Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/348

 carried on with great secrecy. It was also through Palomar’s influence that Přibik of Klenov abandoned the Táborite cause.

Events now proceeded rapidly, but before referring to the downfall of Tábor it is necessary to allude briefly to an attempt made by Sigismund to enter into direct negotiations with the Táborites. Sigismund, who was at that moment at Basel, sent a Bohemian nobleman, Habart of Adlar, to the camp before Plzeň, and proposed that the Táborites and Orphans should negotiate directly with the King. The propositions made by Adlar are not known to us, but they appear to have been very favourable, for they were accepted not only by the Táborites, but also by the Orphans, by whom hatred of Sigismund had always been preserved as a legacy of their dead leader Žižka. It is also probable that the Táborite leaders, who had knowledge of the formidable league which was being formed against them, welcomed this opportunity of negotiating directly with the King. Sigismund, in whom duplicity was innate, undoubtedly entered into these negotiations without the knowledge of the Council. The Táborites and Orphans then chose envoys who were to meet Sigismund either at Basel or at Nürnberg. We are expressly told that Prokop the Great was not one of the delegates chosen, as he was then in Prague; but it is probable that he was in favour of these negotiations, as he always preferred to come to terms with Sigismund rather than with the Bohemian nobility. While negotiations concerning the time and place where Sigismund should receive the envoys were still continuing, hostilities between the Táborites and the Bohemian nobles began, and the negotiations were necessarily broken off.

Once formed, the league of the Bohemian nobles immediately took very energetic steps. To obtain the aid of the lords “sub una” the Utraquist nobles had been obliged to admit that the raising of the siege of Plzeň should be one of the demands which the league was to address to the Táborites. They certainly thus renounced the claim of the advanced