of how they had dealt with them according to the suggestions of those malicious teachers of theirs, the members of the sect of the Jesuits. He said that they had unlawfully attempted to deprive the Protestants of their offices, and that they had given proof of this when they deprived that noble Bohemian hero, Count Thurn, of his office as burgrave of the Karlstein, which office the Lord of Smečno (Martinic) had usurped; he had done this contrary to the constitution of the land. For who had ever heard that in Bohemia officials could be dismissed and offices redistributed without the consent of the Diet and a vote of the three Estates? 'But you,' he said, 'worthless disciples of the Jesuits, you with your followers and little secretaries,[1] you have dared to take it on yourselves to do this, not knowing how otherwise to harm us and to disparage our party. But you shall learn that we are not old women'—and here he snapped his fingers at them—'and that we shall not allow you to deceive us. For we consider you as of rank equal to our own, but we recognise his Majesty as our most gracious lord, and being now well satisfied with him, we shall undertake nothing against his Majesty. As long as old men, honest and wise, governed this kingdom, everything went well in it; but since you, disciples of the Jesuits, have pushed yourselves forward, the contrary has been the case. You will not be able to take from us the privileges which God has given us and our gracious sovereign has confirmed; we will not till we are conquered consent to this.'"
The indignation of Count Schlick and his intense excitement, which render his speech at times incoherent, appear very clearly from Skála's account. The various
- ↑ In Bohemian sekretaričky.
