heard, and the sound of bells alone broke the silence of the hour. The people, who had assembled in thousands, were on their knees, and contemplated in awe, terror, and admiration, the blind and dreaded victor of so many fields.

This was the last of Zisca's triumphs. He was on his march into Moravia, the conquest of which he was resolved to complete, and was besieging the small town of Przibislaw, when he received a private embassy from the King. Sigismund offered him the administration of Bohemia, the command of all the forces of the kingdom, and a large revenue, provided he would unite with the royal party and obtain his, King Sigismund's, acknowledgment by the States. Dr Aschberg, our last and best authority on the subject, is confident that Zisca rejected the proposal, though the particulars of the negotiation are not known; nor were they of long duration, for on the 6th of October Zisca was seized with a fever which terminated his extraordinary life on the 12th of the same month, 1424, when he was already, as the best historians admit, more than seventy years of age. His followers thinking that victory would be acceptable to him even in death, instantly assaulted and carried the walls of Przibislaw. The town was as usual given to the flames, and the inhabitants to the sword; and to testify their grief for the loss of their conquering leader, they assumed thenceforward the name of the Orphans. The story so frequently told, that on his deathbed Zisca desired a drum to be covered with his skin in order that he might frighten the enemy even to the last, is a mere fiction without the slightest foundation in truth.

Zisca was buried with all honours in the Church of St Paul's at Czaslaw, where a monument, with a Latin and Bohemian inscription, was erected to his memory. His iron-studded war-mace was suspended above the tomb. century afterwards the Emperor Ferdinand I., wishing to say a prayer in this church, inquired to whom the mace had belonged, and on Zisca's name being mentioned, in

stantly left the church, exclaming, "Bestia mortua post centum annos terret vivos." The monument was destroyed during the Thirty Years' War, and Ferdinand II. ordered even the bones of the Taborite leader to be taken up and buried beneath the gibbet. The loss, after the battle of Prague, of so many valuable documents respecting himself and his time, has, however, been far more injurious to the memory of Zisca than the little-minded act of Ferdinand. The greater part of our knowledge respecting his extraordinary career has been handed down to us by writers who flourished not only after the fall of the Hussites, but after the suppression of the Reformation, in the very age of persecution therefore; and like that of Hannibal, has only reached us through the medium of inveterate enemies.

Zisca was of middle stature, but strongly and firmly built; his head was large, and bent slightly forward; he had black hair, black eyebrows and mustache, and a dark complexion. His remaining letters seem to show that he had received a good education for the period in which he lived. His gifts for action were of a high order, and he possessed in an eminent degree the qualities that bring men forward in troubled times. He was bold, prompt, and decided

"Of passions fiery, and of judgment cold "

and was endowed with a deep insight into character. Ambition, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, seems to have been foreign to him. He had but one object in view, the establishment of the Utraquist doctrine, and this he believed himself called upon to fix on a firm and permanent foundation.

Wielding almost absolute power in Bohemia after the death of Wenzeslaus, he could at any time have placed the crown upon his head, but never made the slightest attempt to do so.

His military genius was evidently of the highest order.

And

He fought thirteen general actions and nearly a hundred. minor combats, and never sustained a single defeat. these triumphs were achieved with armies composed, not of warlike nobles and their well-trained and well-armed followers, but of rude peasants gathered from the fields, and as ignorant of the use of arms as of those principles of subordination and discipline which can alone render weapons formidable in the hands of the many. And it is in the method of tactics so well suited to the character of his men, and in the strict system of discipline to which he reduced them, and which rendered rude boors, armed principally with spears, clubs, and iron-shod thrashingflails, superior in every battle to the best trained soldiers of the Continent, that the wonderful skill and sagacity of Zisca is displayed. In one respect he may be said to have introduced an entirely new method of war, and, in the numerous waggons that accompanied his army, to have carried movable fortresses along with him. These he afterwards turned to excellent account, and though such a manner of intrenching armies was not unknown in earlier times, we never find it reduced to system till under the Hussite leader. We must add that these cumbrous trains of waggons render the extraordinary rapidity of Zisca's movements, and the ability with which he evaded the blows of armies too numerous to be met in battle, more admirable even than they would otherwise appear.

Every reader of history will lament that a man so highly gifted should have stained his name and fame by the appalling succession of sanguinary deeds perpetrated under his command, and too often by his direct orders. Some still remaining documents seem indeed to show that he frequently conducted the acts of cruelty to which he was forced to resort. What may have been the impelling influence that drove him from better thoughts to darker actions we pretend not to say; nor shall we attempt to account for the melancholy discrepancy between the few

words and many deeds: it is enough for our purpose to remind the reader of the character of the time in which our tale is laid. Indiscriminate carnage and the destruction of towns and dwellings too often marked even the progress of the ordinary wars of the period, and to this fatal and everyday cruelty the Hussite war added all the fierce incentives to acts of barbarism derived from civil discord and religious fanaticism. Anarchy had swept established authority from the land; men and societies were thrown back for security on their own strength, on the arms they could wield, and on the terror they could inspire; and even these sources of security had often to be maintained by the extermination of all who might be disposed to doubt or dispute their reality. We know, unfortunately too well, how many crimes and excesses have been committed under the influence of civil discord and religious enmities, even in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in times far more civilised and enlightened than those of which we have been speaking, and need not be surprised, therefore, if in a darker age we find similar deeds more darkly shaded. This can neither justify nor palliate the conduct of the Hussites, but it tends at least to make their conduct more intelligible.

We may mention, in conclusion, that for four centuries superstitious veneration protected the oak under which Zisca was born. The farriers and blacksmiths of the surrounding country, fancying that the slightest splinter or the Zisca oak fixed to a hammer added strength to its blows, resorted to the tree for the purpose of obtaining some pieces of the valuable wood. It was cut down by authority at the commencement of the eighteenth century, and a small chapel dedicated to St John the Baptist erected on the spot where it grew.

II.

SCANDERBEG.

IF fortune is often capricious in bestowing fame, the shape and form in which it is bestowed is at times equally singular. Of this the fame and history of Scanderbeg seems to form a singular example, for the Albanian Prince is generally known only for his great personal strength, prowess, and skill as a swordsman. We hear of the "arm of Scanderbeg," and we appeal to the "sword of Scanderbeg" when tardy or slothful conduct is to be reproached ; but we seldom mention the genius of the leader and the talents of the ruler which, for so many years, enabled a mere Albanian chieftain to hold at bay the whole of the Ottoman power, then the terror of Christian Europe. However indispensable personal prowess and gallantry were to the part which Scanderbeg acted with so much success, it is still evident that they must have been accompanied by mental qualities of a high and brilliant order, which alone could place and retain him during so long a period of wild turmoil in a station of power and command. What that genius was it must in a great measure be left for the reader himself to judge; we can only state very generally what were the effects produced by the exertions of our hero; the manner in, and too often the means also by, which great actions

B