[136] In Bohemian sekretaričky.
[137] The Altstädter Ring, where the executions took place.
[138] It has often been asserted that Slavata, who was a personal enemy of Wallenstein, was the cause of the estrangement between him and the emperor, and indirectly of Wallenstein's murder.
[139] This portion of Slavata's works has been edited and published by the late Dr. Jireček.
[140] Slavata uses the German word Knecht.
[141] Readers of Schiller's Wallenstein will remember the scene at the banquet at Pilsen (Die Piccolomini, act iv. scene 5), when the servants are listening to the conversation of the generals.
[CHAPTER VII]
THE REVIVAL OF BOHEMIAN LITERATURE
The misery and degradation of Bohemia that were the result of the battle of the White Mountain are beyond all description. Perhaps no country has, in comparatively modern times, suffered as Bohemia did at that period. Gindely, than whom no historian is less given to exaggeration, has written: "The misery under which the land (Bohemia) groaned can, as regards its extent and its depth, be compared only to that which, at the time of the migration of nations (Völkerwanderung), was inflicted on the inhabitants of Gaul and Northern Italy by their Frank and Lombard conquerors." From the battle of the White Mountain, Bohemian literature becomes, and continues for many years, an almost complete blank.