XII.

FROM THE FALL OF TABOR TO THE DEATH OF GEORGE OF PODĔBRAD.

(1452-1470.)

The parallel suggested at the end of the last chapter between Cromwell and George of Podĕbrad must, like all such parallels, be taken with very considerable modifications; and it was perhaps not one of the least points of difference between these two rulers that George’s first object, after the establishment of his power, was to bring back the King, who was still detained by the Emperor of Germany. As a concession to one of the complaining nations, and very likely with the hope of exciting jealousy between them, Frederick had brought the young Ladislaus to Vienna; but, if this step conciliated the Austrians, it does not appear to have excited any opposition on their part to the return of Ladislaus to Bohemia. Nor were the Catholic nobles able to make use of his restoration for weakening the power of George; they could not even prevent the Utraquists of the Assembly from resolving that Ladislaus should be asked, before his coronation, to accept the Compacts of Basel.

The feelings of the boy king were evidently somewhat painfully divided. The education which Frederick had given him had produced in him a great zeal for the Catholic cause; but the zeal was modified, and somewhat counteracted, by his deeply rooted conviction that it was to George of Podĕbrad alone that he owed the possibility of becoming King of Bohemia. Both these feelings were made manifest on his arrival in Prague. When Rokycana came out at the head of the clergy to welcome the young king, Ladislaus turned away and would hardly notice the Archbishop, until George induced him to thank Rokycana for his address. But, when the procession reached the Catholic College, the king sprang from his horse and did special reverence to those clergy who had been restored to their livings on the occasion of Sigismund’s coronation. The struggle between Ladislaus and his strong-willed viceroy was of short duration. George was resolved not to yield on the question of Rokycana’s position; and the young king left Prague in great indignation. He did not, indeed, at once abandon his efforts for effecting a reconciliation between the Pope and the Bohemians, at the expense of the popular Archbishop; but, on his second visit to Prague in 1457, he found both George and Rokycana still obstinate in their resistance; and the poor boy’s efforts at the settlement of the difficulties of the Church were cut short by illness and death. On his deathbed he again renewed to George his admission that he owed the crown to his influence; and he entreated him to govern the dependent provinces justly, and to secure that those, who had followed the young King from Austria to Bohemia, should be allowed to return peaceably to their own country.

The death of Ladislaus extinguished the last claim to direct descent from the old Bohemian kings; and the consequence was that a larger number of candidates than usual came forward to claim the Bohemian crown. Charles VII., King of France, based his pretensions to the throne on the ground that, had Ladislaus lived, he would have been married to Charles’s daughter. The Duke of Saxony pleaded that he had actually married the sister of Ladislaus. The Dukes of Austria tried to revive the recollection of the promise of Charles IV.; while the King of Poland appealed to the fact of his former election, which had fallen into abeyance after the birth of Ladislaus. Of these candidates, the King of France and the Duke of Saxony seem to have been by far the most pressing and sanguine in their candidature; and both of them paid court to George; while both of them hoped, by securing a dependency of Bohemia, to get a footing in the kingdom before their actual election. The King of France declared his intention of taking Luxemburg under his special protection, while William of Saxony appealed to the desire of some of the Silesians to choose him as their ruler.

But both these candidates had reckoned their chances without knowing the wishes of the two most important men in Bohemia. George was determined that Silesia should never be separated from the Bohemian crown; and he had equally little wish that any foreigner should again become king of Bohemia. Rokycana, on his part, was not less determined that no one but George should be the King. In addressing the Bohemian Assembly in March, 1459, the Archbishop boldly grounded his appeal for George not only on his Bohemian birth, the purity of his life, and his proved power to defend them against their enemies, but also on his devotion to the Utraquist cause. Openly as this claim was put forward, it does not seem to have alienated the Roman Catholic nobles. George’s conciliatory policy towards the Catholics, and his personal friendship for some of their leaders, readily induced them to acquiesce in an election which would secure a strong national king to Bohemia. Yet from the very first Rokycana succeeded in giving a Utraquist colouring to the decision. While the envoys of Duke William of Saxony were eagerly expecting the election of their master, their meditations were interrupted by a simultaneous burst of ringing from all the churches in Prague; George speedily issued from the Town Council House with the sword of honour borne before him; and he was led across the square to the Teyn Church, where, after a general singing of the Te Deum, Rokycana called on the people to thank God for giving them a king who would stand by their faith.

