Page:Bohemia's claim for freedom.djvu/31

 "Nothing could induce us," was the decision of the Bohemians," to recognise as king the man who had put to death our saint and hero!"

In the struggle which followed the Bohemian people rallied as one man round their leaders, and the military exploits of Zizka, Prokop the Great, and Prokop the Little were handed down in the history of Bohemia as the most brilliant testimony to the invincibility of a nation fighting for its ideals.

Even the army of crusaders called together by the Pope and consisting of Germans, Hungarians, Croatians, Dalmatians, Bulgarians, Wallachians, Saxons, Austrians, Bavarians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Poles, and a few Englishmen, was unable to conquer the Czechs, and finally, after seventeen years of struggle, Sigismund had to give way and to beg Pope Martin V to concede the principal demands of Bohemia.

The Utraquists, so-named from their demand that the Holy Communion should be administered in both kinds, and comprised of the Czech nobility and the more Conservative Nationalists, carried the day against "Taborites," sometimes called the Extreme Reform Party, who demanded the reconstruction of society on the principles laid down in the Gospel. These two parties formed the nucleus of the two modern political parties in Bohemia.

The next period of Czech history is marked by a series of conflicts between the people and the German kings, the latter backed by the popes endeavouring to force Bohemia back into the Catholic Church. All these attempts were de- 27