Page:Lectures on The Historians of Bohemia by Count Lutzow (1905).djvu/63

 his faithful brother-Bohemians, saying that fearing their beloved God they should firmly and faithfully defend God’s law in view of His reward in eternity. And then, after brother Žižka had commended his soul to God, he died on the Wednesday before St. Gallus.’ So many repulsive tales which I shall presently have to notice briefly were afterwards circulated with regard to Žižka’s last moments, that this authentic account, probably that of an eye-witness, has great interest. To a Bohemian the peaceful end of Žižka appears most fitting. He who had so often fought what he firmly believed to be God’s battle assuredly did not dread entering into God’s peace.

It is more because tradition has decreed that Pope Pius II should be counted among the historians of the Hussite war than because the book has any value, that I must briefly allude to the De Bohemorum Origine et Gestis Historia of Aeneas Sylvius. The writer, a thorough scholar of the period of the Renaissance, has written his book in the then fashionable Latinity teeming with classical reminiscences. Thus the account of the death of the two Prokops at the battle of Lipan, which closed the Hussite wars, is obviously modelled on Sallust’s account of the deaths of Catiline and the man of Faesulae. This manner of writing—often very effective when dealing with the Italians of the Renaissance—who were not really so very different from their forefathers—is totally out of place when writing of the rugged, northern Puritan Bohemians.

Many untruthful tales concerning Bohemia that have since been incessantly repeated, are due to Aeneas Sylvius; among these is his report of the death of Žižka, whom he describes as dying blas-