Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/101

 followed are shrouded in great mystery, as, in consequence of the opposition of the Roman see, to which the Poles have always been greatly attached, they were resultless. The Bohemians had no wish to record an attempt that had proved a failure, and the Poles were glad to leave in obscurity the fact that they had, even for a moment, swerved from their allegiance to Rome. The Bohemian chroniclers, therefore, give but little information on this subject, and Dlugosze’s Historia Polonica, which deals more fully with these matters, is written with so strong a bias that it must be used with great caution.

It is stated that as early as in April 1420 some of the Hussite leaders determined to offer the Bohemian crown to King Ladislas of Poland. During the following warlike events these negotiations for a time came to a standstill, but they were—as already mentioned—resumed after the victory of the Žižkov. The principal Utraquist nobles, as well as the citizens of Prague and Žižka—who signed the parchment which accredited the Bohemian envoys—entrusted Lord Hynek of Kolštýn with the mission to proceed to Poland and offer the Bohemian crown to King Ladislas, and, in the case of his refusal, to his relation, Prince Vitold of Lithuania. It may, indeed, be conjectured that it was Prince Vitold on whom the Bohemians really wished to confer their crown. Prince Vitold, whose name is now undeservedly forgotten, was then at the height of his fame, which had spread over all the Slavic north-east of Europe. Like King Ladislas of Poland, he belonged to the Lithuanian dynasty of Gedymin, which had only recently accepted Christianity, and he himself was born a pagan. After his conversion to Christianity he joined the Greek Church, and in consequence of the vicissitudes of Polish politics, to which it is unnecessary to refer here, he had recently conformed to the Church of Rome. The Lithuanian people, however, mostly continued faithful to the Eastern Church, and were therefore Utraquists. There was thus a natural link between them and the Calixtines