ost on the battlefield of the White
Mountain.

Let us return to our terrace, I to mine, you to yours if it gives you
the right point of view, for we will now take the foreground into
consideration, the Mala Strana and its "Crown of Glory," the Royal
Castle, the Hrad[vs]any. We have watched Charles IV in his labours to
beautify the capital of the land he loved, and among those labours was
the restoration of the Hrad[vs]any. His son, however, found attraction
elsewhere, and neglected the Royal Castle. Sigismund resided by
preference at Kutna Hora whenever his imperial duties gave him time to
visit Bohemia. This, his choice of residence, was probably dictated by
the troubled times through which Bohemia was passing. Prague was full of
tumult and of fierce religious controversy. The Hussites, as we have
seen, were out and bent to warfare in the cause they held sacred, and
the King had no liking for their views or regard for their opinions. We
have also noted the value of that Emperor's given word. In Kutna Hora
Sigismund found himself surrounded by a strongly German population,
zealous in the cause of Rome and the Empire, hostile to the freedom of
thought for which Bohemia was fighting. Racial animosity between Slav
and Teuton was running high; its immediate result had been the
emigration of several thousand professors and students of German
nationality to Leipzig, where a new university arose which was inclined
to consider its Alma Mater, Prague, a stepmother.

Then followed the Habsburgs, Albert and his posthumous son Ladislas.
Albert succeeded as Sigismund's son-in-law, and reigned for two troubled
years of civil war in Bohemia, leaving a disrupted State to Ladislas,
his unborn son. During the infancy of this child arose a strong man from
out of Bohemia, who served Ladislas so faithfully that the young King on
his deathbed sent for him to bid him farewell in touching terms. Then
was this strong man, George Podiebrad, unanimously chosen King by the
Estates.

George Podiebrad was a native of the country which called him to the
throne by reason of his integrity and intelligence. He was also of the
faith held by the majority of his subjects, the followers of Master John
Hus. His lot was cast in troubled times. Bohemia had been ruled by a
succession of monarchs of alien race, at first sympathetic but later
unable to see eye to eye with their subjects on religious and other
questions. In the time of trial, when the soul of