of Sigismund, might aid their Slavic brethren, and Polish troops had already begun to attack the marches of Brandenburg. The Slavic dynasty of the Obotrites in Mecklenburg also rose in arms against the new margrave. By a rapid and victorious campaign against these numerous enemies Frederick isolated the Bohemians from their possible allies in Germany. He believed—wrongly, as events proved—that Sigismund had sufficient forces to crush all resistance in Bohemia.[1] Sigismund had, indeed, invaded Bohemia with a large army, and his forces were greatly increased when, somewhat later, numerous crusaders joined him before Prague. The beginning of the campaign was successful. Králové Hradec, one of the Hussite strongholds, was occupied after very slight resistance, and the royalist army then marched to Kutna Hora, a mining city whose inhabitants were almost all Germans and fervent adherents of the Church of Rome. Sigismund was, therefore, enthusiastically received at Kutna Hora and, sanguine as he sometimes was, he no doubt concluded from this friendly reception that the feeling of the Bohemian people was not as hostile to him as he had previously imagined.
Yet it was just at this moment that the Bohemian movement acquired a distinctly revolutionary character. Čeněk of Wartenberg had left Breslau deeply embittered, and his dynastic tendency disappeared, or at least became obscured for a time. He formally renounced his allegiance to Sigismund, dismissed
- ↑ “Schon hatte in Pommern die hussitische Lehre Eingang gefunden, die fürstliche Familie im Stolper Lande neigte ihr zu und ertrug mit hussitischem Gleichmuthe den Bann, den der Papst über sie verhängte. . . . Und wieder um den Kampf gegen die Marken desto entscheidender zu machen kam ein polnischer Streithaufen von 5000 Mann nach Pommern. . . . Während sich in Böhmen alles zum Kampfe auf Leben und Tod gegen den König und die Deutschen rüstete und die Freunde Böhmens, Skandinavien und Polen über Pommern und Mecklenburg sich die Hände reichten, brach Markgraf Friedrich mit raschem Entschlusse gegen den Bund los. . . . Ihn [Margrave Frederick] fesselten dringendere Sorgen an die Marken; nur erst der Anfang war gemacht Böhmen zu isolieren. . . . Es steht urkundlich fest dass er während des ganzen Feldzuges 1420 in den Marken blieb; er hatte dort vollauf zu schaffen! Und das Kreuzheer das sich vor Prag versammelte war gross genug um den Kampf zu stehen.” (Droysen, Geschichte der preussischen Politik, Vol. I. pp. 293 and ff.)
