fusion, almost a panic, broke out among them. On the evening of August 2 Henry of Plauen returned to the German camp with the news that Prokop and the whole Hussite army were advancing on Střibro by the Plzeň road. The German generals ordered their troops to advance on the following morning, and also gave the order that all the tents in the camps should be burnt. This caused a panic—as incomprehensible as such panics often are; it began among the wagoners, but soon spread among the soldiers also, and the whole army fled in disorder in the direction of Tachov before even a single shot had been fired.[1] The panic was so great that many of the fliers did not halt even at Tachov, but continued their hurried and inglorous retreat till they reached the frontiers of Germany. Abandoned by most of their men the German princes, with the cavalry and a few guns which they had retained, retreated to Tachov on the evening of August 3. The flight of the crusaders was all the more dishonourable because the Hussites, exhausted by long marches, had no intention of attacking immediately. The crusaders, therefore, fled on that day without being pursued, as the chronicler whom I have just quoted wrote.[2]
On the evening of August 3 the German princes held another council, at which Cardinal Henry of Winchester presided. This gave great offence to the Germans, as the previous papal legates who had accompanied their armies had never claimed such a right. The Germans may not have known that Henry of Beaufort was far more a warrior than a dignitary of the Church. The Elector of Brandenburg was specially offended, as he was considered the commander-in-chief, and as he had,
- ↑ The chronicler Andrew of Regensburg writes: “In hac vero tertia expeditione [the third crusade] quod dolenter scribo nemine persequente de Bohemia sic festinarunt ut ad literam videretur adimpletum illud Isaiæ prophetæ: ‘Cuncti principes fugerunt.’” (Höfler, Geschichtsschreiber, etc., Vol. II. pp. 452–453.)
- ↑ Ebendorfer of Haselbach writes: “Dum Misam [Střibro] . . . Principes Electores cum ceteris obsedissent Capitaneo Exercitus Burgravio Nurimbergensi ipsi quoque fugam iniisent nemine persequente” (Chronicon Austriacum Pez Tom. I. p. 852). It will be noted that Ebendorfer describes the retreat to Tachov in the same words as Andrew of Regensburg.
