officials for the purpose of examining the contents of the book before its appearance.
When, after the battle of the White Mountain, all independent works of an historical character were suppressed and many were completely destroyed, Hajek's chronicle became, and continued for nearly two centuries, the one source of information to which the few writers on Bohemian history went. Many of the foolish, displeasing, and untruthful tales referring to his country, which a Bohemian so often finds in the writings of foreign lands, can be traced to Hajek. It is in his work that we find that account of Zižka's death which has been so often repeated, though it is as entirely contrary to all we know of that great warrior as it is to the reports of the contemporary chroniclers. Hajek tells us that Zižka, when dying, ordered that his body be flayed and then thrown to the wild beasts, and that his skin should be used as a drum.[1] This and so many other foolish tales have greatly contributed to the totally false interpretation of ancient Bohemian history that is current up to the present day.
The Hussitenkrieg of Theobaldus, and Lenfant in his Histoire des Guerres Hussites (George Sand's authority for her Jean Zyska and her Comtesse de Rudolstadt), both borrow extensively from Hajek. As the works of Theobaldus and Lenfant were recognised authorities on Bohemian history up to the end of the eighteenth century, Hajek's tales have been repeated by many writers (for instance, Carlyle), who had probably never heard of his name.
Since the beginning of the present century it has become possible to study freely the documents that refer
- ↑ See Chapter IV.
