John Huss and the Hussite Wars - James Aitken Wylie

iver, and climbing the opposite bank, hung upon
the rear of the fugitives, slaughtering them
mercilessly. The carnage was increased by the fury
of the peasantry, who rose and avenged upon the
foe, in his retreat, the ravages he had committed in
his advance. The booty taken was so immense that
there was scarcely an individual, of whatever
station, in all Bohemia, who was not suddenly
made rich.
The Pope comforted the humiliated Henry de
Beaufort by sending him a letter of condolence
(October 2nd, 1427), in which he hinted that a
second attempt might have a better issue. But the
legate, who had found that if the doctrines of the
Hussites were false their swords were sharp, would
meddle no further in their affairs. Not so the
Emperor Sigismund. Still coveting the Bohemian
crown, but despairing of gaining possession of it by
arms, he now resolved to try what diplomacy could
effect. But the Bohemians, who felt that the gulf
between the emperor and themselves, first opened
by the stake of Huss, had been vastly widened by
the blood since shed in the wars into which he had
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