Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/16

viii Æneas Sylvius is responsible for the descriptions of Žižka and Prokop as wizards or magicians, and for foolish tales such as that concerning Žižka’s drum.

In this respect Palacký’s monumental history of Bohemia produced a complete change. He was the first to collect in the archives of Bohemia and other countries authentic evidence on the period of the Hussite wars. With an amount of courage which English readers can, perhaps, hardly realise, Palacký published an impartial and authentic account of the Hussite wars, regardless of the relentless molestation and persecution which befell him, as having ventured to judge unfavourably the policy of the papal see with regard to Bohemia. Since the time of Palacký, the late Professor Tomek and many others, whom I shall mention presently as authors of works which I have used, have written freely and independently on the great Bohemian civil war.

While this great civil war has thus comparatively attracted but little the attention of historians, and those who have written of it have very frequently misrepresented both the motives and the events of the struggle, the Bohemian people, since it has been allowed to study the annals of its country, has been deeply interested in the Hussite wars. This feeling has been so eloquently described by the Bohemian historian Gindely, that I cannot do better than quote his words. “The Hussite battles,” he writes, “were fought for a national cause; poets and painters have chosen them as their subject; the most stirring popular songs date from that time; the names of the leaders of this movement still linger in the memory of the people; the name of no Bohemian king is as familiar to them as that of the blind leader of the Hussite armies. The violent destruction of the national constitution by Ferdinand II, the sufferings which the country endured during