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

by C. Edmund Maurice

Rokycana was not the man to conciliate a prince like Sigismund. He observed with alarm the disreputable courtiers who had gathered round the King; and he soon began to denounce the gambling, profligacy, and drunkenness which were beginning to reappear in the city. It will be remembered that Rokycana had, from the first, prophesied an evil result from the compromise with the Council of Basel; and he now experienced the truth of his own prediction. Mutual recriminations were exchanged between Philibert and himself; each charging the other with violating the Compacts, and enforcing their special form of ritual in a manner contrary to the agreement.

The Praguer soon showed their indignation at the treatment which their elected Archbishop had received; and they indignantly demanded that their nomination should be accepted. Sigismund, however, was now being drawn by his supporters into a complete Catholic reaction. Monasteries and friaries were restored; and ecclesiastical property, which had passed into other hands, was re-demanded. This was a violation, in spirit at least, of the understanding on which Sigismund had been allowed to return. Rokycana’s denunciations grew fiercer than before; and Sigismund answered them by threats which induced the preacher to believe that his life was in danger; so he at last sought safety in flight.

If Sigismund had behaved treacherously and violently towards the leaders of the Calixtines, he was equally faithless in his dealings with the Taborites. The determined opposition which they had offered to him on his first return to the kingdom, had compelled him to make concessions in order to secure their allegiance; and he had promised that they should be allowed the use of their own ritual, for six years, without any disturbance; and that they should also be permitted to choose six Councillors for the government of their town. Doubtless the King had at once looked forward to an opportunity for breaking these promises; but, when they first returned to Prague, it seemed possible to weaken the Taborites by the milder process of stirring up division between them. Soon after the battle of Lipaný, Rokycana had submitted to Peter Payne the question whether Wyclif and Hus had ever held the Taborite doctrines on the seven sacraments and the invocation of saints, and other subjects of dispute. Payne delayed his answers to these questions; and Sigismund found the matter still unsettled on his arrival. He, therefore, peremptorily demanded that the required opinion should at once be given. Payne, thereupon, candidly replied that he could not discover any evidence of the acceptance of these Taborite doctrines by Wyclif or Hus; but that, nevertheless, he (Peter Payne) was prepared to support those doctrines. The answer was a dangerous one; for, while it emphasised the difference between Payne and the Calixtines, it provoked a fierce denunciation from the Taborite Bishop of Pilgram (Pelhr̆imov), who was indignant that his party should be deprived of the protection of two such honoured names. But, though Sigismund might have found it more natural to accomplish the fall of his enemies by sowing division among them, Bishop Philibert, and his colleagues from Basel, required more peremptory measures. So Sigismund once more broke his promises, and threatened to trample out the Taborites with fire and sword.

These repeated acts of duplicity naturally alienated from him many of those who had at first been disposed to support him; and when a man named John Rohac set up a fortress on Mount Sion and denounced the King and his policy, the Assembly of Bohemia actually refused to vote funds for suppressing the insurgents; and they told the King that he might march against Rohac at his own cost. Rohac, indeed, was suppressed after a short struggle; but his example was imitated by many nobles and citizens; and Sigismund at last left Prague in disgust and disappointment and retired into Moravia. He seems to have had some intention of again betaking himself to Basel, partly to hinder the growing quarrel between the Pope and the Council, partly, no doubt, to secure the help of both against his rebellious subjects. But, on his way through Moravia, he was taken ill, and on the 9th of December, 1437, he died at Znojem.

The power which he had gained by his re-conquest of Bohemia, and the fierce hatred which he had excited by his whole career, were alike manifested by the events which immediately followed his death. The champions of Sigismund at once proposed that his son-in-law, Albert of Austria, should be chosen king. This, they said, had been Sigismund’s dying wish; and they backed Albert’s claim, not only by reference to his marriage with Sigismund’s daughter, but by the old promise of Charles IV., that the House of Austria should succeed the House of Luxemburg on the throne of Bohemia. But, on the other hand, the House of Hapsburg had always been looked upon as enemies by all the most patriotic Bohemians, and there were at least three reasons why Albert himself should be specially unpopular in the country. He had tried to use the power which Sigismund had entrusted to him, to drag away Moravia from its connection with Bohemia. He had desired to Germanise all the cities that fell into his hands; and he had taken an active part in the war against the Utraquists. Although, therefore, the champions of Albert succeeded in obtaining a majority in his favour in the Bohemian Assembly, Rokycana and his followers were able to rally round them some of the most active spirits of the nobles and many of the knights and citizens, and to secure the election, at Tabor, of Ladislaus, King of Poland.

Ladislaus was chosen on the ground that, if they could not get a Bohemian prince, the Bohemians should at least secure a king from a nation allied to them in language and race. This King accepted the crown on behalf of his younger brother, Casimir; and a war followed which might have been somewhat uncertain in its results, but that Albert, who had also been chosen King of Hungary, was compelled to hasten to that country to resist the invasion of the Turks. There, too, he found opposition, on the ground of his strong German feeling; many of the Hungarian nobles were disposed to revolt from him; and, worn out with anxiety and illness, he retired to Vienna, and died there, less than two years after his election.

ZNAYM (ZNOJEM), SCENE OF SIGISMUND’S DEATH.

His death at once produced a change in the feeling of Bohemian parties. His widow, Elizabeth, might have been unfortunate in her marriage with a German, and not much more fortunate in being the daughter of Sigismund; but she was, none the less, the granddaughter of Charles IV., and, through the mother of Charles, the most direct descendant of the old Bohemian line. The sentiment which naturally gathers round a widowed queen seems always to have exercised an important influence in Bohemian history, and all parties agreed to suspend their strife until the expected heir should be born. But no sooner was it known that the queen had been delivered of a son than the question at once arose of who was to be his guardian. The new Emperor, Frederick III., at last consented to accept this office; and, both as Emperor and head of the House of Austria, he was considered the rightful protector of the young Ladislaus.