Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/340

 ately after the first envoys had left Bohemia on their return to Basel. They therefore demanded that the Utraquists should consent to a truce with Plzeň. The representatives of the Council, who were in secret communication with the city, had received intelligence that it was then on the point of capitulating. All Utraquist parties agreed in rejecting this proposal. The regent, Aleš of Riesenburg, demanded that the citizens of Plzeň should recognise his provisional government and pledge themselves to accept the agreement which the diet would conclude with the Council. The advanced parties, of course, even more energetically expressed the same opinion. Čapek of San, one of the best generals of the Orphans, who had commanded their recent expedition to Prussia, spoke strongly in the diet against the armistice. The representatives of the Council left Prague on January 14, 1434. The negotiations were not, however, entirely broken off, and the envoys of the Council were on their return journey accompanied by a Bohemian envoy, Martin Lupač, parish priest of Chrudim.

It has already been mentioned that, during the first visit of the envoys of the Council to Bohemia, hostilities had temporarily ceased in the country. Very soon after their departure, however, the Utraquists, as already mentioned, began again to besiege Plzeň, long the principal stronghold of the Roman Catholic party in Bohemia. Since its abandonment by Žižka at the beginning of the war the city had always continued to be in the hands of the Roman party, and its immediate neighbourhood contained some of the principal castles of the nobles “sub una,” who, though not numerous, were very powerful. The citizens of Plzeň found in them staunch allies and talented leaders, and, in consequence of the permanent danger to which the attacks of the Utraquists exposed them, they had become thoroughly accustomed to warfare. On July 14, 1433, the new siege of Plzeň began. The first troops to arrive there were the Táborite forces, under Frederick of Stránic and John Pardus