Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/210

 part in his far-reaching plans. Sigismund, always well informed on matters concerning Bohemia, knew that Venceslas had to a great extent regained his popularity in that country. His vices, in consequence of the influence of the pious Queen Sophia, were less prominent. He was decidedly popular with the townsmen and on good terms with a large part of the nobility. Sigismund knew that he could not now, acting as a bandit, seize and imprison his brother, as had been possible formerly. Sigismund had, as he mentioned at Constance, followed the career of Hus from its beginning. He did not doubt that the pious, simple-minded priest, whose actions were entirely governed by his conscience, would consider it his duty to appear at the council. Still less did he doubt that it would be possible to prevent Hus’s return to his native country. This, at least, he was from the first determined to prevent. Sigismund believed—wrongly, as events proved,—that Hussitism, Hus once removed, would have a brief and precarious existence. The king knew that both Venceslas and Queen Sophia were already suspected of heresy. Should they be convicted of it, Sigismund could, as defender of the Roman faith, conquer Bohemia and free himself of his detested brother. The English students of the life of Hus have generally first met with Sigismund when he entered the cathedral of Constance on Christmas Day, 1414. His earlier record, his actions in Poland and Hungary, tainted as they are with perfidy and treachery of every description, are less known.

The two men, who, not to the honour of humanity, were then the rulers of the Christian world, had some difficulty in agreeing as to the locality and the date of the council. When the papal envoys, Cardinals Antony of Challant and Francis Zabarella, who were accompanied by the Greek scholar Chrysolaras, visited Sigismund at Como in October 1413, they used