Page:Zawis and Kunigunde (1895).djvu/273

 The garrisons of the different castles, Fürstenberg, Landskron, Landsberg, Hluboka, gradually constituted themselves into separate councils. Wide diversity of sentiment arose. Witek visited each in turn; and around him gathered the more resolute, and the more indignant. Self-interest prevailed with some; and temporizing controlled others.

As soon as Witek had departed from each fortress the division of opinion created numerous small parties, each clamorous for its own proposal; and these again subdivided into individuals who held strongly to their several sentiments with that centrifugal temper so strongly characteristic of the Bohemian people. That individualist and independent spirit, which made the nation the first reformers in Europe, and has longest and most persistently asserted the right of private judgment, and must do so because such tendency is inherent in their nature and cannot be eradicated, on the present occasion, as on many others, exposed the united cause to ruinous prostration. Well did the Duke of Troppau understand his countrymen when he presented to them the double source of discord, an offer of compromise, and an appeal to their nationalist sentiment as embodied in one chieftain, adulterated by a provocation of personal self-appreciation. Never yet have the Bohemians failed in exhibiting their dislike of one-man government; and never, accordingly, have they adhered to any one leader, even when that one combined in himself all that human excellence could present. They have had such on many occasions;