the effect of drawing the attention of all Europe to Bohemia. The people asked: “What is this nation that, turning out of the beaten path, can not be brought back by the united efforts of the Pope and so many princes, nor humbled and rendered harmless? Why does it struggle against established customs? What is its faith, and what does it demand?”
During the ten years of the war, the Bohemians had sent numerous manifestoes to the various European nations in which they vindicated their actions, throwing the blame of the storms and disorders upon the hierarchy of Rome; and as the war continued, these documents were read with more and more interest, and produced an effect that was by no means desirable. Thus, in France, there were various disturbances; sects were formed who took their confession of faith from these manifestoes. Even in Spain the people began to question the propriety of all the lands being held by the clergy and nobility, and the common people being treated little better than slaves. Such questions were dangerous to established customs; and to this was added another especially dangerous to the Church—if the cause of the Bohemians was not just, why did God permit them to be so uniformly successful? Indeed, in course of time, the term heretic lost much of its stigma. The Bohemians were unquestionably heretics; and yet they seemed to enjoy the favor of Heaven even more than some of the faithful. These were some of the moral gains; but, on the other hand, there were losses that counterbalanced them. The Bohemian nation, although victorious, could not escape the demoralization incident to a long war. On every side could be seen villages and towns broken down, castles and for-
