Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/237

 Bohemian nobility who had remained faithful to his cause. The fact that on many other occasions Sigismund appeared as very subservient to the Church of Rome may be attributed to conscientious remorse for his scandalous private life, the record of which it is well to leave to those who wrote in Latin. With regard to the Elector Frederick of Brandenburg, the official leader of the third crusade, it is very difficult to express a positive opinion. Dr. Juritsch recently, in his study which I have frequently quoted, practically accuses the Elector of Brandenburg of treachery. It has already been mentioned that the elector had for some time been on bad terms with King Sigismund. He had entered into an alliance with Poland at a moment when the rulers of that country were greatly exasperated against Sigismund because of the judgment, favourable to the Teutonic order, which he pronounced at the meeting of the imperial diet at Breslau in 1420. Frederick himself had on several occasions been involved in quarrels with that order, and it appears clear from his letters that his policy had what would now be called an “anti-clerical character.” It should also be mentioned here that in 1430 Margrave Frederick made an agreement with Prokop the Great according to which papal and Utraquist divines were to meet at Nürnberg and discuss the question whether the articles of Prague could be accepted by the Catholic Church. It is therefore certain that the Elector Frederick maintained a conciliatory attitude and favoured a peaceful agreement with the national Church of Bohemia; this feeling naturally became stronger when the elector observed the incapacity of the German leaders, the discord among the princes and the complete absence of all discipline among the soldiers. German writers have, however, gone much further, and have accused Frederick of having treacherously attempted to obtain the Bohemian crown. I have already alluded to this conjecture, which is at least very improbable. In distinction from most of the other German princes, Frederick was at that period