Bohemia was never a part of Austria in the sense of it being merged into an entity called Austria, but it was ruled between 1526 and 1918 by the same dynasty as ruled the lands that would become known as Austria, namely the Habsburgs. Thus, Bohemia in this period and depending on the precise era is variously referred to as being part of the Holy Roman Empire (of which the Emperor of Austria was traditionally also Holy Roman Emperor), the Austrian Empire or, specifically in the period 1867–1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire The key event for Bohemia in the sense of loss of national autonomy and full absorption into the Habsburg realms was the Battle of the White Mountain (Bítva na Bílé Hoře in Czech; Schlacht am Weißen Berge in German) in 1620, after which Bohemia would essentially be governed in the German language (to the detriment of the Czech language) until 1918. In October 1918, as the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed as the First World War drew to a close, Bohemia, Moravia, the hitherto ‘Austrian’ Silesia and Slovakia unilaterally declared their independence as the newly formed state of Czechoslovakia The existence of Czechoslovakia was confirmed by the peace treaties with Austria and Hungary respectively in 1919 and 1920 which brought any association between Bohemia and Austria to an internationally recognised end