Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/111

 afterwards arrived in Bohemia. The extreme fanatics of the Táborite party alone showed displeasure. They declared that, as a German, Conrad was by birth an enemy of the (Bohemian) nation, and reproached him for having crowned Sigismund as king.

While the great victories of Žižka and of the men of Prague had almost silenced all hostility in southern and western Bohemia, the country, never destined to enjoy a respite even of a few months, was now obliged to assure the safety of its eastern and northern frontiers. Bohemia here marches with Silesia and the county of Glatz, which was then still considered as forming part of the Bohemian kingdom. Silesia itself, with Moravia and Lusatia, then formed the lands of the Bohemian crown, as they were called. This theoretically and at some periods actually involved a supremacy of Bohemia over these lands. The population of Silesia at that time consisted mainly of Germans, who were very zealous Catholics, and therefore hated their Bohemian neighbours both as Slavs and as heretics. Incessant border-warfare, therefore, took place on the frontiers during the great civil war. It did not on the whole have much influence on the main current of the war, and therefore requires but slight notice here. In consequence of the great victories of Žižka in the spring of 1421 some of the Catholic frontier towns of Bohemia appealed to their Silesian neighbours for aid. In May 1421 a Silesian army, consisting of the levies of the towns of Breslau and Schweidnitz and numerous knights with their followers, invaded Bohemia. According to Březova the army consisted of about 20,000 men. Crossing the frontier at Trautenau—now known as one of the battlefields of 1866—they burnt down the small town of Police, and a few days later stormed the fortified hill of Ostaš, where the inhabitants