Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/262

 by the mere approach of the Hussites, forsook their dwellings and fled into the woods, where many perished of cold and privation. The Germans, whose practice it had been when they occupied Bohemian towns or villages to murder the whole population, were surprised that the Bohemian always spared the lives of women and children. The German chronicler Windecke writes that “wherever the Bohemians arrived the citizens and peasants fled into the woods, leaving their wives and children behind them”; they evidently soon knew that the Bohemians did not war against women and children.

It is beyond the purpose of this work to give an account of the different raids which the Bohemians undertook during this winter. Their principal army marched into Franconia. That part of Germany, comparatively distant from Bohemia, had hitherto taken little interest in the affairs of that country. The Bohemian invasion came as a complete surprise. The Hussites attacked the town of Hof, of which they easily obtained possession, but the castle was bravely defended by Kaspar of Waldenfels. That general appears, however, to have been one of the first Germans who realised the necessity of terminating the war with Bohemia. Through his mediation the Bohemian leaders entered into negotiations with the Elector Frederick of Brandenburg, who was also Burgrave of Nürnberg. I have already referred to the elector’s conciliatory tendencies, and he again gave proof of them on this occasion. He had just returned to Germany from Pressburg, where he had taken part in the fruitless negotiations which have already been mentioned. It is not likely that the elector returned from Sigismund’s court in a hopeful frame of mind, and seeing that his country was at that moment quite unable to resist the Bohemians he determined to negotiate with them. His foremost purpose was to free Germany from the presence of unwelcome visitors, but he may have also hoped to reconciliate the Utraquists with the Roman Church, and thus to