the aid of the Bohemians, remained at the village of Rusin, at the foot
of the hill; but they were there attacked and driven into flight by the
cavalry of the Imperialists, neither their German nor their Bohemian
allies attempting to rescue them. Again the wretched King of Bohemia
was seized with a panic; and this time he actually fled from the army,
and did not stop till he reached Prague. Bucquoi desired to leave the
enemy unattacked, and to advance straight to Prague; but Tilly did not
think it safe to leave Anhalt’s army in the rear; and, while they were
still discussing the point, Dr. Angelini, a chaplain of Maximilian’s,
exhorted them to fight, as God would protect them. This at once decided
the Generals; and, as Bucquoi was wounded, Tiefenbach took his place at
the head of his forces. The first opening of the battle was favourable
to the Bohemians. Count Thurn repelled an attack of the Imperialist
cavalry, and Anhalt followed up this success by advancing in his
turn. But Tilly came to the rescue, drove back Anhalt’s forces, and
stormed the fortifications which had just been erected. Then a complete
panic seized the Protestant army; the soldiers fled in confusion, and
many were drowned in the Moldau in their endeavour to escape from the
Imperialists. Anhalt did his best to rally the fugitives; but he soon
found that further resistance was hopeless. Tschernembl, indeed, still
wished to defend Prague, and even to organise a new attack; but the
rest of the Council decided to open negotiations with Ferdinand. It
was resolved, however, that the Queen and her child should at once be
sent away into safety; and Frederick went to make arrangements for
this purpose. But, with the departure of his wife, the wretched King
had lost all remains of hope; and, no sooner had he despatched her on
her journey, than he suddenly mounted his horse and galloped off after
her, followed by Ruppa and other members of the Provisional Government.
Count Thurn’s son endeavoured, indeed, to rally his forces once more
for the defence of the Karlsbrücke; but the soldiers were too terrified
to fight; the Imperialist army entered the town with little resistance;
and on November 23rd Ferdinand received, at Vienna, a chest containing
the charters of all the Bohemian privileges.
Of the causes of this final collapse of Bohemian independence there
are three which stand out with special vividness: the first connected
solely with the events of the insurrection; the second, with the
condition of Bohemia ever since the fall of Tabor; the third, with
a fatal weakness that had reappeared continually through the greater
part of Bohemian history. The first was the character of the leaders
who undertook to guide this movement. With the exception of Budovĕc and
Tschernembl there seem to be none of those heroic figures at the helm
of affairs which are indispensable for a struggle for independence;
and, of these two exceptions, Budovĕc had been speedily thrust into the
background by his more ambitious colleagues, and Tschernembl’s advice
was disregarded in most vital points. Of the rest, Ruppa seems to have
been cowardly and colourless; Count Thurn, rash and unscrupulous to the
last degree; Christian of Anhalt, an ambitious self-seeker; Mansfeld,
a mere soldier of fortune, with rather less principle than Dugald
Dalgetty; and as for the Elector Palatine, the story has shown how
deficient he was in every kingly quality.
The second cause of weakness was the fatally aristocratic character of
the movement. The rejection of the petitions of the serfs was in only
too faithful harmony with the course of Bohemian history since the fall
of Tabor. The Brotherhood alone had witnessed for wider sympathies
and a higher conception of humanity and religion; but, as we have
seen, even the Brotherhood had often found it difficult to resist the
encroachment of aristocratic principles on its own organisation. The
cry for freedom for a class could not animate a nation to resist the
enthusiasm of sincere bigots like Ferdinand of Austria and Maximilian
of Bavaria, nor the military ability of Tilly.
The third error, which hastened the ruin of Bohemia, was the
connection which the Bohemian leaders had formed with the alien policy
and the unsympathetic schemes of the German intriguers.
