But if you do not act thus, and, banding together in your communities, continue to nourish disorder, lies, and disputes, then by God’s help we, together with his Highness the Prince, the magistrates, the lords, knights, nobles, and faithful commons, will strive to wreak vengeance, whoever the culprit may be, without regard of person. Do you promise to assist us in this task? And should a man have a dispute with another, be it on matters of religion or on others, then he is without riot or disturbances to appear before the burgomasters, the town-councillors, or judges in an orderly fashion and state his case. The elders of the communities, as well as the burgomasters, town-councillors and judges you must hold in honour, and you must love one another. Then God and His holy grace will be with us and grant us His blessing for all good purposes.”
This manly letter, whose Cromwellian flavour will not escape the reader, is one of the most striking and characteristic documents of the Hussite period that have been preserved. It throws a very clear light on Žižka’s true character. The true Žižka had nothing in common with the brutal, cruel, and blasphemous ruffian whom the descendants of those whom he so often defeated conceived and somewhat meanly called Žižka. It is one of the principal merits of the great historian Palacký that he was the first to point out that the fables concerning Žižka, first imagined by Æneas Sylvius and by some fanatical monks and then uncritically repeated by countless writers, are absolutely untrue. It will have been noted that Žižka in his letter to the Praguers laid great stress on the necessity of concord. This admonition was very timely. The Praguers had, after the riots that followed the execution of John of Zělivo, chosen new town-councillors belonging to the party of the decapitated priest. It was practically impossible that Korybutovič should act in unison with men who, as Professor Tomek writes, were the intimate friends of the lowest rabble of Prague. The Lithuanian Prince showed great tact and sagacity in this