[Illustration: GEORGE OF PODĔBRAD, FIRST HERETIC KING OF BOHEMIA.]

Thus the election of George of Podĕbrad to the throne of Bohemia marks the accession of the first heretic king in the history of Europe. Doubtless the name of heretic had been freely thrown at Henry IV. by Hildebrand, at Barbarossa by Alexander III., and at Frederick II. and Louis of Bavaria by every Pope who came in contact with them; but every one knew that that name was a mere term of abuse, of no more special significance than “knave” or “ruffian”; and that the real point at issue in those quarrels was the question of the exercise of some form of secular authority. George of Podĕbrad, on the other hand, was deliberately recommended to the Assembly of Bohemia, on account of his championship of a purely ecclesiastical practice, which had been condemned by one Council of the Church, and by one Pope at least; and, although a later Council might have partially and hesitatingly sanctioned the practice, that Council had itself perished in an odour of heresy and resistance to Papal authority.

Yet, strange to say, it was not till about four years after George’s election that the Pope and the leaders of the Church recognised the full significance of the event which had taken place. This delay was due to various causes. In the first place, George, who was evidently conscious of the difficulties of his position, and anxious to maintain his character of national king, had begun his reign by making concessions to the Catholics. Remembering that Rokycana had never been formally recognised as Archbishop by any ecclesiastical authority, he looked about for some more legally appointed bishop, to consecrate him as king. In this matter he was assisted by one whom he had good reason to look to as his friend.

Immediately on the death of Ladislaus, the Hungarians had decided to choose, as their king, Matthias, the son of their great general Huniades. He had been opposed to the rule of Ladislaus, and had even raised insurrection against him. In one of the battles which followed, Matthias had been taken prisoner by George, and brought to Prague. On the announcement, however, of the Hungarian election, George at once set his prisoner free, and sent him back to Hungary as King. George now in turn appealed to Matthias to send him over two bishops to crown him King of Bohemia. Matthias readily consented; and George promised at his coronation to suppress heresy. A more satisfactory concession to Roman Catholic feeling was the new arrangement for the government of the diocese of Prague. The Dean of Prague had claimed to administer the diocese, on account of the heresies of Rokycana. The Archbishop, naturally enough, protested; and George settled the matter by granting the Dean authority over the Catholic priests, while Rokycana was to retain his authority over the Utraquists.

But apart from these concessions to Catholic feeling, the position and policy of the Pope tended more than anything else to delay, for a time, the collision between him and the heretic king. In the very same year in which George was chosen King of Bohemia, Æneas Silvius Piccolomini was elected Pope of Rome under the title of Pius II. He had been a zealous champion of the Council of Basel, and had vainly tried to make peace between it and Eugenius IV. He was therefore not prepared at once to condemn a practice which the Council of Basel had, at least conditionally, sanctioned. Moreover, there was another reason, which operated still more strongly to induce him to make friends with the King of Bohemia. For several years past, the most zealous Catholics of Europe had been turning their attention away from the divisions in their own Church, to watch with terror the advance of the Turks in Europe; and, since the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the sense of the relative insignificance of every other question, in comparison with the expulsion of the Mahometan invaders, had been growing in the minds of all true champions of Christendom. If, then, Pius II. could succeed in winning to this cause the strong championship of the new King, he might well wink, for a time, at a few little heresies in doctrine and practice.

But, unfortunately, there were other grounds of opposition to George which were not so easily put aside as mere suspicions of heresy might be. William of Saxony was determined to make good his claim on Silesia; and he was able to appeal to that sentiment of provincial independence which had been growing during the previous century. Neither Z̆iz̆ka nor Procop had ever been able thoroughly to establish the power of the Bohemians over Moravia and Silesia; but the accession of a ruler, who seemed to be acceptable to all parties in Bohemia, was likely to strengthen the central power at the expense of local aspirations. The Silesians and Moravians complained that neither of their Assemblies had been consulted in the election of George; and the towns of Moravia, always jealous of the power of Prague, and containing a strong admixture of German and Catholic elements, were eager to resist the centralising power of the heretic king. Albert of Austria was able to give them little assistance; and one after another the great cities of Moravia were reduced to obedience. Znaym (Znojem) was the first to open its gates to George. Brünn (Brno), more strongly fortified, was at first disposed to resist; but it soon yielded to the threat of a siege; and Olmütz speedily followed its example. In Iglau (Jíhlava) the Catholic reaction had risen to a greater height than in any of the other towns of Moravia; and the leaders of the party had deposed the Town Council and appointed one of their own; but, on being convinced that George intended no persecution of the Catholics, Jíhlava also surrendered to the king.

