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.

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