Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/164

 mission of Korybutovič as inspired by the wish to reconcile the Bohemians with the universal Church, an expression that obviously may have conveyed a different meaning to the Grand Duke Vitold and to Pope Martin V. We have no information with regard to Korybutovič’s correspondence with his Polish and Lithuanian relatives, which undoubtedly preceded his departure from Bohemia. It is certain that the Prince left his new country very reluctantly, and that after leaving Prague he remained in Bohemia up to Christmas Eve, 1422, and then only returned to Poland.

The official policy of Poland now became, and for a considerable time continued to be, very hostile to the Utraquist cause. It appears that when leaving their country Prince Korybutovič had promised the Bohemians that he would return and obtain aid from his uncle, the Grand Duke Vitold. The Bohemians, trusting this promise, which was probably made in good faith, wrote to the Lithuanian Grand Duke, inviting him to come to Bohemia as he had promised, and to assume the government of the country. Vitold sent an answer whose untruthfulness, falsehood, and misrepresentation is almost unrivalled even in the records of diplomatic dispatches. He began by stating that he had only permitted the mission of Korybutovič because the Bohemians had promised that, as soon as the Prince arrived, unity and obedience to the Church of Rome would be re-established in the kingdom. The Prince had, however, after his arrival in Bohemia, not been able by his kind and affable mediation to unite the people, lead them away from the erroneous articles (of Prague), and reconcile them with the Holy Roman Church. When we consider the fact that Prince Sigismund Korybutovič had both at Unitov and at Časlav received Communion in the two kinds, that he had in the latter place sworn to defend the articles of Prague, and that, during his stay in the capital, priests of the national Utraquist Church had been among his principal councillors, we cannot