John Huss and the Hussite Wars - James Aitken Wylie

thousands of enthusiastic warriors pressing forward
to fight under his banner. He was mortified,
however, to find that few Englishmen were
ambitious of taking part in an enterprise beyond
doubt very holy, but which beyond doubt would be
very bloody. Beaufort crossed the sea to Belgium,
where better fortune awaited him. In the venerable
and very ecclesiastical city of Mechlin he
published the Pope's bull, and waited the effect. It
was all that the warlike legate-a-latere could wish.
No such response had been given to any similar
summons since the day that the voice of Peter the
Hermit had thrilled the Western nations, and
precipitated them in fanatical masses upon the
infidels of Palestine. The whole of that vast region
which extends from the Rhine to the Elbe, and
from the shores of the Baltic to the summits of the
Alps, seemed to rise up at the voice of this new
Peter. Around his standard there gathered a host of
motley nationalities, composed of the shepherds of
the mountains, and the artisans and traders of the
towns, of the peasants who tilled the fields, and the
lords and princes that owned them. Contemporary
writers say that the army that now assembled
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