Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/20

xii the seventeenth century. After the battle of the White Mountain in 1620, and the suppression of Protestantism and the national constitution of Bohemia, all literary activity in that country ceased, and the Bohemians were prevented from obtaining any information on the history of their country. They were even forbidden to read the Historia Bohemica of Pope Pius II. Late in the eighteenth century Pubička’s Chronologische Geschichte von Böhmen was published. Though the period of the Hussite wars is, as was then necessary, treated with great caution, yet it is not without value, and includes some interesting documents.

In the nineteenth century the monumental historical work of Palacký appeared, to which I have already referred. It threw an entirely new light on the history of the Bohemian revolution. Palacký proved that the Hussites were not, as had been believed, brutal and fanatical savages, but Christians, very zealous for their religion, disgusted by the corruption of the period, and anxious to return to the simplicity and fervour of the primitive church. Besides his great historical work and numerous minor works, Palacký also published two very valuable collections of documents referring to the life of Hus and the period of the Hussite wars. The volume, entitled Urkundliche Beiträge zur Geschichte der Hussitenkriege, is invaluable for all who wish to study the story of the great Bohemian rising. Of the works on the Hussite wars published after Palacký’s history the most valuable are those by the late Professor Tomek. His great work, the History of the Town of Prague, becomes, during the period of the Hussite wars, in which the “Praguers” played so great a part, a complete record of all the battles and negotiations that took place in Bohemia at that time. We are also indebted to Professor Tomek for a most interesting biography of Žižka, the first record of the great warrior that has any historical