who enjoyed the sympathy of almost the whole Bohemian people, were naturally well informed as to the movements of their enemies. Assoonas they had ascertained that no hostile forces were, at least for the present, menacing their Eastern frontiers, they resolved to march immediately to the relief of Žatec. On the approach of the Hussites a panic seized the crusaders, who were also exasperated by the attitude of Sigismund, which they attributed to cowardice. They burnt the tents of their besieging army[1] and hurriedly and in great disorder retired to the German frontier. Though the Hussites did not pursue their enemies as they did when they acquired more experience during the later campaigns, they made a large number of prisoners and captured a great part of the arms of the enemies. On their return to Germany the crusaders cast all blame on Sigismund, forgetting, as Palacký rightly states, that their forces had been vastly superior to those of the Bohemians.
Fortune—or God’s special grace, as the pious Bohemians would have worded it—here again favoured Bohemia. Almost at the moment when the retreating crusaders left Bohemia the troops of Sigismund appeared on the eastern frontier of the country. The King of Hungary had succeeded in assembling a vast army, consisting principally of his Hungarian, Transylvanian, and Croatian subjects. With these forces he crossed from Hungary into Moravia at the beginning of November. In Moravia Sigismund was joined by an Austrian army of 12,000 men, which his son-in-law, Archduke Albert of Austria, brought to his aid. Frequent defeats had taught Sigismund to distrust his military talent. He had, therefore, engaged as leader for his new enterprise an Italian soldier of
- ↑ Březova, whose mysticism renders his book so fascinating, here also sees the direct intervention of Providence. He writes: “Nam miro modo tam inhumanam gentem [the crusaders] nullo homine impugnante Deus omnipotens in fugam convertiti. Die namque II Octobris divina providentia ordinante incensa sunt in multis locis exercitui tentoria, apparuit namque una velut flavea columpna super tentoria transferens se de uno ad alterum et, ubi stabat columpna, ibi ignis vorabat tentoria” (p. 513).
