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the policy of appointing foreigners to the chief offices of the University, but the crisis came in 1409, when King Wenceslas, yielding to the National Party, by the decree of Kutna Hora, changed the system of voting; henceforth the Bohemians were given three votes and the combined foreign nations only one. Thereupon five thousand German students with their professors left in a body and founded the University of Leipzig.

That John Hus played an important part in bringing about this change is confirmed by the fact that at that time he was a Confessor of Queen Sophia, wife of Wenceslas, and was elected rector of Prague University immediately after the crisis. At this time the personality of Hus was shaped in that form which ever afterwards won the admiration even of his enemies. "Meanly born, 23