Note 18 — Last Words of Distinguished Men and Women. (continued 2)

These instructions were probably ignored; for, when his tomb was opened by the Society of Antiquaries in 1771, those present gazed for a moment on the features of the great victor before they sank into dust. The gold cloth was still folded round the colossal corpse; and the cast in the eyes was distinctly noticeable. The snow-white hair still remained. The coffin was then filled with pitch.—Farrar.

John Zisca, general of the insurgents who took up arms in 1419 against the Emperor Sigismund, seems to have had a like spirit with Edward I. He would revenge the deaths of John Huss and Jerome of Prague, who had been cruelly burned at the stake for their religious faith. He defeated the Emperor in several pitched battles, and gave orders that, after his death, they should make a drum out of his skin. The order was most religiously obeyed, and those very remains of the enthusiastic Zisca proved, for many years, fatal to the Emperor, who, with difficulty, in the space of sixteen years, recovered Bohemia, assisted by the forces of Germany. The insurgents were 40,000 in number, and well disciplined.