From the time when Vratislav received his crown from Henry IV., to
the time when Budovĕc and Thurn called Christian of Anhalt into their
counsels, this seems to have been the fatal mistake running through
the history of Bohemia. Doubtless both Vratislav and Vladislav meant
well by their country, and they secured it a more brilliant position
for a time; but they involved that country in many wars and disputes
which hindered its progress, and which often encouraged unpatriotic
intrigues. Doubtless, too, Wenceslaus and Ottakar promoted the trade
and, for a time, even the freedom of Bohemia, by the introduction of
German laws and German settlers into their towns; but this innovation,
intended by them as a development of good government in Bohemia, was
easily perverted by Otto of Brandenburg into a means of new tyranny.
Still more unquestionably well-meant was the attempt of Charles IV.
to combine the greatness of the German Empire with the growth of
culture and learning in Bohemia; but, as unquestionably, it ended in
failure, and its benefit chiefly consisted in the preparation that it
afforded for the purely Bohemian movement which rose from its ruins.
Hus in the fourteenth century, Peter of Chelc̆ic and his followers
in the fifteenth and sixteenth, were the people through whom Bohemia
was really able to develop a distinctive life, and thereby to do most
essential service to the other nations of Europe; and we shall see,
from the fragments of national history which still remain to be told,
that it is through such representatives as these that Bohemia, even
after the loss of its political independence, could still do some work,
which other countries may be the better for studying.
XVIII.
FROM THE BATTLE OF THE WHITE HILL TO THE PRESENT TIME.
Few crises in the history of a country are so dramatically complete, or
mark so clear a division between past and future, as the Battle of the
White Hill. Though Mansfeld still held out for a time in some towns of
Bohemia, and though the victories of Gustavus Adolphus in 1631 led to
a temporary return of the Protestants, such partial checks could not
hinder the establishment of a stifling despotism, nor remove its traces
when established. That Ferdinand II. desired only to crush rebellion,
and to restore the orthodox Roman Catholic faith, may be true enough;
but he soon found that civil and religious liberty were bound up
together, and that a centralised despotism at Vienna was the only means
of securing that outward appearance of orthodoxy which is all that the
most energetic despot can produce. The first part of his efforts was no
doubt naturally directed to the punishment of the insurgents. On the
21st of June, 1621, twenty-seven of the leaders of the insurrection
were executed in the Great Ring of Prague, the noblest and best of
them being old Wenceslaus of Budova; and many trials, confiscations,
and fines followed, the last of them taking place in 1626.
But Ferdinand soon abandoned the pretext of repressing insurrection,
and proceeded to the great work of restoring Catholic orthodoxy. At
first his hostility was almost confined to the Protestant preachers,
and his positive schemes were mainly directed to the exaltation of
the Jesuits. Several preachers had been tortured and killed by the
soldiers in the first heat of victory, and, in 1621, the great bulk
of the Protestant clergy of Prague were ordered to sell their goods
and to migrate to Saxony. Promises had, indeed, been made to the
Elector of Saxony that the Lutherans should be gently dealt with.
Moderate terms had been offered to the Utraquists, and Tabor had
only surrendered on condition of its liberties being secured. But
all these promises were swept aside by the eagerness of the Jesuits
to recover their lost ground. They had been expelled and persecuted
during the insurrection, and now their turn was come. Gradually all
schools, books, and newspapers were placed under their care. The old
liberties of Charles IV.’s University were crushed out, and at last the
University itself was absorbed in a Jesuit college in which the name of
Ferdinand was to be connected with that of Charles. The censorship of
the press was to be enforced by the careful limitation of the number of
printing-presses, and by the most rigorous inquiries into faith. Nor
was the danger left unmarked which might arise from the reverence paid
to the Protestant heroes of the past. The statues of Hus were either
destroyed or turned into statues of John Nepomuc; Z̆iz̆ka’s dust was
dug up from his grave at C̆aslau, and the figure above it was broken to
pieces; a memorial of Rokycana shared the same fate; while the statue
of King George protecting the Cup was removed from the Teyn Church, and
a figure of the Virgin substituted for it.