The resistance in Silesia was of a more determined kind. Broken up as it was into little Dukedoms, containing a strong German element, and often influenced by its near neighbourhood to Saxony, Silesia had probably at no time felt that strong sympathy with the Bohemians which still existed in Moravia, in spite of the apparent triumph of the Catholic reaction. But the strongest opposition in Silesia came, not from the provincial dukes, but from the town of Breslau. The Bishop of Breslau seems to have been a more zealous Catholic than most of his neighbours; while the citizens had continual causes of rivalry with Prague, both on account of trade differences and of exceptional municipal privileges. Breslau, therefore, held out against George, long after the rest of Silesia had practically submitted to him. The Pope, still hoping to secure the help of George against the Turks, tried to persuade the Breslauer to submit to the King, and answered to their complaints of George’s heresy that it was for the Pope, and not for the town of Breslau, to decide that question. At last, in 1460 George succeeded in bringing the Breslauer to terms; but not till he had promised them considerable ecclesiastical and municipal privileges, and had allowed them to defer their homage to him for three years.

Bohemia, however, was not the sole obstacle to the union of Christendom against the Turks. The Emperors of Germany had been growing steadily weaker during the last century; and many princes had wearied of Frederick III.’s government, and were looking about for a strong ruler who might put down the divisions of the Empire, before leading them against the Turks. Under these circumstances many considered that George of Bohemia would be the right man for the place. In Hungary, too, Matthias had found great difficulty in holding his own against the nobles; and there again, though much against his will, George was looked upon as a possible substitute for the unpopular king. In his own country he seemed to be gaining steadily in power. He had restored, to a great extent, the influence of the towns which had been decaying during the Hussite wars, and he gathered round him, not only the most eminent men in Bohemia, but also the most distinguished foreigners from Germany and Italy.

But, in the meantime, Pius II. was becoming alarmed at the power of this king. He had hoped that George would have come to Rome to declare himself a true son of the Church. He found that no progress was being made in the anti-Turkish crusade; and he heard, with alarm, that the Archbishop of Mainz and other German ecclesiastics were preparing to demand the fulfilment of that decree of the Council of Constance, according to which a new Council was to be summoned every ten years. These suspicions of the Pope were much encouraged by one of his advisers, Fantinus de Valle, who tried to convince him that heresy had recently gained new life, and that there was a special revival of the teaching of Wyclif. At last in January, 1462, George consented to send an embassy to Rome, stating the terms on which he would make the necessary submission to the Pope. This submission was to be given, practically, on the recognition by Pius of the Compacts of Basel. The Pope was, in the first place, indignant that George should send representatives instead of coming himself to Rome; and he was perhaps not more favourably disposed to the deputation, that Koranda, the Taborite preacher, was one of the members of it; for Koranda dwelt with considerable enthusiasm on the victories of the Taborites in the Utraquist wars, and maintained that they had acted by the grace of God, and by the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit.

