They therefore murdered all, without distinction of age or sex. “They were determined to let no heretic live,” as a contemporary chronicler writes. The Hussites almost always spared children and women, and those who suffered most from their cruelty were priests and monks, whom they considered responsible for the murder of Hus, as they termed it. It is, of course, impossible to deny that Žižka was cruel; no Hussite general could be otherwise; but he at least on one occasion severely blamed his men for unnecessary cruelty, and he sometimes, on the advice of others, withdrew cruel orders which he had given. Thus the learned Jesuit Balbinus, whom no one will accuse of partiality for Žižka, states[1] that when Žižka occupied the abbey of Sezemic, near Chrudim, he ordered twelve nuns who had been found there to be drowned in the Elbe; but on some of the soldiers of the Praguers—the moderate Utraquists, whose centre was Prague—pleading for them they were spared, and conducted to a convent of their order at Králové Hradec.
The true character of Žižka appears very clearly from his few letters which have fortunately reached us. One of these letters, though written only in September 1422, may well be quoted here already. The citizens of Domážlice (Tauss) had joined the national party, and greatly feared to be attacked by the Germans. The situation of the city, very near the Bavarian frontier and in a district partly inhabited by Germans, exposed them to such attacks, and they applied to Žižka for help. Žižka sent the following reply:
“To the brave captains and citizens of the town of Domážlice, my dear brethren.
“ May God grant you to return to your fervour, as at first,[2] that you may first do brave deeds. Dear brethren in God, I beg you, for the sake of the Lord God, to remain in the fear of
