It was then, in the church of St. Stephen, in the New Town, that on the 30th of July, 1419, a fiery preacher named John of Seelau (Zelív) delivered a sermon in the presence of an excited crowd of the followers of Z̆iz̆ka. After being worked up by pictures of the coming judgment, these fiery reformers marched in procession through the streets. As they passed the Council House, some insult appears to have been offered them by those who were looking out of the windows; whereupon the infuriated Utraquists rushed upstairs into the council chamber, and hurled the newly-elected Councillors from the window, the crowd below receiving the falling men on the points of their spikes. Then Z̆iz̆ka and his friends proceeded to seize the town into their hands, elected four captains for each district, and appointed Councillors in the place of those who had been killed. Wenceslaus was furious at this news, and vowed that he would exterminate all Wyclifites and Hussites. Many of his advisers, however, were still in sympathy with the principle of Utraquism; and they persuaded the King to come to terms with the rioters, and to confirm the election of the new Councillors. The excitement of the controversy and the humiliation of this confession were too much for the strength of Wenceslaus. He was seized with a fever; and, in August, 1419, ended at last his long and tragic reign. The concessions into which Wenceslaus had been persuaded by his queen and his nobles, produced less effect on the minds of the citizens of Prague than the violent threats which had preceded them; and, at the time of his death, the feeling against him was so fierce that his friends did not venture to give him a public funeral, but buried him secretly by night. A still plainer evidence of this feeling was shown in the renewal of the riots against the monks. Altars, organs, and images of saints were destroyed; and many of the monks were driven out of the city. Several of the nobles who had been hitherto inclined to the Utraquist cause, were so much alarmed at these excesses that they called upon Sigismund, as next heir to the throne, to hasten to Bohemia, to restore order. The messengers found him preparing to start on an expedition against the Turks; and his German and Hungarian councillors persuaded him to delay his visit to Bohemia, until he could enter it at the head of a victorious army. He therefore appointed Wenceslaus’s widow Sophia as regent in his place; and he chose a council to assist her, of which the most prominent member was C̆enĕk of Wartenberg.