As the war went on, Ziska, its controlling spirit, grew steadily more
abhorrent of privilege and distinction, more bitterly fanatical. The
ancient church, royalty, nobility, all excited his wrath. He was
republican, socialist, almost anarchist in his views. His idea of
perfection lay in a fraternity composed of the children of God, while he
trusted to the strokes of the iron flail to bear down all opposition to
his theory of society. The city of Prachaticz treated him with mockery,
and was burnt to the ground, with all its inhabitants. The Bishop of
Nicopolis fell into his hands, and was flung into the river. As time
went on, his war of extermination against sinners--that is, all who
refused to join his banner--grew more cruel and unrelenting. Each city
that resisted was stormed and ruined, its inhabitants slaughtered, its
priests burned. Hussite virtue had degenerated into tyranny of the worst
type. Yet, while thus fanatical himself, Ziska would not permit his
followers to indulge in insane excesses of religious zeal. A party arose
which claimed that the millennium was at hand, and that it was their
duty to anticipate the coming of the innocence of Paradise, by going
naked, like Adam and Eve.
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