Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/268

 of the steps which the nobles of his country were taking for his defence. These attempts at intervention on the part of Hus’s countrymen have already been mentioned, and I shall have again to refer to them later. Duba may also have informed Hus of the intended flight of Cossa, as his intention of escaping from Constance was mooted in the city several days before the event actually took place. This would inspire hope in the minds of both Hus and Duba. Cossa departed, Sigismund was undisputed master of the city of Constance, and it was entirely in his power to liberate Hus. On March 24, Palm Sunday, Hus wrote to his friends at Constance informing them that his guards had left him. On the same evening an armed force of a hundred and seventy men, sent by the Bishop of Constance, seized Hus and conveyed him to the bishop’s castle of Gottlieben. Immediately after the departure of Cossa, Sigismund, fearing that Hus might escape him, conferred with the most important members of the council, and it was decided that Hus should be placed in the custody of the Bishop of Constance. That Sigismund failed to use this opportunity of liberating Hus greatly disappointed the Bohemians, and has also caused the surprise of some modern writers. A closer study of the character of Sigismund would show that he had firmly resolved that Hus should never leave Constance, or at least never return to his native land.

The imprisonment at Gottlieben was for Hus in every way a change for the worse. The tower at Gottlieben, still known as the “Hussenthurm,” in one of the highest cells of which he was confined, was indeed, from a sanitary point of view, preferable to the Dominican monastery at Constance. But Hus now for the first time endured all the horrors of a mediaeval prison. He was chained to a post, at day time by the hands only, at night also by the feet, and suffered continually from hunger and thirst. His German guards were allowed to treat him with the utmost cruelty, while the Italian soldiers of