Equal to, and if possible, even more fascinating, is Jósika’s novel, “The Bohemians in Hungary” (“_A csehek Magyarországban_”). This novel goes back to older times still. It pictures the state of Hungary in the middle of the fifteenth century, when the Bohemian (Czech) Hussites were invading Hungary. Of all the innumerable sects and heresies from the end of the twelfth century to the rise of Protestantism, the Hussites were no doubt the most powerful. From the depths of the forests ranging round the river Main, to the mountains encircling Hungary and Transylvania, these heroic and fanatic warriors spread the terror of their name. But for some grave political mistakes and unforeseen reverses of Vitovt, one of the greatest of the historic Slavs (flourished 1380 to 1430), who wanted to found a Slav empire, reaching from the western confines of Bohemia, to the walls of holy Moscow, the Slavs, on the basis of Hussitism, and under leaders like Ziska, and the Procops, might have for ever reduced the historic _rôle_ of Germany to that of a small power. Theirs would then have been a great empire, strongly unified in language, creed and traditions. No Austria would have been possible; and Hungary would have probably been submerged in the Slav flood. It is the story of the lives of some of these wild and terrible Czechs in the north and north-west of Hungary which forms the subject of the powerful novel of Jósika. The castles of the Czech leaders were real fortresses of Slavdom, and the population of those parts of Hungary being largely Slav to the present day, the danger for Hungary was very great. Fortunately for the independence of the Magyars, their young king Matthew Corvinus, son of John Hunyadi, was a match for the Bohemians. One by one he destroyed their castles, liberating thousands of prisoners, and ridding the country of the Slav invasion. His illustrious figure shines in Jósika’s novel like the youthful emblem of that historic vitality which has kept Hungary in a ruling position over Slav and Germanic tribes these last thousand years. The picturesqueness of Jósika’s novel is extraordinary. Male and female characters of intense fascination move in the castles, battlefields, dungeons and mountain-paths described by the novelist. Komoróczy, the knight and robber; the glorious king and his romantic love; Elemér, the hero, called “the Eagle”; the charming widow, who defies with a dimpled smile the most ruthless of amorous men; Jews, at once grand in suffering and commonplace in their greed; all these and many more scenes and portraits reconstruct that memorable time when the Renascence was rising over the dying gloom of the Middle Ages.