Page:Lectures on The Historians of Bohemia by Count Lutzow (1905).djvu/62

 of God has not been shortened. Therefore trust in God and be ready. May the Lord God grant you strength!’

It is hardly necessary to draw attention to the strongly Cromwellian ring of this stirring letter. I may here note that when I, writing some years ago, compared Žižka to Cromwell, I was quite unaware of the fact that this comparison had been made some years before by the late Bishop Creighton.

I have already alluded to the collection of ancient chronicles, belonging to the period of the Hussite wars, which was edited by Palacký. They are all written in the national language, and are a true but little-explored storehouse for Bohemian historical research. Time obliges me to refrain almost entirely from quotation. Among the most interesting parts of the chronicle is the account of Žižka’s invasion of Hungary in 1423, by means of which he hoped to force Sigismund to renounce his claims to the Bohemian crown. Though Žižka obtained brilliant successes, the constant attacks of the Hungarian horsemen finally obliged him to retreat, and it was in this retreat that Žižka’s military genius appeared more clearly than on any other occasion. Professor Leger, who has translated into French a considerable portion of the account of Žižka’s Hungarian campaign, writes: ‘This account written by Xenophon in good Greek of Athens would no doubt have become a classic; but it was unfortunately written in Bohemian by a contemporary, probably an eye-witness.’ Another intensely interesting part of this chronicle is the account of the death of Žižka. The chronicler writes: ‘Here—at Přibyslav—brother Žižka was seized with a deadly attack of the plague, and gave his last instructions to