[Illustration: PLACE IN FRONT OF TOWN COUNCIL HOUSE OF PRAGUE WHERE THE
BOHEMIAN NOBLES WERE EXECUTED AFTER THE INSURRECTION.]
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
It is obvious that, in such a period as this, the real history of
Bohemia should be rather studied in the lives of its exiles, than in
the dreary records of its home life. Fortunately, one can find among
these exiles a man who is trebly interesting to the historian; first,
as embodying the highest ideal then possible to a Bohemian; secondly,
as linking together, in a remarkable manner, the earlier and later
stages of the Bohemian Brotherhood; thirdly, as one of the founders of
the modern methods of education. John Amos Komensky (better known by
his Latin name of Comenius) was born at Nivnice in Moravia in 1592. His
father and mother died early, and the guardians, to whose care he was
left, are said to have neglected their charge. However, he was sent
to the school of the Brotherhood at Prerov, where he soon developed a
great love of learning; and, at the age of thirty-two, he was appointed
by Charles of Z̆erotin to the headship of the school in which he had
formerly studied. He soon became impressed with the unsatisfactory
character of the accepted methods of teaching Latin; and he suggested
an easier and simpler plan. From Prerov he was removed to Fulnec, the
oldest Moravian settlement of the Brotherhood; but, before he could
carry his reforms any further, he was interrupted in his work by
the Bohemian insurrection. In 1621 a Spanish army burnt Fulnec; and
all Comenius’s books and manuscripts were destroyed. In the time of
persecution he, like other preachers of the Brotherhood, took refuge
with Charles of Z̆erotin. The sufferings and uncertainties of his life
naturally turned his attention to theological and moral problems, and
his first important book took the form of an allegory. In this he
describes a journey through scenes of vanity and confusion, ending
in the return to the inner life, and the realisation of a stronger
sympathy with the poor and suffering.
[Illustration: JOHN AMOS KOMENSKY.]
But the final expulsion of the Protestants from Bohemia brought
Comenius back to the real work of his life. He and other members of the
Brotherhood now formed a kind of colony at Lissa in Poland. In that
town he resumed his profession of schoolmaster, and he once more became
vividly conscious of the defects in existing methods of education. In
1631 he published the book which embodies his strongest convictions on
these matters--“Janua aurea reserrata quatuor linguarum.” In this book
he points out that “boys are being stuffed with the names of things
without the things.” The boy learns to recite by heart a thousand
words; if he does not know how to apply them to things, of what use
will all this provision of words be? Moreover, the books chosen are
too restricted in their character; and, however excellent in quality,
they do not deal with nearly all the subjects which a boy should learn.
Comenius therefore proposes to arrange sentences in four languages
(Latin, German, French, and Italian). These sentences deal with a
large variety of subjects, ranging from the creation of the world to
the mechanical arts and the practice of the law-courts; and they are
followed by a vocabulary of the most necessary words. Comenius, indeed,
very generously admitted that the Jesuits had made a useful beginning
in this matter of the vocabulary; but he did not consider that their
vocabulary was complete enough for his purpose.
In a later book called the “Didactica,” he further explained his
principles. The intellect, he urged, should be developed before mere
language is taught. Language should be learnt from authors, rather
than from grammatical rules. Things should be taught before organisms;
examples before rules. Pictures should be largely used to bring out the
meaning of the teacher; and children should not be forced to commit
to memory what they do not understand. The first teaching should be
given in the vernacular; the Latin equivalents should be learnt later.
“Nature,” said Comenius, “cannot be forced, but must be led willingly.
All the senses must be called into play by the lesson; and the later
lessons should be the natural development of the earlier ones. Whatever
is to be known should be taught. Whatever is taught should be taught as
a present thing of definite use.”
