permission to return to their homes. When this was refused many, none the less, left the camps. Other men, professed mercenaries, were indeed prepared to stay, but demanded that their pay should be given them regularly.[1] To Sigismund, who was always in financial trouble, this was a matter of great difficulty, even after he had, following the example of his opponents, begun to sell the monstrances and other sacred vessels in the churches that were in his power.
As soon as it appeared certain that the camps of the crusaders would break up, Sigismund determined also to leave the neighbourhood of Prague. He would, indeed, still retain a large following, as the Roman Catholic nobles of Bohemia and Moravia remained with him, and he had also a strong force from Silesia, which was ready to continue the war. He was in that country supported, not only by the Catholic nobles, but also by the townsmen, who were mostly Germans and ardent Roman Catholics; these terms were indeed synonymous in the lands of the Bohemian crown at that period. These considerations did not affect Sigismund’s decision, though he afterwards again appeared near Prague. Great doubt has been thrown on the personal courage of Sigismund, who certainly differed widely from his grandfather King John, “the crown of chivalry.”[2] The annals constantly refer to the brave deeds of Žižka, Krušina of Lichtenburg, Bořek of Miletinek, and on the Catholic side of Ulrich of Rosenberg—to mention but a few names—but Sigismund never appears in these often very picturesque battle-pieces except occasionally as a spectator. Before retreating from Prague Sigismund was, on the advice of the Bohemian Catholic nobles, crowned as King of Bohemia in St. Vitus’s cathedral on the Hradčany hill. It is not my intention to refer here—I have done so elsewhere—to
- ↑ How greatly financial difficulties contributed to the dispersion of the crusaders is proved by a very laconic statement of a contemporary Bohemian chronicler. He writes: “Afterwards [i. e. after the defeat of the Vitkov] the King dismissed the Germans, for he had nothing more to give them” (“Scriptores rerum Bohemicarum,” Vol. III. p. 38).
- ↑ See my Bohemia, a Historical Sketch, pp. 68–69.
