Page:Lectures on The Historians of Bohemia by Count Lutzow (1905).djvu/91

 several contemporary accounts in his narrative, but it is obvious that it required some effort to him to refer to the latest and least glorious battle fought by the Bohemians as an independent people.

Where we again find Skála at his best is when we reach the executions of Prague, which were one of the results of the catastrophe of the White Mountain.

The Austrian government, which seems at first to have intended to assume a lenient attitude, soon decided to act with the utmost severity. After referring to the trial of the Bohemian leaders, and the evidence which by means of torture was obtained against them, Skála writes: ‘Thus was enacted this most doleful tragedy, hitherto unknown and unheard of in the Bohemian kingdom. But as it is of much interest to know in what frame of mind a man leaves this world (be his death natural or violent) and whether he leaves it with contentment or with sorrow, and how he prepares for it—therefore will I give here, word by word, the last sayings of these men according to the accounts of three clergymen who were present during the last moments of the Bohemian prisoners, and prepared them for the violent and, in the eyes of the world, dishonourable death that awaited them.’ I can, of course, only quote a few lines from Skála. Of the death of one of the Bohemian leaders, Dvořecky of Olbramovič, he writes: ‘When the judges called out his name, he referred to the House of Austria, saying that it had wrought much evil to the Bohemian kingdom, and that it was obvious that it would continue to do so. Then he sent word to his lady wife and his son, begging them to remain true to the religion.

‘When they again called his name, he declared that