Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/272

 resolved also to make a last attempt to save the life of their countryman. Their step was not without danger; they had no power to act as representatives of King Venceslas, who declined all relations with the council. Other Bohemians, noted members of the university, had been driven out of Constance by the emissaries of Michael de causis, and some had with difficulty escaped with their lives. The nobles were but too well aware of the treachery innate in Sigismund, though they may have thought that he would at least during the lifetime of Hus endeavour to avoid a general uprising in Bohemia. Associated with the Bohemians were a few Polish noblemen. They were—in distinction from the Bohemians—present as representatives of the King of Poland, therefore shielded by diplomatic immunity and restricted by the customary reserve of diplomatists. Yet they did not hesitate to intervene in favour of a member of the kindred Bohemian nation who in Poland also was by many already considered as a saint.

Mladenovic gives a detailed account of the intervention of | the nobles of Poland and Bohemia in favour of Hus. “While he (Hus),” Mladenovic writes, “was lying in fetters in the fort (Gottlieben), the noble lords, knights, and squires of the Bohemian and Polish nations were moved by their love of truth, and of the honour and fame of the illustrious kingdom of Bohemia, which had now become a laughing-stock, and an infamous object of shame to its enemies, even to strangers of the meanest birth. They therefore resolved to recover and restore its ancient glory, of which they were heirs, and they determined to insist that John Hus, once their preacher and instructor, now deprived of all human aid, should at least have the opportunity of publicly expressing his opinions.” On May 13, the nobles drew up a statement which was to