Strange as it sounds, in speaking of so turbulent a country, it is none the less true that, till this time, there had been no instance of a combined national resistance in Bohemia to a King who was the sole lawful claimant of the throne. There had been plenty of instances of setting up rival members of the royal family against each other; attempts by discontented nobles to call in a foreign King or Emperor to their help; and even something like a provincial insurrection of Moravia against Bohemia; but that the National Assembly of Bohemia should formally commit itself to an attempt to exclude from the country the lawful heir to the throne, who was at once the only living representative of the House of Luxemburg, and the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire--this was a step so unprecedented that it may well have caused hesitation in those who were called upon to take it. Doubtless this difficulty might have been avoided if Sophia could have ventured on more independent action. But the Queen, though she had exercised so useful an influence over her husband during his lifetime, seems, after his death, to have fallen completely into the background, and to have taken her cue from Sigismund, or from his principal advisers. The result, then, of the deliberations of the Bohemian Assembly was that the nation was broken up into three parties. These were as follows: (1) The Catholic Party, which was in favour of complete submission to Sigismund. (2) The Moderate Utraquist Party which would have accepted him if he would have granted some amount of religious liberty. (3) The Extreme Reforming Party, which thoroughly distrusted Sigismund, and desired to throw off his authority. The first of these parties found its supporters chiefly in Moravia, and particularly in the German-speaking districts of that province. By a strange irony of fortune, its leader was that Wenceslaus of Duba who had stood so gallantly by Hus at the Council of Constance. But though he, and one or two others of the party, may have cherished some national aspirations, they were, as a body, too much out of sympathy with the keen Slavonic feeling of the country to be reckoned as a Bohemian party at all. The second party, which gradually acquired the name of Calixtines, from the importance which they attached to the custom of granting the Cup to the laity, were really composed of two very different elements. Many of the great nobles, while theoretically zealous for the Cup, were far more anxious to maintain that position in the country which largely depended on the favour of the king; while, on the other hand, learned preachers like Jakaubek of Kladrau were as zealous for the reforms which they desired as many of the extremer Utraquists could be, and would have risked and sacrificed as much to secure them. [Illustration: ENTRANCE INTO FORTIFIED PART OF TABOR.]