were victorious, took place before they arrived at Prague. News of these skirmishes, or at least of the intention of the Romanist nobles to attack the Hussites on their march, reached Prague already, on November 4, and street-fighting immediately began. The priest Ambrose, formerly parish priest of Králové Hradec (Königgrätz), exhorted the people to attack the royal castle on the Hradčany hill. The bells of all the church steeples of Prague were rung, and large masses of Utraquists, led by Nicholas of Hus and Žižka of Trocnov, crossing the bridge of Prague, attacked the royal troops, which occupied the Malá Strana at the foot of the Hradčany. After a prolonged and very sanguinary contest the Hussites remained victorious, and the royalists were obliged to evacuate the Malá Strana—part of which was burnt down—and retire to the strongly fortified Hradčany castle. The victory was principally due to Žižka, and it was here that his brilliant career as leader of the Bohemian people may be considered to have begun.[1]
Almost at the same time as the Utraquists had resumed hostilities the Roman party began to attack them in various parts of Bohemia. Troubles first broke out at Kutna Hora (Kuttenberg), then the great mining city of Bohemia. They are thus described by Lawrence of Březova, almost our only contemporary authority. “At this time,” he writes, “the faithful Bohemians, both priests and laymen, who favoured Communion in the two kinds and reverently partook of it, and who deeply deplored the unjust death of John Hus, of sacred memory—who had perished by a terrible death because the perverse clergy of the kingdom of Bohemia and the margraviate of Moravia, principally the bishops, canons, abbots and parish priests, who had not been able to suffer hissermons, in which he denounced their pride, simony and avarice . . . had,
- ↑ We read in the “Scriptores rerum Bohemicarum” (Vol. III. p. 32), “The Bohemians occupied the end of the bridge on the side of the Malá Strana, and here Žižka became famous among the people, for here he first began to fight. The Chronica Universitatis Pragensis (p. 581 of Professor Goll’s edition) states: “Item Pragenses spoliaverunt civitatem minorem Pragensem, et ibi Žižka cepit capitaneatum."
C
