Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/383

 became more serious when the procession reached the town hall of the new town, and demanded the liberation of the Hussites who were imprisoned there. In answer stones were thrown at them from the windows of the town hall by the German councillors who were strong opponents of the national movement. One of the stones struck John of Zelivo, who, as had become customary, carried the sacrament in a monstrance before the procession. The people, infuriated by this act of sacrilege, as they considered it, attacked and stormed the town hall. They found a leader in John Zizka of Trocnov, who, like Nicholas of Hus, had been a courtier of King Venceslas. The town-councillors were thrown from the windows, and those who survived the fall were killed by the people who were assembled in the market-place below. When the news reached King Venceslas he was seized with an apoplectic fit, and on August 16 a second fit ended his life.

The death of the king left Bohemia in a state of complete uncertainty. Sigismund was undoubtedly the legitimate heir to the throne, and even among the utraquists, particularly among the nobles belonging to that party, some were at first ready to recognise him as their sovereign, should he conform to the teaching of what had already become the national church. Treacherous as he always was, Sigismund had hitherto generally concealed his blind adherence to Rome and his hatred of the Bohemian people. He had even, on several occasions, expressed his regret that Hus had been executed, and stated that this would not have occurred had Hus arrived at Constance with the king, and after having received the letter of safe-conduct. The great mass of the Bohemian people, with that instinctive intuition that sometimes characterises the masses, always distrusted Sigismund, to whom they rightly attributed the responsibility for the death of the revered master Hus. The eloquent priest John of Zelivo, who had at that time great influence over the people of Prague,