to 1526 and the extinction of Czech independence (Palacký admitted that in writing about the national history since 1526, he "would have to lie"), was founded on laborious research in the local archives of Bohemia and in the libraries of the chief cities of Europe, and remains the standard authority. The first volume was printed in German in 1836, and subsequently translated into Czech. The publication of the work was hindered by the police censorship, which was especially active in criticizing his account of the Hussite movement. Palacký, though entirely national and Protestant in his sympathies, was careful to avoid an uncritical approbation of the Reformers' methods, but his statements were held by the authorities to be dangerous to the Catholic faith. He was compelled to cut out parts of his narrative and to accept as integral parts of his work passages interpolated by the censors. After the abolition of the police censorship in 1848 he published a new edition, completed in 1876, restoring the original form of the work. The fairest and most considerable of Palacký's antagonists in the controversy aroused by his narrative of the early reformation in Bohemia was Baron Helfert, who received a brief from Vienna to write his Huss und Hieronymus (1853) to counteract the impression made by Palacký's History. Konstantin von Höfler, a German professor of history at Prague, edited the historical authorities for the period in a similar sense in his Geschichte der hussitischen Bewegung in Bohmen. Palacký replied in his Geschichte des Hussitenthumes und Professor Löffler (Prague, 1868) and Zur böhmischen Geschichtschreibung (Prague, 1871). Political activism The Revolution of 1848 forced the historian into practical politics. In his famous Psaní do Frankfurtu (A Letter to Frankfurt) he refused to take part in the preliminary parliament consisting of 500 former deputies to the all-German Diet, which met at Frankfurt, on the grounds that as a Czech he had no interest in German affairs. In early June oversaw the Slavic Congress at Prague as its president. Later that year he was deputed to the Reichstag which sat at town of Kroměříž (Kremsier) between October 1848 and March 1849. He was at this time in favour of a strong Austrian empire, which should consist of a federation of the southern German and the Slavonic states, allowing the retention of their individual rights. This movement was called Austroslavism. Its views met with some degree of consideration