignored his advice and soon paid with their lives at the gates of Děvín.

The pinnacle of Děvín cruelty and the irreversible milestone of the Maidens’ War was the trap set for the brave hero Ctirad. Vlasta craftily lured him near the rocks, where she ordered one of the most charming girls of her retinue, dark-eyed Šárka, to be bound tightly to the trunk of a fully grown oak. Beside the fainting and seemingly genuinely weeping Šárka, she left a hunting horn and a flask of intoxicating mead. When the trusting Ctirad heard the woman’s crying and freed the wretched girl in the deep forest, he and his loyal men, tired from the arduous journey, sat on the ground for a feast. As soon as Šárka handed him the fateful horn in gratitude and he blew it as a sign of success, the Děvín amazons, hidden in the gorge until then, lunged forward. They slaughtered his entire retinue, and the captured Ctirad ended his heroic life broken on the wheel on the Vyšehrad cliff to the mockery of all the girls on the other bank.

However, this agonizing act turned out to be the swan song of female domination. The massacre of Ctirad and his men ignited a hatred in the men that mere caution could no longer dampen. Prince Přemysl declared war, and a massive army surged like a rolling river to conquer Děvín. Vlasta herself, with the ferocity of an enraged dragon, rushed out to meet the men, convinced of her invulnerability, but she soon succumbed to the overwhelming and unyielding crowd. The defeated leader perished in the dust, and with fierce roars, the avenging warriors stormed through the gates into the courtyard of Děvín. The women, now screaming in terror and pleading for mercy, found no understanding. The men settled the score with cold steel, broke the cunning pride, completely plundered the armories, and let the castle burn to the ground. The end of the Maidens’ War forever closed a rebellious chapter in early Czech myths.