Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/337

 Their brilliant victories in distant lands had not rendered them more amenable to discipline; they consented, however, to assist the Táborite forces, which had for some time been besieging the city of Plzeň. Exhausted as Bohemia already was it became impossible to provision these large forces. Insubordination became general, and both Táborites and Orphans indiscriminately pillaged the districts in which they were quartered.

Under these circumstances it was natural that the estates almost unanimously determined to take the necessary steps to prevent their country from drifting into anarchy or the despotic rule of a pretorian force. On this point veteran enemies of Church reform, such as Ulrich of Rosenberg, adherents of Sigismund, such as Menhard of Jindřichův Hradec—then still a Utraquist, though he afterwards joined the Roman Church—the Utraquist nobles, the citizens of the Old Town of Prague, and those of other cities which adhered to the moderate Utraquist party and the leaders of the Orphans, such as Lord Aleš of Riesenburg, were entirely in agreement. Even Prokop the Great, who had left the camp before Plzeň to take part in the debates of the diet, was at that moment in favour of attempting to re-establish order in the land. As a first step to further this purpose it was decided to elect a regent, who was to be the head of the government up to the moment when it would be possible to elect a king, according to the ancient constitution of the land. That this decision by no means signified an unconditional surrender to Rome, as the advanced Táborites believed, or pretended to believe, is sufficiently proved by the personality of the regent who was elected. The choice of the diet fell on Lord Aleš of Riesenburg, a member