nion was celebrated at a
place where the town of Tabor was afterwards built. It was a very
different kind of ceremony from what had been usual. There were three
hundred altars, but they were without any covering; the chalices were
of wood, the clergy wore only their every-day dress; and a love-feast
followed, at which the rich shared with their poorer brethren. The
wilder party among the Hussites were called _Taborites_, from Tabor,
which became the chief abode of this party. They now took to putting
their opinions into practice. They declared churches and their
ornaments, pictures, images, organs, and the like, to be abominable; and
they went about in bands, destroying everything that they thought
superstitious. And thus Bohemia, which had been famous for the size and
beauty of its churches, was so desolated that hardly a church was left
in it; and those which are now standing have almost all been built since
the time when the Hussites destroyed the older churches.

The chief leader of the Taborites was John Ziska, whose name is said by
some to mean _one-eyed_; and at least he had lost an eye in early life.
Ziska had such a talent for war, that, although his men were only rough
peasants, armed with nothing better than clubs, flails, and such like
tools, which they had been accustomed to use in husbandry, he trained
them to encounter regular armies, and always came off with victory. He
taught his soldiers to make their flails very dangerous weapons by
tipping them with iron; and to place their waggons together in such a
way that each block of waggons made a sort of little fortress, against
which the force of the enemy dashed in vain. But Ziska's bravery and
skill were disgraced by his savage fierceness. He never spared an enemy;
he took delight in putting clergy and monks to the sword, or in burning
them in pitch, and in burning and pulling down churches and monasteries.
In the course of the war he lost his remaining eye; but he still
continued to act as general with the same skill and success as before.
His cruelty became greater continually, and the last year of his life
was the bloodiest.

Ziska died in October, 1424. It is said that he directed that his skin
should be taken off his body, and made into the covering of a drum, at
the sound of which he expected all enemies to flee in terror; but the
story is probably not true. At his death, a part of his old companions
called themselves _orphans_, as if they had lost