was the initiator of that great philosophical movement which resulted in the French Revolution, and in the establishment of modern philosophical and political individualism. It is through John Hus that Bohemia is connected with the religious reformation in England, and with Wyckliff, as well as with the great thinkers of France.
It is common knowledge that he was burnt alive at Constance, and that the entire Czech nation rose up to avenge his death. The struggle, which contended above all things for liberty of conscience and religion, soon transformed itself into a fight against the Germans. On several occasions the latter invaded Bohemia with the object of exterminating the Czech heretics, but each time they were put to flight. Then the Czechs began to fight the German settlers who had penetrated into the interior of their country, and ended by almost freeing Bohemia of their presence. Thus the Hussite wars assumed a national character.
Since the fifteenth century these struggles of the Czechs against Germans have never ceased, only sometimes their character has been hidden or modified in appearance owing to Czech antagonism towards the Habsburg dynasty. At bottom, the struggle was Catholic against Protestant, but since the Germans were Catholics and the Czechs persisted in remaining heretics, the contest naturally assumed a racial character.
