Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/35

 King was then residing at his castle of Kunratic near Prague. On receiving the news of the events in that city he was immediately seized by an apoplectic fit. Infuriated against the ohemians, he, after having slightly recovered, wrote to his brother Sigismund, begging him to march to his aid with an army to exterminate all heretics. Only a few days later a second apoplectic fit, on August 16, ended his life. Though the democratic tendencies of King Venceslas and the favour he showed to his Slavic and, for a time also, to his Hussite subjects have caused him often to be judged more severely than he deserves, he was certainly quite unfit to rule a turbulent country, such as Bohemia then was, at one of the most critical moments of its history.

As Venceslas had died childless, his brother Sigismund was now the rightful heir to the Bohemian throne. The state of public opinion in the country, however, rendered it impossible for him to be recognised by the people as their sovereign. When Sigismund permitted—and, indeed, abetted—the execution of Hus at Constance, he practically abdicated the Bohemian throne, though, after twenty-four years of sanguinary civil war, he finally reigned as King of Bohemia for one brief year. The vindictiveness of the Bohemians was proportionate to the strength of their devotion to Hus. Even the more moderate Hussites, such as Žižka, who was by no means on principle opposed to monarchy, abandoned their usual moderation when it was even suggested that the Bohemians should enter into negotiations with Sigismund. To the more advanced Hussites, whose leader was then John of Zělivo, Sigismund was the dragon of the Apocalypse, the murderer of the saint. Sigismund, on his part, as already stated, did not attempt to conceal his detestation of the Hussites, and, indeed, of all Bohemians.

It is not, under these circumstances, surprising that the immediate consequence of Venceslas’s death was renewed and more serious rioting in Prague and other Bohemian cities.