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Updated: June 27, 2025
Drum is not a fable, but an antique reality fallen flaccid; made, by express bequest, as is mythically said, from the skin of Zisca, above 300 years ago: altogether mythic that latter clause. Friedrich, while at Glatz this time, gave a new Dress to the Virgin, say all the Biographers; of which the story is this.
It cost above a Century of sad tumults, Zisca Wars; nay above two Centuries, including the sad Thirty-Years War; which miseries, in Bohemia Proper, were sometimes very sad and even horrible.
"There is an abundance of military knowledge to be picked out of the lives of Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII., King of Sweden, and of Zisca the Bohemian, and if a tolerable account could be got of the exploits of Scanderbeg, it would be inestimable, for he excels all the officers ancient and modern in the conduct of a small defensive army."
High up on the steeple, mending the clock-hands or I know not what, hung in mid-air one Czech; the only living thing we saw. Population may be three or four hundred, all busy with their teams or otherwise, we will hope. A people not given to washing, to ventilating! Zisca was buried IN his skin, at Czaslau finally: in the Church of St. Peter and St.
John Zisca, the same who, to vindication of Wicliffe's heresies, troubled the Bohemian state, left order that they should flay him after his death, and of his skin make a drum to carry in the war against his enemies, fancying it would contribute to the continuation of the successes he had always obtained in the wars against them.
It was a tragedy, and the first attempt of a Saxon poet, of whom my brother had been taught to entertain the highest expectations. The exploits of Zisca, the Bohemian hero, were woven into a dramatic series and connection. According to German custom, it was minute and diffuse, and dictated by an adventurous and lawless fancy. It was a chain of audacious acts, and unheard-of disasters.
Schwerin, with due steadfastness and stormfulness, after his prelude of bomb-shells, rushes on double-quick; cannot be withstood; hurls out the Praguers, and seizes their battery; a ruinous loss to them. And we overhang, from our Zisca Hill, the very roofs, as it were; and there is nothing but a long bare curtain now in this quarter, ready to be battered in breach, and soon holed, if needful.
Devoured Priests, with appetite, wherever discoverable: Dishonorers of his Sister; murderers of the God's-witness John Huss; them may all the Devils help! Beat Kaiser Sigismund SUPRA-GRAMMATICAM again and ever again, scattering the Kitter hosts in an extraordinary manner; a Zisca conquerable only by Death, and the Pest-Fever passing that way.
With foot, with cannon batteries, with horse, light or heavy, they cover in long broad flood the whole of that Zisca Slope, to near where it ceases, and the ground to eastward begins perceptibly to rise again. It runs in sight of the King, I think, where he now is; this lower livelier part of it: little does the King know how important the upper oozing portion of it will be to him this day.
Delighted to be so fortunate again! Hope your Majesty likes Prag? Eternal friendship, OH JA: and as to Julich and Berg? Particulars have not transpired. Would your Majesty wish to see Zisca's own skin, which he bequeathed to be a drum when HE had done with it?"NARRENPOSSEN!" for indeed the thing is fabulous, though in character with Zisca.
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