the unity of the (Bohemian) Brethren."[1] "I cannot," he writes, "oh Bohemian and Moravian nation, my dear country, forget thee now that I leave thee for ever." … "I believe before God that when this storm of wrath—which our sins have brought on us—has subsided, thou wilt, oh Bohemian people, again obtain the control over thy destiny." With that intense devotion to the national language which is so characteristic of the Bohemians, Komensky writes, "I leave to thee (the community of the Brethren) and thy sons the task of refining, purifying and developing the beloved graceful language of our ancestors, for the care which our sons devoted to this matter is known from the time when all sensible men said that there was no better Bohemian than that spoken by the Brethren and written by them in their books."[2]
There are few darker pages in the world's history than those in which the state of Bohemia after the Thirty Years' War is recorded. Almost every part of the country had been devastated during that war. Many towns and countless villages had been destroyed, and even at the present day many now deserted spots are known to have once been inhabited. The population of Bohemia, which at the beginning of the Thirty Years' War had exceeded 3,000,000, had dwindled to 800,000 at the end of that war. The country had suffered more during this war than even during the Hussite campaigns. The towns had lost the larger part of their population. Among the exiled Protestants had been almost all the prominent merchants and tradesmen, who now sought refuge in distant countries.[3] As of France after the edict of Nantes, it can be said of Bohemia after the Thirty Years' War that it suffered by the loss of its best citizens, in such a manner that it can even now hardly be said to have recovered. It is true that within the last generation national industry and commerce have again begun to flourish. Prague, recently the capital of a vast empire, after the treaty of Westphalia acquired the aspect of a provincial
- ↑ "Kšaft umirajicí matky jednoty bratrské."
- ↑ For the care devoted by the Bohemian Brethren to the development of the national language, see my History of Bohemian Literature (2. ed.), pp. 295–298.
- ↑ It is only recently that Bohemian historians have made researches concerning these exiles who proceeded to Germany, England, the United States, and other countries.
