and particularly the nobles who adhered to that party, who, from dynastic, or rather feudal motives, were reluctant to oppose the legitimate sovereign—to again attempt the hopeless task of reconciling King Sigismund with the Bohemian nation. Through the intervention of Lord Čěnek of Wartenberg, acting for Queen Sophia, who, though she had left Prague, was still considered as regent, an armistice was concluded on November 13, which was to continue up to the end of April 1420. The Queen and the lords who sided with her promised to maintain, as far as it was in their power, the right of preaching freely and of receiving Communion in the two kinds. The Praguers, on the other hand, agreed to surrender to the royal troops the castle of the Vyšehrad, of which they had obtained possession during the recent fights, and they also promised to prevent all further destruction of churches and monuments.
Sigismund did not sanction this agreement, and the Táborite party, rightly distrusting his future intentions, refused to accept the armistice. Žižka, now the recognised leader of the Táborites, determined to leave Prague with his men, and to march into South-Western Bohemia. As for a short time no events of importance occurred in Prague, it is more interesting to follow Žižka and his Táborites. They first marched to Plzeň (Pilsen), on the advice of Koranda, a priest of that city, whose name has already been mentioned.[1] Koranda—wrongly, as afterwards became obvious—believed that the inhabitants of Plzeň were almost entirely favourable to the Hussite cause. Žižka was, no doubt, more influenced by the fact that Plzeň was at that time strongly fortified. The fortified places and castles in Bohemia were then still almost all in the possession of the royalists, and Žižka sought at Plzeň what he afterwards found at Tábor—a fortified centre
- ↑ Before the appearance of Palacký’s work, when the only records of Bohemia consisted in myths and legends, we were told that Žižka marched to Plzeň because it was one of the five “cities of refuge” or “holy cities,” and because it was called “the City of the Sun.” Those interested in such matters will find these visionary ideas expounded in George Sand’s quaint biography, or rather historical romance, entitled Jean Zyska, pp. 78–79.
