Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/191

 though we have only Æneas Sylvius’s very unreliable authority for it, yet should, perhaps, not remain unrecorded. Æneas Sylvius states that King Sigismund, seeing that Žižka was everywhere successful, and that he was the one man on whom the fate of Bohemia depended, secretly attempted a reconciliation with him. He promised to appoint him Governor of Bohemia and commander of the troops in that country, and to grant him a large sum of money. There is every probability that this tale is entirely untrue. Had Žižka become a traitor to his country and his creed he would have found his only supporters in Bohemia among the not very numerous Romanist nobles, from whom the intense hatred caused by four years of incessant warfare widely separated him. King Sigismund was probably well acquainted with the dispositions of the Hussites, and cannot have been ignorant of Žižka’s extreme suspiciousness, which would certainly have prevented him from trusting the word of Sigismund. Only one quite ignorant of Žižka’s true character can have imagined this tale. The certainly spurious anecdote has only been mentioned here because many writers have even recently repeated Æneas Sylvius’s tale.

The victory of Malešov was followed by a series of successes for Žižka. Immediately after the battle he again obtained possession of Kutna Hora, and the cities of Česky Brod, Kouřim, and Nymburk, formerly allies of Prague, voluntarily accepted his rule. In this his last year we find Žižka constantly moving with feverish activity from one part of the country to another. It has already been mentioned that the Hussite war, like the great English civil war, comprised numerous local struggles, which were dispersed over all parts of the country. Žižka, as if aware of his imminent fate, now wished to give his aid and advice to his comrades in the different districts. After receiving the submission of the cities on the