Comenius had now gained a high reputation in the Brotherhood; and he
was chosen to write the history of its trials and sufferings. At the
same time his educational works had attracted attention outside his
own circle, and Gustavus Adolphus invited him to Sweden, to reform the
schools in that country. This invitation Comenius at first refused;
but, ten years later, when his books were in a more advanced condition,
he accepted a proposal, of a somewhat similar kind, from another
country.
Samuel Hartlib, a merchant of London, had been much interested in the
works of Comenius; and, in his desire to reform English education,
he invited the Bohemian to come over to London. Hartlib had shown
great liberality to the Bohemian exiles; and Comenius had already
been interested in several English books. Moreover, one of his own
books had been written at Hartlib’s suggestion, and published, at
Hartlib’s own expense, in London. Comenius, therefore, decided to
accept this invitation, and he arrived in London in the critical year
1641. The Long Parliament readily responded to Hartlib’s proposals;
and they voted money for the founding of three colleges, in which the
principles of Comenius might at once be applied. One of these was to
be at the Savoy, one at Chelsea, and one at Winchester. Unfortunately,
the Irish insurrection turned the attention of Parliament away from
these matters; and the rapid succession of events, which culminated
in the civil war, convinced the Bohemian that there was no further
possibility, at that time, for the development of his purposes in
England.
But, though Comenius left our country in some disappointment, it must
be remembered that he left one very eminent disciple behind him.
Four years later, when the hopes of the Puritans had gained further
strength, Hartlib appealed to Milton to second him in the promotion of
his schemes. Milton turned, somewhat unwillingly, from the composition
of the Areopagitica to the discussion of Hartlib’s plans; but he was
impressed by his friend’s enthusiasm; and it is evidently of Comenius
that he speaks so warmly in his letter. He there describes him as “a
person sent hither by some good Providence from a far country, to be
the occasion and incitement of great good to this Island.” Though,
therefore, the poet had not time “to search out what many modern Januas
and Didactics, more than ever I shall read, have projected,” he yet
consented in this letter to express his sympathy with the plans of
Comenius and Hartlib. The following words, perhaps, best sum up his
teaching. “If, after some preparatory grounds of speech, by their
certain forms got into memory, children were led to the praxis thereof,
in some chosen short book lessened thoroughly to them, they might then
learn the substance of good things and arts in due order, which would
bring the whole language quickly into their power.”
In the meantime, Comenius, eager for those spheres of work, had
accepted a second invitation to Sweden, this time from a Swedish
nobleman named De Geer. The famous Chancellor, Oxenstierna, readily
welcomed the Bohemian to Sweden; though, at the same time, he
complained that previous educational reformers had pointed out faults
without suggesting remedies. When Comenius produced his schemes, the
Chancellor subjected them to a searching criticism; and, finding that
Comenius was ready to meet his objections, he consented to place the
reform of Swedish education under his guidance. Comenius, however,
ultimately chose the Prussian town of Elbing as the centre of his
experiments; probably because he was there nearer to the settlements
of the Brotherhood, and could intervene at times to mitigate their
quarrels or intercede for their rights.
The relation of literary patron to protected man of genius has never
been an easy or a happy one; and Comenius often found that De Geer
complained of the slowness of his work, and, still more, perhaps,
of that wide range of sympathies which often distracted him from the
interests to which his patron desired him to confine himself. Once De
Geer even withdrew his support, for a time, from the needy Bohemian;
and Comenius must have felt this desertion the more keenly, because his
applications for money had been far oftener made on behalf of others
than for his own needs. But a bitterer blow awaited him in 1648. He had
hoped that the enthusiasm of Gustavus Adolphus for the Protestant Cause
had been shared by his Councillors, and by his countrymen generally;
and that they would insist on the restoration of the Protestant
Bohemians to their country, before the final conclusion of the peace.
It was, therefore, a terrible shock to find that Oxenstierna cared
more for the possession of Pomerania than for the liberties of German
or Bohemian Protestants; and Comenius bitterly reproached the Swedish
Chancellor with his desertion of the cause of the exiles.