Saxony. Along this road the pursuit continued relentlessly, and the loss of life was even greater than during the battle. The Utraquists, however, always more humane than their antagonists, now became more merciful. A considerable number of Germans were taken prisoners and conveyed to Lipa and to Mladá Boleslav.[1] Though the figures vary greatly, it is certain that the battle of Ústi was the most sanguinary one of the Hussite wars. The Germans, according to the writers, who minimised their losses, lost 15,000 men. Other chroniclers state that 50,000 Germans were either killed or made prisoners. We are told that numerous members of the greatest families of the German nobility perished here. They had, as previously mentioned, continued to fight when the infantry had already fled. The Bohemian losses were very slight, though it is impossible to believe that they amounted to only thirty men, as the contemporary chroniclers write. The only man of importance whose death they record is the Utraquist knight Bradatý, who, since the beginning of the war, had been one of the bravest defenders of the chalice. The contemporary ballad to which I have already referred concludes its account of the battle with these words:
“Now, all ye true Christians,
Lords, knights, Praguers and citizens,
Follow the faith of your ancestors,[2]
Show that you sprang from their blood.
Cling to God’s truth;
Thus will you obtain praise from God,
Thus will your race be blessed by God,
Unto eternal life through all times.”
The first and inevitable result of the battle of Ústi was the capture of the town of that name. The German garrison
- ↑ Palacký, in his Urkundliche Beiträge, etc., publishes letters written by the municipalities of Nürnberg and Görlitz, which deal with the ransoming of prisoners who were detained as captives in Bohemia (Vol. I. pp. 466, 467, 476).
- ↑ These words are interesting as proving that the belief that Utraquism was the original form of Christianity in Bohemia was already general at that time. (See my Bohemia, a Historical Sketch, pp. 94–95 and my Master John Hus, pp. 10–11.)
