movement was not limited to the parts of Germany that are nearest to Bohemia. In the districts near the Rhine the peasants formed armed bands, which carried before them a banner with the portrait of Our Saviour, and raided the neighbouring country in every direction. It appeared as if an appeal of the Hussites would be sufficient to induce the whole German people to rise in arms against their princes.[1]
Though this is a matter on which it is impossible to express a positive opinion, it appears that at this moment the religious views of the Hussites, and particularly of the Táborites, were beginning to find favour even in countries very distant from Bohemia. Some traces of this popular current appear even at the beginning of the Hussite wars. Monstrelet states[2] that at a village near Douay some persons suspected of Hussite heresy were arrested and burnt. It was stated that some villages in the Dauphiné had sent subsidies to the Bohemians, and that revolutionary bands who were supposed to have some connection with the Hussites had appeared in the county of Forez, and had been exterminated by the Bailiff of Macon.[3] The longer the war lasted the more the danger increased, particularly as in consequence of the slowness of the communications the news of the great Hussite victories only
- ↑ Professor Droysen has very eloquently described the condition of Germany at this period; the passage is unfortunately too long to be quoted in its entirety: “Schon begann,” he writes, “die wilde Gährung die die Massen in so vielen Städten ergriffen auch beim Landvolk einzureissen: sie seien von den Pfaffen betrogen, von ihren Herrschaften preisgegeben. Und nicht bloss in den zunächst an Böhmen gelegenen Gegenden; am Rheine traten die armen Leute zu ‘Bauernschaften’ zusammen unter gewählten Hauptleuten, und eigenem Banner mit dem Bilde des gekreuzigten Heilandes, begannen nach Hussitenart umherzuziehen, wagten sich selbst an Worms, forderten die Auslieferung der Pfaffen und Juden. . . . War es noch möglich sich über die unermessliche Gefahr in der Deutschland stand zu täuschen? Nur eines Aufrufes daherziehender Hussitenhaufen schien es zu bedürfen um die Masse des deutschen Volkes zu entfesseln” (Geschichte der preussischen Politik, Vol. I. p. 382. Leipzig, 1868).
- ↑ “Et d’austre part furent trouvez en l’an dessudit [1420] plusieurs hommes et femmes tenans ladicte hérésie [Hussitism] et faisant leur concile ensemble, en un village près Douay nommé Sains, dedans lequel ilz furent trouvez et menez prisonniers à la court de l’evesque d’Arras” (Monstrelet, Vol. IV. chap. cclix).
- ↑ Noël Valois, Le Pape et le concile (1418–1450), Vol. I. p. 154.