At last on March 31st the Pope, in a large assembly, declared that the Communion in both kinds, having been condemned by the Council of Constance, and at one time by the Council of Basel, must be considered as a disorderly and heretical arrangement; that the Compacts had been only a temporary provision; and he now declared them at an end. The Bohemian ambassadors, accompanied by Fantinus de Valle, returned to Prague to report the news to the Assembly. When they had delivered their report, George declared that the Pope had no right to take away what the Council of Basel had conceded, and what Eugenius had indirectly sanctioned. If any Pope, he said, may undo what his predecessors have done, what security is there for justice? Then, referring to the charge that he had violated his coronation oath in not suppressing heresy, he ordered the oath to be read publicly. Then he proceeded to say that, in declaring he would suppress heretical wickedness, he had never meant that he would suppress Utraquism, since, said he, “it is founded in the Gospel of Christ, according to the institution of the primitive Church, and has been conceded to us as a privilege of our virtue and devotion, by the Council of Basel. And as to swearing to oppose the practice, no indeed! But know for certain that, since we were born in that Communion, since we were nurtured in it, and since, by God’s help, we have been raised to the royal dignity in it, so we promise to guard and defend it, and to live and die for it; and our wife and children, and all who do any thing for the love of us, ought to live and die in the defence of the Compacts; nor do we believe that there is any other way of salvation for our souls than the Communion in both kinds, according to the institution of our Saviour.” Then he turned to the nobles who stood about him, and asked them for their decision on the question.

But it was no longer possible to maintain the former unity in the face of this declaration; and while the Utraquist nobles promised readily to stand by the King, Sternberg declared, on behalf of the Catholics, that, while they were willing to support the King in all that concerned the honour of his kingdom, they had not been consulted about the acceptance of the Compacts, and that George must not look to them to defend them. The next day Fantinus de Valle was admitted to speak on behalf of the Pope. He at once announced the revocation of the Compacts by Pius, and the deposition from the clerical office of all who gave the cup to the laity. Finally he wound up his speech by fiercely threatening George with deposition from his throne, if he did not obey the Pope. George thereupon turned to the lords, who stood round him, and said, “Noble lords, you chose me as your king and protector; and since you have the power of choosing a lord to protect you, you ought to work with him.” He then burst out into a fierce denunciation of the Roman see, declaring that it was a seat of pestilence; and on the following day Fantinus was seized and imprisoned.

The declaration of hostility seemed now sufficiently clear on both sides; but again new considerations delayed the final outburst. The Emperor Frederick had just been engaged in a war with his brother Albert about some claims in the Archduchy of Austria. Albert succeeded in defeating the Emperor, and imprisoning him at Vienna; but George hastened to Vienna, rescued the Emperor, and restored him to the throne. Frederick was full of gratitude; and, while confirming all the liberties of Bohemia, he persuaded the Pope to abstain from excommunicating George. Pius, still bent on the Turkish war, and knowing probably that Frederick would find some sympathy for an anti-Papal policy, consented to a curious compromise. He would not issue a formal Bull of anathema against George; but he sent messengers to the citizens of Breslau, releasing them from the treaty which they had recently made, and encouraging them to rebel. At the same time he tried to stir up discontent among the nobles. Many of these had already become alarmed at the growing power of their king. Although he had strictly recognised the Constitutional rights of the Assembly, yet the expedition to Vienna had given an opportunity for reasserting one of the privileges about which the Bohemian nobles were most sensitive; namely, the power of refusing to follow the King when he made war outside the country. The opposition to this expedition was speedily followed by fiercer attacks; and the lords now accused George of illegal taxation, of interference with the coinage, and of manipulating the land register, so as to reduce to feudal submission those who were legally independent. With regard to most of the nobles, however, there seemed an unwillingness at first to push things to an extremity; but a Moravian named Hynek of Lichtenberg, who had long cherished a personal jealousy against the king, broke out into open insurrection, and set on fire some of the towns in Moravia. Hoping to secure the Pope’s sympathy in this rebellion, Hynek sent to Rome for advice as to the course that he should pursue; but, before Pius could commit himself to a distinct answer to this question, he was taken ill, and died in August, 1464.

George was well pleased to hear that a Venetian Cardinal had been elected Pope. But Paul II., though at first apparently friendly to George, was irritated at some delay in the formal congratulation on his accession which was due to him from the King of Bohemia. Hynek soon succeeded in getting a ready hearing from those Cardinals who were most opposed to George; and, in spite of the protest of the Bishop of Olmütz and of many leading people in Moravia, Paul was induced to command George to withdraw his forces from the siege of Hynek’s castle. George remonstrated with the Pope; but the previous irritation was revived by the rumour that George had refused to send ambassadors for fear of their being ill-treated at Rome. The continued attempts on Hynek’s castle, and the renewal of the siege of Breslau, were treated as acts of contumacy; and at last, on August 6, 1465, Paul issued a Bull deposing George from the throne, and authorising the legate to punish all who should still adhere to him.

