A few days afterwards the career of Wenceslas, once Emperor of Germany, now King of Bohemia, came to an abrupt end.  On August 16 he suddenly died,—­by apoplexy, say some historians, while others say that he was suffocated in his palace by his own attendants.  The latter would seem a fitting end for a man whose life had been marked by so many acts of tyrannous violence, some of them little short of insanity.

Whatever its cause, his death removed the last restraint from the mob.  On the following day every church and monastery in Prague was assailed and plundered, their pictures were destroyed, and the robes of the priests were converted into flags and dresses.  Many of these buildings are said to have been splendidly decorated, and the royal palace, which was also destroyed, had been adorned by Wenceslas and his father with the richest treasures of art.  We are told that on the walls of a garden belonging to the palace the whole of the Bible was written.  While the work of destruction went on, a priest formed an altar in the street of three tubs, covered by a broad table-top, from which all day long he dispensed the sacrament in both forms.

The excesses of this outbreak soon frightened the wealthier citizens, who dreaded an assault upon their wealth, and, in company with Sophia, the widow of Wenceslas, they sent a deputation to the emperor, asking him to make peace.  He replied by swearing to take a fearful revenge on the insurgents.  The insurrection continued, despite this action of the nobles and the threats of the emperor.  Ziska, finding the citizens too moderate, invited into the city the peasants, who were armed with flails, and committed many excesses.

Forced by the moderate party to leave the city, Ziska led his new adherents to Mount Tabor, which he fortified and prepared to defend.  They called themselves the “people of God,” and styled their Catholic opponents “Moabites,” “Amalekites,” etc., declaring that it was their duty to extirpate them.  Their leader entitled himself “John Ziska, of the cup, captain, in the hope of God, of the Taborites.”

But having brought the story of the Emperor Wenceslas to an end, we must stop at this point.  The after-life of John Ziska was of such stir and interest, and so filled with striking events, that we shall deal with it by itself, in a sequel to the present story.

SEMPACH AND ARNOLD WINKELRIED.

Seventy years had passed since the battle of Morgarten, through which freedom came to the lands of the Swiss.  Throughout that long period Austria had let the liberty-loving mountaineers alone, deterred by the frightful lesson taught them in the bloody pass.  In the interval the confederacy had grown more extensive.  The towns of Berne, Zurich, Soleure, and Zug had joined it; and now several other towns and villages, incensed by the oppression and avarice of their Austrian masters, threw off the foreign yoke and allied themselves to the Swiss confederacy.  It was time for the Austrians to be moving, if they would retain any possessions in the Alpine realm of rocks.