Page:Lectures on The Historians of Bohemia by Count Lutzow (1905).djvu/68

 the capital almost without resistance. If we consider the rough justice of those days, it may be said that the Bohemians were treated somewhat mercifully. Only four men—two knights and two townsmen—were decapitated. The executions took place at the gates of the Hradčany Palace on the day on which the Diet—henceforth known as the ‘bloody Diet’—met there. The nobles and knights indeed preserved most of their privileges, but the citizens suffered considerably. The autonomy of the towns was greatly limited, and royal officials to a great extent replaced those that the citizens had hitherto freely elected. Sixt himself was deprived of his office of chancellor of the city of Prague.

Sixt’s book, written very shortly after the events with which it deals, mirrors the despondency that overcame the Bohemian townsmen after the curtailment of their autonomy. A man gifted with great political insight, such as was Sixt, probably saw through the crafty policy of Ferdinand. The peasantry had lost its power since the establishment of serfdom. The citizens, who hitherto had mainly upheld the independence of the country, were now to lose a large part of their political weight. There remained the nobles and knights, among whom the influence of the Jesuits was already beginning to spread. Absolutism and Romanism seemed already to loom in the distance.

This despondency shows very clearly in Sixt’s Introduction, from which I shall quote a few words; he writes: ‘We have in these days lived to see in reality those things which by divine visions terrified and frightened our ancestors, who said “even should the Almighty God deign to prolong our lives, we do not desire it; neither do we wish to remain longer