Bohemia, from the earliest times to the fall of national independence in 1620 / With a short summary of later events

by C. Edmund Maurice

Wenceslaus was furious at this news, and vowed that he would exterminate all Wyclifites and Hussites. Many of his advisers, however, were still in sympathy with the principle of Utraquism; and they persuaded the King to come to terms with the rioters, and to confirm the election of the new Councillors. The excitement of the controversy and the humiliation of this confession were too much for the strength of Wenceslaus. He was seized with a fever; and, in August, 1419, ended at last his long and tragic reign.

The concessions into which Wenceslaus had been persuaded by his queen and his nobles, produced less effect on the minds of the citizens of Prague than the violent threats which had preceded them; and, at the time of his death, the feeling against him was so fierce that his friends did not venture to give him a public funeral, but buried him secretly by night. A still plainer evidence of this feeling was shown in the renewal of the riots against the monks. Altars, organs, and images of saints were destroyed; and many of the monks were driven out of the city.

Several of the nobles who had been hitherto inclined to the Utraquist cause, were so much alarmed at these excesses that they called upon Sigismund, as next heir to the throne, to hasten to Bohemia, to restore order. The messengers found him preparing to start on an expedition against the Turks; and his German and Hungarian councillors persuaded him to delay his visit to Bohemia, until he could enter it at the head of a victorious army. He therefore appointed Wenceslaus’s widow Sophia as regent in his place; and he chose a council to assist her, of which the most prominent member was C̆enĕk of Wartenberg.

C̆enĕk was one of those men who will always receive more condemnation and less pity than are their due. He was evidently a man of some attractive qualities, and, originally at least, of excellent intentions. He had taken the lead in the protest against the execution of Hus; and, if he had shown himself somewhat too tolerant towards the early excesses of Z̆iz̆ka and his friends, he had at least helped to preserve Wenceslaus from being driven by those acts into the arms of Sigismund. But to steer the kingdom through the dangers with which it was threatened by the fierce intolerance of Sigismund on the one hand, and of Z̆iz̆ka on the other, required stronger nerve and clearer purpose than C̆enĕk possessed; and thus his continual changes of party were effected in a manner which have left a deep stain on his memory.

When the Bohemian Assembly first met to consider the position of affairs, it seemed as if the moderate Utraquists would be able to carry the day; for a resolution was passed that the Estates would only consent to the coronation of Sigismund on the following conditions: First, that he would permit the Communion in both kinds to be celebrated in all the churches, and would try to procure the sanction of the Pope to this practice. Secondly, that he would place no clergy in temporal authority. Thirdly, that he would not permit the publication of any Papal Bulls until they had received the approval of the King’s Council. Fourthly, that he would not appoint any foreigners to either temporal or spiritual offices, nor set German magistrates over towns where Bohemians dwelt. Lastly, that the proceedings of the law-courts should be conducted in the Bohemian language. These were the principal demands of the nobles; but the citizens of Prague, who were daily gaining greater influence in the councils of the State, added certain conditions of their own. These were that Sigismund should grant an amnesty for the recent disturbances; that he should not permit the establishment in Prague of any more houses of ill-fame; and that he should permit the reading of at least the Gospel and Epistle in the Bohemian language. Such a programme might seem to unite for the moment all sections of Bohemians who desired peace and independence for their country; but, when Sigismund replied by putting aside the whole of these demands, and declaring that he would only promise to govern as his father had governed before him, the situation was entirely changed.

Strange as it sounds, in speaking of so turbulent a country, it is none the less true that, till this time, there had been no instance of a combined national resistance in Bohemia to a King who was the sole lawful claimant of the throne. There had been plenty of instances of setting up rival members of the royal family against each other; attempts by discontented nobles to call in a foreign King or Emperor to their help; and even something like a provincial insurrection of Moravia against Bohemia; but that the National Assembly of Bohemia should formally commit itself to an attempt to exclude from the country the lawful heir to the throne, who was at once the only living representative of the House of Luxemburg, and the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire—this was a step so unprecedented that it may well have caused hesitation in those who were called upon to take it.

Doubtless this difficulty might have been avoided if Sophia could have ventured on more independent action. But the Queen, though she had exercised so useful an influence over her husband during his lifetime, seems, after his death, to have fallen completely into the background, and to have taken her cue from Sigismund, or from his principal advisers.

The result, then, of the deliberations of the Bohemian Assembly was that the nation was broken up into three parties. These were as follows: (1) The Catholic Party, which was in favour of complete submission to Sigismund. (2) The Moderate Utraquist Party which would have accepted him if he would have granted some amount of religious liberty. (3) The Extreme Reforming Party, which thoroughly distrusted Sigismund, and desired to throw off his authority. The first of these parties found its supporters chiefly in Moravia, and particularly in the German-speaking districts of that province. By a strange irony of fortune, its leader was that Wenceslaus of Duba who had stood so gallantly by Hus at the Council of Constance. But though he, and one or two others of the party, may have cherished some national aspirations, they were, as a body, too much out of sympathy with the keen Slavonic feeling of the country to be reckoned as a Bohemian party at all. The second party, which gradually acquired the name of Calixtines, from the importance which they attached to the custom of granting the Cup to the laity, were really composed of two very different elements. Many of the great nobles, while theoretically zealous for the Cup, were far more anxious to maintain that position in the country which largely depended on the favour of the king; while, on the other hand, learned preachers like Jakaubek of Kladrau were as zealous for the reforms which they desired as many of the extremer Utraquists could be, and would have risked and sacrificed as much to secure them.