Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/69

 which, according to the chroniclers, who probably exaggerated, consisted of about 1,000 men.

After retiring from the neighbourhood of Prague Sigismund proceeded to raid the country districts of Bohemia, hoping thus to intimidate the population. He then, accompanied by his Queen Barbara and the Dowager Queen Sophia, proceeded from Stara Boleslav to Mělník, and then to Slané, which had already been captured by some of his adherents. He remained some time at Slané, and summoned to that city representatives of the town of Loun. The citizens of Loun made their submission to Sigismund and consented to receive a royalist garrison. It has already been mentioned that the more warlike citizens of Žatec and Loun had already marched to Prague to take part in the defence of the menaced capital. The passage of Sigismund’s army was everywhere marked by deeds of horrible cruelty. At Slané the papal legate, Bishop Ferdinand of Lucca, who accompanied Sigismund, caused a priest and a layman, who claimed the right to receive Communion in the two kinds, to be burnt alive. At Litoměřice, to which city the royal army marched from Slané, Sigismund himself ordered seventeen town-councillors, who had been imprisoned as being suspected of Utraquism, to be drowned in the Elbe. These evils deeds, when they became known in Prague, caused, as was inevitable, terrible reprisals.

The vast armies of the crusaders had meanwhile begun to arrive in Bohemia. As had been settled at the imperial diet of Breslau, the city of Prague was to be the rallying point for the varied host that was now intent on destroying the ancient liberty and nationality of the Bohemians. Sigismund, therefore, decided again to draw nearer to Prague; his access to the capital was always assured by the possession of the castles of Hradčany and Vyšehrad. On his march Sigismund halted at the town of Zbraslav (Königsaal) on the Vltava, where evil tidings awaited him. Lord Krušina of Lichtenburg, leader of the Orebites, had left Prague with the monk Ambrose, and