STATUE OF ST. JOHN NEPOMUC.
But it must not be supposed that no resistance was offered to this scheme of persecution. Loc̆ika, the preacher at the Teyn Church, persisted, even in 1622, in administering the Cup to the laity. He was rebuked for this proceeding; but he appealed to his congregation to stand by him, and he repeated the offence on the following Sunday. Then soldiers came into the church to seize him; he escaped by a back door, and a thousand men gathered to defend his house. In spite of this defence, however, the soldiers broke into the house and carried Loc̆ika to prison, where he soon after died.
More notable still, in its consequences to Bohemia, was the resistance of Kutna Hora. Even Ferdinand’s champions and followers had warned him that the mining industry was of vital importance to the welfare of Bohemia, and that it could only be maintained by respecting those powers of self-government which had been granted for so many centuries to the miners. But Ferdinand cared little for the material prosperity of Bohemia. Ever since Z̆iz̆ka had rescued it from Sigismund, Kutna Hora had remained enthusiastically Protestant; and it now offered special resistance to the attempt to Catholicise Bohemia. Ferdinand resolved at all hazards to crush this opposition. In defiance of the special liberties of the town he quartered soldiers upon it; and, when even this did not crush its spirit, he sent the Jesuits to celebrate Mass at the church of St. Barbara. Forcible expulsion seemed at last the only hope for conversion, and, by the end of 1626, no Protestant was left in Kutna Hora. Two hundred and eight out of five hundred and ninety houses were deserted, and the mining industry was ruined in its chief centre.
CHURCH OF ST. BARBARA AT KUTNA HORA.
But there was one Protestant whose claims to consideration even Ferdinand could not deny. Charles of Z̆erotin had stood faithfully by the king at the height of the insurrection, and he had sacrificed position, and suffered imprisonment, in his cause. Ferdinand had promised to respect his convictions, and not to interfere with the Protestants who resided on his estate. Z̆erotin, therefore, was naturally indignant when he found the Commissioners of Cardinal Dietrichstein carrying out, on his lands, their schemes for the suppression of Protestant worship. He hastened to Vienna and warmly remonstrated with the Emperor on his breach of faith. Ferdinand admitted the promises which he had given, and the services which he had received from Z̆erotin; but he said that the Pope was his master in matters of conscience, and the Pope had forbidden him to keep his promises. Z̆erotin was not satisfied with this answer. He hastened back to his own estate, and found that the Commissioners had just closed a Protestant church and sealed up the doors. Z̆erotin indignantly tore off the seal, re-opened the church, and took under his special protection several of the preachers who had fled from other districts. A Bohemian nobleman named George Sabovsky followed Z̆erotin’s example; and thus, both in Bohemia and Moravia, Protestantism was still kept alive in certain small districts.
Ferdinand now saw that it was not only the preachers whom he had to fear; and that to attack the clergy and destroy the privileges of towns, while he spared the nobles, was an extremely inadequate policy. He therefore now issued decrees, which were partly aimed against the landed proprietors, partly against Protestants of every class. In 1624 Protestants were forbidden to register their lands in that Land Court which alone secured them a good title to their estates; their children might not inherit the lands of their fathers unless they deserted their fathers’ faith; and marriages between Protestants and Catholics were to be no longer recognised. Even these remedies failed. Z̆erotin still openly defied the royal Commissioners; and at last, in 1627, all Protestants were ordered to sell their estates and to leave the country, under pain of severe punishments.
But, before this climax had been reached, Ferdinand had discovered how hopelessly entangled with each other were the principles of civil and of religious liberty. He had wished merely to Catholicise Bohemia; in order to effect this, he now found that he must crush out its national feeling and its constitutional liberties. The towns had resisted him, therefore the towns must be deprived of their charters. The Land Court might evade the decisions against Protestant registration; the decisions of the Land Court must in future be overruled by the king. The Estates might make Protestant laws, and refuse to vote necessary taxes for his wars; their power must therefore be practically suppressed; the king must be allowed to re-model the Constitution, to appoint officials, to raise forces, and to levy taxes, without interference from any other authority. Nay, might not Prague rise, again, against his authority? Therefore the king must carry off the Bohemian crown to Vienna, and govern Bohemia by the advice of Austrian councillors. Even in that most tender point, his language, the Bohemian was to receive severe wounds. Ferdinand, indeed, had talked only of equalising the German and Bohemian languages in the practice of the law courts; but, as German officials and judges gradually took the place of Bohemians, and as a German aristocracy rapidly rose on the ruins of the exiled Bohemian nobles, this equalisation steadily developed into the exaltation of German at the expense of Bohemian, while, in the University and the schools, both these living languages gave way before the Latin of the Jesuits. The study of history and physical science almost died out. Trade steadily decayed, and the population of the country diminished.