long years in poverty, which the close of the war did not relieve, as the Peace of Westphalia made no provision for the return of the exiles, Indeed, the country suffered such a fearful loss in population that, out of the 3,000,000 before the war, barely 800,000 remained. And, as if the cup of bitterness were not overflowing to the wretched people, they were left entirely to the tender mercies of the new nobility that settled upon the confiscated estates of the exiled Protestants. These new lords themselves were cruel enough, but that was as nothing when compared with the brutal tyranny of the swarms of officials that surrounded them. It was not surprising that at times the downtrodden people thought that “God had forsaken the earth, and given Satan permission to torment its inhabitants according to his own pleasure.”
As for religion, it seemed that all had become devout Catholics; but, in truth, this was not the case. Bibles were still held by some families, who kept them hidden in secret places, in the walls or under the floors. Protestant ministers traveled through the country in disguise, held services in the depths of dark forests, mountains, and caves, and administered the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
This method of worship was accompanied with great danger, as the country was filled with mendicant monks, whose chief aim was to ferret out and bring to punishment the feast act of unfaithfulness to the Catholic Church. These monks also sought out all Bohemian books, and burned them in the public marketplace. Thus a certain monk named Konias boasted that he had burned 60,000 Bohemian books. In place of the reading thus ruthlessly destroyed, they distrib-
