council; strangers even are found there; peasants, who have come from no one knows where." However, the wealthy and virtuous class knew how to deal with such adversaries. Allying themselves with a portion of the Radicals, they obtained the majority at the next elections. John of Zelew was then invited to a conference with the council; he went, and found himself caught in a trap; he and his ten companions being executed there and then.
The civil war went on until the decisive battle of Lepau, when the people were thoroughly defeated; their great captain, Procopius Magnus, a former monk, fell surrounded by his officers, and nearly the whole of his army. A few hundred fugitives, made prisoners during the next few days, were traitorously burnt.
Thus the lords of Bohemia came out victorious from this great struggle, and the fetters were bound tighter than ever on the necks of the people. In place of the equality of all human beings, and the emancipation of women proclaimed by the Taborites, the Catholic and Utraquist oligarchy based their parliament on the suffrages of a few hundred families; even the ancient customs of the old Bohemian nobility were gradually set aside in favour of such ideas as an "eldest son," as "the captivity" of a married woman to her husband, and as the right of a brother to dispose of his sisters either in marriage or in a convent.
The people, politically ruined, turned for consolation to the source which had inspired all their efforts, and He in whom they had trusted did not leave them comfortless. A poor man, Peter of Chilcicky, received a view of Christian truth than which few ever approached nearer the spirit and teaching of the discourses by the Lake of Gennesaret.
Chilcicky was opposed to all dogma, all power, all war. "Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself," was the essence of his teaching. He objected to every attempt to defend the Truth by the sword. The Gospel, he said, could only conquer by Love. The Church must disembarrass itself from all power, all wealth, from every tie which binds it to the earth. Power both in Church and State was of pagan origin, and therefore no Christian man could accept any public charge or power.
