Page:Lectures on The Historians of Bohemia by Count Lutzow (1905).djvu/50

 the intense vivacity of some of his battle-pieces, which, if I may be permitted a vile anachronism, appear as photographic snapshots before our eyes, bears witness to this.

Březov deals in a rather cursory manner with the events of the years 1414 to 1419, and it is only of the events of the period which begins in 1419 and ends in 1421 that he gives us a detailed and moving account. It should be noted that these two years, as regards their importance, may well count for two centuries in the history of Bohemia. The victory on Žižka’s Hill was the first successful fight for liberty in the Middle Ages. The success of these armed bands of citizens and peasants against half the nobility of Europe and their countless followers, found an echo in all countries and produced a democratic movement which has been little noticed, and to which it is of course not my purpose to refer here.

I will now quote part of Březov’s account of the siege of Prague by Sigismund in 1420, and of the subsequent Hussite victories in the two battles near Prague—that of the Žižkov and that of the Vyšehrad. Brezov writes: ‘On the thirtieth of June, which was the Sunday nearest to the feast of St. Peter the Martyr, the Hungarian King Sigismund approached the [Hradčany] castle of Prague with a large army, consisting both of Bohemians and of men of foreign nations. After mass had been said, the king himself with some of his principal followers was solemnly received at the gates of the castle by the clergy, who then followed him in procession amidst the ringing of bells and the