The Hussite Wars

I

That the tendency of his work should be strongly hostile to the Calixtine or Utraquist cause was, no doubt, inevitable, but iEneas often attacks his enemies in a distinctly unfair manner. Thus he lays great stress on the appearance of the Adamite fanatics in Bohemia, though they had no connection whatever with the Hussite movement, entered Bohemia as strangers, and were almost immediately extirpated by the Hussite general, 2izka.i 2izka himself and the Bohemian nobles are described as savages whom Providence permitted to obtain victories to punish the sins of the Christian world. I have already alluded to the repulsive and untruthful description of 2izka's death. The value of iEneas Sylvius's book is also lessened by the humanistic manner of the author, who is always endeavouring to imitate the historians of Greece and Rome. He always strives to adorn and enliven his narrative by often quite unauthenticated anecdotes, and he follows the classics in introducing imaginary speeches, which the modem student of Bohemian history knows to be quite out of harmony with the character of the supposed speaker.

The period of the German reformation again shows a slight revival of interest in the Hussite movement, which, after the "compacts" and the restoration of King Sigismund, had for a time attracted but little attention. Founding their view on Luther's words, the early German Church reformers glorified the Hussites, whom they considered as their predecessors. The German writers of this time, however, attributed all the success which the Bohemians for a time obtained to the extreme Taborite fanatics, and quite ignored the merits of the conservative Hussite party — consisting mainly of the lords sub-Utraque and the citizens of the old town of Prague — which, under more favourable circumstances, would, perhaps, have established a national church and a national kingdom in Bohemia. We find the same tendency also in the work of Zacharias Theobaldus, entitled Hussitenkrieg, which belongs to

* See my Master John Hus, pp. 360-361.

the seventeenth century. After the battle of the White Mountain in 1620, and the suppression of Protestantism and the national constitution of Bohemia, all literary activity in that country ceased, and the Bohemians were prevented from obtaining any information on the history of their country. They were even forbidden to read the Historia Bohemica of…