Page:Lectures on The Historians of Bohemia by Count Lutzow (1905).djvu/51

 singing of canticles and hymns. Meanwhile his army was encamped on the plain between Bruska and Ovenec; it was intent on capturing Prague, which they considered a heretical city because of its holy communion by means of the chalice and its faith in the gospel. To this camping-ground many and manifold men flocked daily from all parts of the world, duchies, provinces, and districts, because of the crusade which the Pope had proclaimed against the Bohemians, principally because they received communion in the two kinds. They all came for the purpose of capturing the glorious and magnificent city of Prague, hoping that by thus destroying and frustrating communion in the two kinds, they would obtain remission of their sins and penalties; for the priests had falsely promised them this, thus in various ways inciting them to murder all faithful Bohemians of both sexes.

‘Now in this army, which consisted of a multitude of more than 150,000 men, there were archbishops, bishops, the patriarch of Aquileja, doctors of divinity and other spiritual dignitaries, secular dukes and princes, about forty in number, many marquises, counts, barons, and nobles, and so many soldiers and camp-followers that they covered the whole vast plain, and their magnificent tents and encampments appeared as three vast cities. There were here men of various nations, tribes, and tongues, Bohemians and Moravians, Hungarians and Croatians, Dalmatians, Bulgarians, Wallachians, Ruthenians [Racians], Slavonians, Servians, Prussians, Thuringians, Styrians, men of Meissen, Bavarians, Saxons, Austrians, men of Franconia, Frenchmen, Englishmen, men of Brabant and Westphalia, Dutchmen, Switzers, Lusatians, Suabians, Carinthians, Ara-