Note 278 — THE AGE OF BRONZE.

[John of Trocnow, surnamed Zižka, or the "One-eyed," was born circ. 1360, and died while he was besieging a town on the Moravian border, October 11, 1424. He was the hero of the Hussite or Taborite crusade (1419-1422), the malleus Catholicorum. The story is that on his death-bed he was asked where he wished to be buried, and replied, "that it mattered not, that his flesh might be thrown to the vulture and eagles; but his skin was to be carefully preserved and made into a drum, to be carried in the front of the battle, that the very sound might disperse their enemies." Voltaire, in his Essai sur Les Mœurs et L'Esprit des Nations (cap. lxxiii. s.f. Œuvres Complètes, etc., 1836, iii. 256), mentions the legend as a fact, "Il ordonna qu' après sa mort on fit un tambour de sa peau." Compare Werner, act i. sc. I, lines 693, 694.]