In the meantime the growing bitterness of the Catholic nobles had been increased by a personal quarrel between George and Zdenek of Sternberg. Although George had been forced to rely upon this nobleman in his attempts to conciliate the Catholics, he soon found that Zdenek’s character was not deserving of confidence; and he was forced to refuse him a wardship, for which he applied, on the ground that he had abused his trust on a former occasion. This reproach roused Zdenek to still further opposition; and he induced the lords to found a League in defence of the Pope. The immediate object of Paul and the rebel lords was to find a king for Bohemia; and they fixed on Matthias of Hungary, who, though he owed much friendship and help to George, was easily attracted by the hope of a new kingdom. Many of the important towns of Bohemia fell away from the King, and joined the lords against him. The four great towns of Moravia formed a special League for the defence of the Catholic faith. Pilsen and Budweis, always inclined to the Catholic cause, speedily joined this League; and the town of Görlitz, the centre of a special district in Silesia, was hard pressed, on account of its loyalty to the king. George was so eager for peace that he consented to a meeting with the rebels at Prague, at which he defended himself from the various charges brought against him by the nobles; and he produced some of the charters from Carlstein to prove the legality of his actions. Sternberg refused to believe George’s assertion that he had shown them all the charters which concerned their rights; and he demanded that Carlstein and its contents should be handed over to himself and his friends, and that the charters should be submitted to the Emperor for confirmation. George indignantly refused these proposals, which apparently went beyond the wishes of many of the lords; but the Pope frightened the rebels into new opposition, by another Bull which placed Bohemia under an interdict.

George now appealed from the Pope to a new Council, and called on Casimir of Poland to intercede between him and Paul. Casimir willingly undertook this negotiation, to which some victories of George seemed to give a hope of success; but the attempt at compromise completely broke down; and the Poles joined the anti-Utraquist alliance. Rosenberg, who had stood by the King for some time, now went over to Sternberg; and, when George advanced to besiege Olmütz, his own soldiers deserted his banner. George was now compelled to retreat to Prague in April, 1469; and the Legate supposed him to be so completely crushed that he offered him the following terms of peace. He was to return, with all his servants, to the Catholic faith; to give up all Articles which the Church condemned; to restore all ecclesiastical property; to recognise Matthias as his son and successor, and allow him to appoint the Archbishop and the heads of all the churches in Prague; and, finally, to give up to the Legate the _arch-heretic_ Rokycana.

Not many even of George’s enemies could have expected him to accept these terms; and the consequence of their proposal was an exchange of fierce defiances between the two parties, ending in a formal election of Matthias as king of Bohemia, by the rebel nobles. But the heretic King was not so easily to be beaten. On January 1, 1470, he sent a letter to the princes of the German Empire, which reads more like the manifesto of a conqueror than the appeal of a defeated and deposed king. He set forth in bitter language the treatment which he had received from the Pope; and he warned the princes that unless they would support him in this crisis, he would break off all connection between Bohemia and the Empire, and stand alone.

In the meantime his enemies had begun to be divided among themselves. The six towns, of which Görlitz was the centre, had been forced to yield for a time to the Catholic League and had been placed under the rule of Sternberg’s son. They had soon found him so oppressive that they revolted against him and drove him out; and when Zdenek appealed to Matthias, Matthias treated his complaints with contempt. Rosenberg and Gutenstein returned to their allegiance to George; and many of the towns of Silesia and Moravia began to cry out against the government of the League. Seizing this opportunity, George once more invaded Moravia, and gained victory after victory over Matthias.

The King of Hungary tried to redeem his cause by making an inroad into Bohemia; but the cruelties of the Hungarian soldiers led the common people to rise against Matthias’s army; and the Poles seemed once more friendlily disposed to their old allies. The Bohemian lords gradually drifted back to George; and the complaints of the Interdict were so loud in the country that the Cardinals began to consider the advisability of suspending it. But, before the victory of the Bohemians could be secured, the struggle was cut short by the death of King George, preceded, only a few weeks earlier, by the death of his friend and supporter, Archbishop Rokycana.