Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/251

 the moment irreconcilable. On the advice of his councillors Sigismund replied that the Catholic Church had been founded by Jesus Christ, and that the teaching of the Hussites had already been condemned at Constance by the Pope and Council, and that discussions on a matter which had already been decided were useless; the Hussites could only expect a hearing and such instruction as was befitting for those who had erred; this, however, could be better given privately by ecclesiastical or temporal princes and by scholars than before a large assembly comprising many plain men who knew nothing of these matters. This categorical statement did not, as might have been expected, lead to an immediate conclusion of the negotiations. Sigismund again consulted his advisers. They declared that heresy in Bohemia could only be exterminated by the sword, but that it would be well, that being for the moment impossible, to propose an armistice which was to last up to the moment of the meeting of the new Council. The condition of the armistice was to be that the Hussites should attend the Council and submit to its decisions. This advice was undoubtedly astute if we consider the constitution of the Hussite armies. It was certain that during a prolonged truce the Utraquist nobles would retire to their estates with their followers; the peasants, freed from imminent peril, would return to their country homes, from which they had so long been absent; the mercenaries, whose number in the Hussite armies was increasing, accustomed to constant warfare, would, deprived of any immediate hope of obtaining booty, have sought service elsewhere. It can be considered as probable that the acceptance of Sigismund’s proposal would have deprived the national party of the powerful weapon which the Hussite army had now become, and would have left the country at the mercy of Sigismund and his allies. It need hardly be said that Prokop, whose military talent had kept the Hussite armies at that very high standard of efficiency to which Žižka had brought them, did not for a moment