Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/185

 against him. And thus did he lead his army out of the forest again through some fields that were between slopes. When he had arrived at the new roads which he had made, he first ordered these fifty wagons to move along the new road which he built to the right [of the old one]; and when they marched through the fields they drove close to the slope so that the foot-soldiers had on one side the wagons and on the other the slope, so that they did not fear the horsemen; and he ordered the other columns also to advance along the other [the new] road; and he sent the artillery out of the wood by the old road and then occupied the fields. And so gradually all the wagons were driven out of the wood, and he disposed them so that they were all in one line and wound themselves together like a wreath. And he did this to unite the two columns in one and drive them [the Hungarians] from the field with a powerful hand. And thus the number of wagons which left the forest ever increased, till they had all got into the open. And thus did the Lord God help him to retreat from Hungary. But from the time that Žižka had begun to war this had been his heaviest task.”

This contemporary account of Žižka’s Hungarian campaign—which I have thought best to translate literally from the rugged fifteenth-century Bohemian of the original—was probably written by one who took part in the campaign. It contains many inaccuracies and obscurities and, as I have mentioned, leaves us in doubt with regard to matters both chronological and topographical. Recently Professor Tomek and Dr. Toman, who have thoroughly studied this curious document, have tried to elucidate some doubtful points. The account gives but few names of localities—these generally spelt in a manner that renders them almost unintelligible—and the question arises: What part of Hungary did Žižka invade? It seems most probable that he entered Hungary from Moravia at Holic, and that he marched by Tyrnau and Neutra to the