testant poor were driven from the hospitals and the
alms-houses. No Protestant was allowed to reside in the capital city of
Prague, but, whatever his wealth or rank, he was driven ignominiously
from the metropolis.

In the smaller towns and remote provinces of the kingdom, a military
force, accompanied by Jesuits and Capuchin friars, sought out the
Protestants, and they were exposed to every conceivable insult and
indignity. Their houses were pillaged, their wives and children
surrendered to all the outrages of a cruel soldiery; many were
massacred; many, hunted like wild beasts, were driven into the forest;
many were put to the torture, and as their bones were crushed and
quivering nerves were torn, they were required to give in their adhesion
to the Catholic faith. The persecution to which the Bohemians were
subjected has perhaps never been exceeded in severity.

While Bohemia was writhing beneath these woes, the emperor, to secure
the succession, repaired in regal pomp to Prague, and crowned his son
King of Bohemia. He then issued a decree abolishing the right which the
Bohemians had claimed, to elect their king, forbade the use of the
Bohemian language in the court and in all public transactions, and
annulled all past edicts of toleration. He proclaimed that no religion
but the Roman Catholic should henceforth be tolerated in Bohemia, and
that all who did not immediately return to the bosom of the Church
should be banished from the kingdom. This cruel edict drove into
banishment thirty thousand families. These Protestant families composed
the best portion of the community, including the most illustrious in
rank, the most intelligent, the most industrious and the most virtuous,
No State could meet with such a loss without feeling it deeply, and
Bohemia has never yet recovered from the blow. One of the Bohemian
historians, himself a Roman Catholic, thus describes the change which
persecution wrought in Bohemia:

"The records of history scarcely furnish a similar example of such a
change as Bohemia underwent during the reign of Ferdinand II. In 1620,
the monks and a few of the nobility only excepted, the whole country was
entirely Protestant. At the death of Ferdinand it was, in appearance at
least, Catholic. Till the battle of the White Mountain the States
enjoyed more exclusive privileges than the Parliament of England. They
enacted laws, imposed taxes, contracted alliances, declared war and
peace, and chose or co