Page:Lectures on The Historians of Bohemia by Count Lutzow (1905).djvu/70

 the king had taken the field not only for the purpose of suppressing religious liberty, but that he was also preparing to destroy the constitution of the land, became general. It was, indeed, a thing unheard of that the king should undertake any war whatever in the name of the kingdom without the consent of the Estates, and that he should order them to grant him financial aid according to his own valuation, threatening them with the severest punishments. Besides this, the Italians and other foreigners used threatening language to the citizens of Prague, openly saying that in a short time they would acquire for nothing the houses, the wives and the daughters of the Bohemians, and that they would wade in their blood; they also called the Bohemians traitors and heretics.’

I cannot, of course, follow Sixt in his account of the mismanaged and ineffectual national rising, and I have already briefly referred to the penalties which were its consequence, and which appear a slight foreshadowing of the terrible events of 1621.

Sixt’s book is still little known, and even now no complete printed edition exists, though a considerable portion was reprinted by Professor Tieftrunk, while Professor Denis and I have translated some parts of the book into French and English.

A contemporary of Sixt, but an historian of a very different character, was Wenceslas Hajek of Libocan. His book, which was ‘inspired,’ never shared the complete oblivion that was for a long time the fate of most books written in the Bohemian language. Hajek’s book therefore became famous, and the author, who