Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/570

 554 THE HUSSITES. sieged followed the retreating enemy, burned one of their camps^ spiking some of their cannon and carrying the rest back into the town, where they did good service during the rest of that memo- rable day. Mahomet gathered together his forces for a last des- perate attempt, which was a failure, and during the night he fled, leaving twenty-four thousand men upon the field, and three hun- dred cannon. His army was utterly dispersed, and this disaster, aided by the heroic resistance of Scanderbeg in Albania, arrested the Turkish invasion and gave Europe a breathing-spell. It cost, however, the lives of the two heroes to whom it was due. The stench of the dead bodies sickened the army of the victors, and John Hunyady fell a victim, August 11, to the epidemic, which prevented the following up of the advantage. Capistrano had thrown himself into the work with aU his self -forgetful enthusi- asm. His eloquence had wrought the Christians up to the highest pitch of religious exaltation ; the crusaders would obey no one but him, and his labors, were incessant. He passed days without time for food, and nights without rest ; for seventeen days, it is said, before the victory, he slept but seven hours in all. He was in his seventy-first year, with a frame weakened by habitual austerities, and when the strain was past exhausted nature paid the penalty. A slow fever set in, August 6, under which he wasted away, and died, October 23. He was perhaps the most perfect type which the age produced of the ideal son of the Church ; a purely artifi- cial creation, in which the weakness of humanity disappeared with some of its virtues, and the whole nature, with its rare powers, was concentrated in unselfish devotion to a mistaken purpose. Such men are the tools of the worldly and unscrupulous who know how to use them, and for forty years Capistrano had been thus employed to bring misery on his fellow-beings, unconscious of the| evil which he wrought. Yet, as JEneas Sylvius shrewdly points) out, there was one weak spot left i;i his nature. In the lettersj in which he and Hunyady described the victory of Belgrade nei- ther chief gave credit to the other. As JEneas says, " Capistrano • had despised the pomps of the world, he had fied from its delights, he had trampled down avarice, he had overcome lust, but he couldj not contemn glory. " * Six several attempts were made, at various times, to canonize Capistrano,;
 * Wadding, ann. 1456, No. 16-67, 83-4.— ^n. Sylv. Hist. Bohem. cap. Ixv.