Page:Lectures on The Historians of Bohemia by Count Lutzow (1905).djvu/55

 of the Hradčany and of the Vyšehrad. In the autumn of the year 1420, the Hussites began to besiege the Vyšehrad, and Sigismund, wishing to relieve the garrison, again approached the city of Prague. The result of these movements was the battle of St. Pankrace or of the Vyšehrad, fought on November 2, which the men of Prague justly considered as their crowning mercy; for the defeat that they here inflicted on Sigismund freed the Bohemians from his rule for a considerable period, while the leading part that the citizens of Prague had taken in this campaign obtained for their town a temporary hegemony over almost all Bohemia. I can quote only a small portion of Březov’s account of this great victory. After enumerating the forces of Prague, of the Utraquist nobles, and of the men of some of the Hussite towns who together formed the besieging army, Březov writes: ‘Thus the Vyšehrad was encircled in every direction, so that provisions could not be brought into the castle either by any footpath or by means of carts. Not a little terrified, the men on the Vyšehrad wrote to King Sigismund begging for provisions, of which, they said, they had great lack. The king in his haughtiness promised to give them abundance of provisions and to drive back the citizens of Prague; in truth he did nothing for five weeks, and for three weeks they were obliged to feed on the flesh of horses.’

After some fruitless attempts to revictual the Vyšehrad by means of boats on the Vltava, Sigismund at last decided to give battle to relieve the garrison, which had already agreed to capitulate if they did not receive provisions within a certain time. Sigismund had not this time a cosmopolitan army at his disposal.