Page:The Peace League of George Poděbrad, King of Bohemia.pdf/10

 this was greatly furthered by the ingeniously devised plan of the Confederacy of the Christian Princes of Europe, imagined and built up by king George of Poděbrad.

The Peace League of George Poděbrad is not, however, the first important manifestation undertaken by the Czech Hussites and the Czech intellect in order to mitigate the horrors of war. The stormy years of the Hussite wars themselves brought already before that time some decrees by means of which the Hussites tried to impair and, to a certain extent, even to remove the excrescences of war. Nearly all of these decrees are closely connected with the name of Žižka, as they partly emanate from him or, at least, were created through his influence. And Žižka’s military rules and decrees form the principal nucleus of all these endeavours. The aim and object of these regulations is the maintenance of a severe discipline, the removal of all disputes and quarrels, of disorders and mischief, and they establish the equality—equal rights—of all members of the army, without any regard to their condition, class and rank; they restrict unnecessary plundering and arson, as well as private looting, as the booty should be common property, distributed by a special commission according to military merit. Then the synods of Tábor, which came about by the influence of Žižka, prescribed that wars should be waged with all possible moderation, that the peasants should be protected from looting and that cruelty and barbarity, as well as capital punishment should be restricted to a just measure. Perhaps many of these regulations originated in the principles of the deeds and documents of Sempach (XIV. century), handed down to us, as it seems, for the first time in the first draftings of Hájek’s regulations which were published only a short time before the Hussite wars broke out; but it remains the exclusive merit of the Hussites that they adopted and enlarged and even practised them which is best shown by the second enlarged edition of Hájek’s regulations dating from the last stage of the Hussite wars. In this edition we find not only the above mentioned, more ancient regulations, but also new ordinances: the protection of sacred things and places, of mills, women and children, the strict prohibition to take from people their last things, as for instance, the bundles on which they were found seated—the prohibition of looting own or friendly people, the making of enemy prisoners etc.