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 for them in which to take away their private goods, and a guard was sent to protect them on their way. Some of them, overcome by the consideration with which they were treated, left the side of the king, joining the popular army.

After the battle, as the men and women wandered among the dead and wounded, their hearts were filled with compassion. They remembered that they were brethren, people of the same nation and speaking the same language. The Tborite priests alone were without pity; they ordered that the bodies remain unburied as food for wolves and vultures. But this cruel command was not heeded. During the night many willing feet hastened to the battle-field, and loving hands with tenderness performed the last rite to the fallen soldiers.

After the disastrous defeat at Vyšehrad, Sigmund, as has been said, fell back to Kuttenberg, where he tried to make the people believe that he had won a signal victory. To make up for his losses, he plundered the estates of noblemen, not even sparing those that had not yet taken up arms against him. The Hungarian division of Sigmund’s army, stationed at Nimburg, committed fearful depredations upon the surrounding country. Villages were plundered and sacked without mercy, and the inhabitants subjected to the most atrocious cruelties.

The effect of these lawless acts was that many lords, who still had adhered to the king, now threw up their allegiance and joined the popular party. They were also influenced, to some extent, by a proclamation issued by the army in Prague, wherein it was plainly shown that Sigmund was the enemy of the Bohemian people, since, in the battle of Vyšehrad, he had