The place of the Hussites in Czech history has always been a source of controversy. From the defeat at White Mountain in 1620 to the period following Napoleon's defeat of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Hussites were regarded as heretics. Statues of emperors continue to dot the empire's cities featuring a snake or dragon being trampled under the imperial foot; in Czech lands, the identity of that serpent was Hussite. Today, travellers will encounter shrines and statues dedicated to St. John Nepomuk, a fourteenth-century priest famous for refusing to divulge the information the queen had confessed to him to an angry King Václav of Bohemia. He was thrown from the Charles bridge to his death, and after White Mountain, was promoted as the perfect replacement to overcome the hagiographic cult of Hus.

Among the first scholars to pay serious attention to Hus and Hussitism were German church historians who identified them as forerunners of Protestantism. Attempts to identify the Hussites with Czech nationalism were not desirable for the Habsburgs, though. The Catholic identity of the Empire suffered from Napoleon's invasion and the ignominious defeat at Austerlitz, not far from Brno. Enlightenment secularism remained a threat to the Empire's hold over populations either prone to Protestantism, Eastern Orthodoxy, or those sceptical of Roman Catholic dogma. But the drama the Hussites inspired among Romantic era authors and artists had the same effect among the Czech intelligentsia that tales of medieval Scotland had on writers like Sir Walter Scott. Perhaps the most famous of the non-Czech works of this period is George Sand's Jean Ziska: Épisode de la guerre des Hussites. She developed an interest in the subject during a trip through the Czech lands, and when she wrote, she explained that Žižka was a real person, despite the drama and energy that cast him as such a Romantic figure.

When Josef Jungmann published his massive Czech–German dictionary in 1834–1839, the Czech language was regarded as little better than a bucolic patois by the German-speaking upper and middle classes. One of the figures instrumental in publishing this dictionary was František Palacký, now regarded as the founder of modern Czech historiography.