Page:Lectures on The Historians of Bohemia by Count Lutzow (1905).djvu/115

This attack on the Hussite movement, and on himself as its historian, justly incensed Palacký. In reply to it Palacký wrote the small but brilliant book, entitled Die Geschichte des Hussitenthumes und Professor Höfler. The controversy is antiquated, but incidentally Palacký here expressed his views of the Hussite period more clearly than anywhere else. After defining the historical method of Höfler and his school, Palacký writes: ‘Other historians, to whom I have the honour to belong, have stated that the Hussite war is the first war in the world’s history that was fought not for material interests but for intellectual ones, that is to say, for ideas. This ideal standpoint was so seriously and sincerely taken up by the Bohemians, that even when they were victors they never thought of substituting for it a more interested one. It is true that during the war they forced foreign communities to pay taxes and an annual tribute to them; but they never thought of subduing them or of extending their dominion over foreign lands—a thing that under the circumstances of the time would not have been difficult. I know that among the modern school of German historians there are persons (Palacký uses the rather contemptuous German word Subjecte) who attribute this attitude mainly to the political incapacity of the ancient Bohemians, and who with brutal derision attempt to deduce from it their racial inferiority. I leave it to a more enlightened posterity to decide which conduct is nearer to barbarism—that of the disinterested victor, or that of the imperious and rapacious conqueror. Two centuries later, the enemies after one victory—that of the White Mountain—certainly acted differently, and endeavoured in every way