Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/214

 admitted no further delay, fearing that their enemies might escape them. The Germans bravely scaled the hill, on which the Bohemians awaited their attack. Their wagons were connected by chains, and a considerable number of guns which had been placed at short intervals immediately opened fire on the advancing Germans. Behind the guns some of the soldiers were placed, partly protected by large shields, whose pointed lower ends had been driven into the ground. In spite of the incessant fire of the guns and muskets of the Bohemians the Germans continued to advance, and reached the Bohemian encampment, though the great loss of life and the fatigue of the ascent had already weakened them. When the Germans, almost blinded by the smoke caused by the primitive firearms of those days, halted for a moment, the Bohemians, faithful to the teaching of their dead leader Žižka, immediately assumed the offensive. First the Táborites, then the Orphans, then the Utraquist nobles under Prince Korybutovič, then the Praguers and the townsmen allied with them, closed with the enemies. Employing a stratagem that was frequently used during the Hussites wars the Bohemians raised the cry, “The Germans fly, they fly!” Some of the German captains then turned their backs on the enemies, exclaiming that everything was lost. The mass of the infantry, hearing this, fled in great disorder, and many were killed while descending the hill. The slaughter was so great that, as we read, the stream that flows from the hill in the direction of Ústi and the fish-pond into which it falls were on that day coloured blood-red. The pond up to the present day bears the name of “Blut Teich” (the pond of blood). As is so frequently the case when an army has been unexpectedly and signally defeated, rumours of treachery were immediately rife. The German nobles who had