The leader of this outbreak was an officer of experience, named John Ziska, a man who had lost one eye in childhood, and who bitterly hated the priesthood for a wrong done to one of his sisters.  The martyrdom of Huss threw him into such deep and silent dejection, that one day the king, in whose court he was, asked him why he was so sad.

“Huss is burnt, and we have not yet avenged him,” replied Ziska.

“I can do nothing in that direction,” said Wenceslas; adding, carelessly, “you might attempt it yourself.”

This was spoken as a jest, but Ziska took it in deadly earnest.  He, aided by his friends, roused the people, greatly to the alarm of the king, who ordered the citizens to bring their arms to the royal castle of Wisherad, which commanded the city of Prague.

Ziska heard the command, and obeyed it in his own way.  The arms were brought, but they came in the hands of the citizens, who marched in long files to the fortress, and drew themselves up before the king, Ziska at their head.

“My gracious and mighty sovereign, here we are,” said the bold leader; “we await your commands; against what enemy are we to fight?”

Wenceslas looked at those dense groups of armed and resolute men, and concluded that his purpose of disarming them would not work.  Assuming a cheerful countenance, he bade them return home and keep the peace.  They obeyed, so far as returning home was concerned.  In other matters they had learned their power, and were bent on exerting it.

Nicolas of Hussinez, Huss’s former lord, and Ziska’s seconder in this outbreak, was banished from the city by the king.  He went, but took forty thousand men with him, who assembled on a mountain which was afterwards known by the biblical name of Mount Tabor.  Here several hundred tables were spread for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, July 22, 1419.

Wenceslas, in attempting to put a summary end to the disturbance in the city, quickly made bad worse.  He deposed the Hussite city council in the Neustadt, the locality of greatest disturbance, and replaced it by a new one in his own interests.  This action filled Prague with indignation, which was redoubled when the new council sent two clamorous Hussites to prison.  On the 30th of July Ziska led a strong body of his partisans through the streets to the council-house, and sternly demanded that the prisoners should be set free.

The councillors hesitated,—­a fatal hesitation.  A stone was flung from one of the windows.  Instantly the mob stormed the building, rushed into the council-room, and seized the councillors, thirteen of whom, Germans by birth, were flung out of the windows.  They were received on the pikes of the furious mob below, and the whole of them murdered.

This act of violence was quickly followed by others.  The dwelling of a priest, supposed to have been that of the seducer of Ziska’s sister, was destroyed and its owner hanged; the Carthusian monks were dragged through the streets, crowned with thorns, and other outrages perpetrated against the opponents of the party of reform.