John Huss and the Hussite Wars - James Aitken Wylie

were face to face with the enemy they raised their
war-cry, they swung their terrible flails, they plied
their long hooks, and pulling the Germans from
their horses, they enacted fearful slaughter upon
them as they lay on the ground. Rank after rank of
the invaders pressed forward, only to be blended in
the terrible carnage which was going on, on this
fatal spot. The battle raged till a late hour of the
afternoon. The German knights contested the
action with great valor and obstinacy, on a soil
slippery with the blood and cumbered with the
corpses of their comrades. But their bravery was in
vain. The Bohemian ranks were almost untouched;
the Germans were every moment going down in
the fearful tempest of arrows and shot that beat
upon them, and in the yet more terrible buffeting of
the iron flails, which crushed the hapless warrior
on whom they fell. The day closed with the total
rout of the invaders, who fled from the field in
confusion, and sought refuge in the mountains and
woods around the scene of action.
The fugitives when overtaken implored quarter,
but themselves had settled it, before going into
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