Page:Bohemia An Historical Sketch.djvu/176

 opinion. Should such a Council assemble, they were ready to send to it wise, prudent, and pious men, and to furnish them with full powers. As to the truce, the Estates were only prepared to grant it should Duke Albert of Austria evacuate Moravia, which country had been ceded to him by the Emperor and King Sigismund. They also made several other reservations, of which the most important were, that the truce should only be valid for Sigismund's own territories, but not for Bavaria and Saxony; also that all those who had formerly accepted the utraquist doctrine and then deserted it should be excluded from the truce.

King Sigismund, as was inevitable, considered these proposals to be inadmissible; he had, in fact, immediately after the rupture of the negotiations of Presburg, again begged the German princes to arm against the heretics. Pope Martin V, the most indefatigable enemy of Bohemia, also caused a new crusade to be preached against the land. Special reliance was placed on England. The cardinal-legate Henry of Winchester had equipped a force of 5000 men, with which he crossed the seas in July (1429). On his march through Belgium the cardinal was recalled, and ordered, instead of continuing his march to Bohemia, to proceed with his troops to France, where the victories of Joan of Arc at that time rendered his presence necessary. The cardinal obeyed reluctantly, but was forced to do so, as his troops declared that they would in any case, even against his wish, march into France, as their king had ordered them to do so.

The Germans seized on the abandonment of the English expedition as an excuse for giving up the intended crusade. They were comforted by the hope that, after defeating the English, Joan of Arc would appear in Bohemia and exterminate the heretics. A very menacing letter which she