Page:Glimpses of Bohemia by MacDonald (1882).pdf/24

 For some months after the battle of the White Hill, Ferdinand left the Bohemians undisturbed, but on the night of 21st January, 1621, forty of the principal leaders were arrested, and it soon became evident that the respite had merely been intended to lull them into false security. The nobles were summoned to appear at Prague, but now knowing what would likely befall them, many wisely went into voluntary exile. Those who had been arrested were condemned to death, but the sentence was not at once carried out. On the 21st of July, 1621, however, twenty-seven of the leading nobles and citizens were beheaded in the Grosse Ring of Prague, in some instances the hand or tongue being first cut off. These men were nominally executed for insurgence against their lawful sovereign, but as they were offered pardon on condition of renouncing their Protestant faith, they were really martyrs for conscience’ sake. On the day of their execution, it is said Ferdinand was on a pilgrimage to Maria Zell in Styria to expiate the cruelty of his conduct. Then followed the most terrible persecutions of modern times, rendered more terrible than the authors perhaps contemplated by the officers to whom they were entrusted, who sought the spoil of the vanquished Bohemians, as well as the extirpation of Protestantism. Ferdinand had declared that he would rather have a wilderness, than a country peopled by heretics, and the figures which I now quote show how he carried out his terrible resolution. In 1617 Bohemia had 732 cities, 34,700 villages, and a population of over three millions. When Ferdinand died in 1637, there remained 130 cities, and 600 villages, and the population was reduced to under 800,000. In 1620 the great bulk of the population were Protestant. In 1627 an avowed Protestant could only be found within the walls of prisons. 30,000 families had preferred exile to a change of religion. These emigrants included the noblest and best in the land, and many of them became most useful citizens in the countries. in which they settled. Some writers account for the meaning which has now become attached to the name Bohemian by the great number of Bohemians thus sent forth, all over Europe, as homeless wanderers. Every effort was made by the Jesuits to destroy