the summit of the Zampach hill was never re-built, it was not the present house at the foot of that hill that next became the home of the lords of Zampach. Shortly after the destruction of the old castle, a building was erected on the neck of the hill, on a spot about midway between the old and the present château of Zampach. This place, locally known as “Chudoba,” has also long been desolate, but a cottage erected there, probably built out of the materials of the older building, was only demolished within the last few years, when the Countess and I enlarged the Zampach Park. The only record of the second castle at Zampach is to be found in a picture still preserved in the chapel of the present house. A painter, gifted, unfortunately, with no artistic talent, but who was certainly not devoid of imagination, has, in a picture, represented the three castles of Zampach—the one on the summit of the hill, the one at its side, and the present building, which is at its foot-as existing simultaneously. This is, of course, purely imaginative, as there were considerable intervals of time between the destruction and reconstruction of these buildings.
The annals of Zampach, after the destruction of the first castle, are very obscure. The lords of Zampach, who, at that period, took their name from that castle, acquired vast possessions, and for a time ruled over a considerable portion of north-eastern Bohemia.
THE LONG GALLERY WHERE THE GHOST WALKS.
The later records of Zampach are intimately connected with the order of the Jesuits. Twenty years after the introduction of the order into Bohemia, there were only forty Jesuits in Bohemia. One of the first acts of the provisional government that was formed at Prague after the defenestration was a decree expelling the Jesuits from Bohemia. But their exile was of short duration, and they returned in triumph in 1620, and then devoted their whole energy to the complete destruction of Bohemian Protestantism. Laws against “heresy,” which cannot be read without a shudder, were established. Tortures too horrible for mention are contained in these ghastly “regulations for the punishment of heretics.” The reading of a “non-Catholic” book was punishable by decapitation, and all such books were to be destroyed. It is to this regulation that the destruction of countless Bohemian books is due. The execution of these regulations was mainly entrusted to the Jesuits, most of whom were foreigners, and ignorant of the national language of Bohemia. It was therefore considered more practical to destroy all works written in that language, taking it for granted that they contained “heretical” thoughts. It is perhaps worthy of note that these severe regulations against all opinions that did not entirely conform with the doctrine of the Church of Rome were, in Austria and Bohemia, maintained up to a comparatively recent period. It is only since the accession of the present Emperor, Francis Joseph, whom, I think, the historians of the future will, in consequence of his statesmanship, impartiality, and benevolence, consider as one of the greatest figures of the nineteenth century, that all such regulations have been entirely abolished.
No part of Bohemia suffered more from the Romanist reign of terror, which followed the battle of the White Mountain, than the north-eastern districts of the land of which the town of Königgrätz is the centre, and in which Zampach is situated. The community of the Bohemian Brethren, generally in England
