FROM THE FALL OF TABOR TO THE DEATH OF GEORGE OF PODĔBRAD.
The parallel suggested at the end of the last chapter between Cromwell and George of Podĕbrad must, like all such parallels, be taken with very considerable modifications; and it was perhaps not one of the least points of difference between these two rulers that George’s first object, after the establishment of his power, was to bring back the King, who was still detained by the Emperor of Germany. As a concession to one of the complaining nations, and very likely with the hope of exciting jealousy between them, Frederick had brought the young Ladislaus to Vienna; but, if this step conciliated the Austrians, it does not appear to have excited any opposition on their part to the return of Ladislaus to Bohemia. Nor were the Catholic nobles able to make use of his restoration for weakening the power of George; they could not even prevent the Utraquists of the Assembly from resolving that Ladislaus should be asked, before his coronation, to accept the Compacts of Basel.
The feelings of the boy king were evidently somewhat painfully divided. The education which Frederick had given him had produced in him a great zeal for the Catholic cause; but the zeal was modified, and somewhat counteracted, by his deeply rooted conviction that it was to George of Podĕbrad alone that he owed the possibility of becoming King of Bohemia. Both these feelings were made manifest on his arrival in Prague. When Rokycana came out at the head of the clergy to welcome the young king, Ladislaus turned away and would hardly notice the Archbishop, until George induced him to thank Rokycana for his address. But, when the procession reached the Catholic College, the king sprang from his horse and did special reverence to those clergy who had been restored to their livings on the occasion of Sigismund’s coronation. The struggle between Ladislaus and his strong-willed viceroy was of short duration. George was resolved not to yield on the question of Rokycana’s position; and the young king left Prague in great indignation. He did not, indeed, at once abandon his efforts for effecting a reconciliation between the Pope and the Bohemians, at the expense of the popular Archbishop; but, on his second visit to Prague in 1457, he found both George and Rokycana still obstinate in their resistance; and the poor boy’s efforts at the settlement of the difficulties of the Church were cut short by illness and death. On his deathbed he again renewed to George his admission that he owed the crown to his influence; and he entreated him to govern the dependent provinces justly, and to secure that those, who had followed the young King from Austria to Bohemia, should be allowed to return peaceably to their own country.