Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz

Front matter

ADVENTURES OF BARON WENCESLAS WRATISLAW.

ADVENTURES OF BARON WENCESLAS WRATISLAW OF MITROWITZ. WHAT HE SAW IN THE TURKISH METROPOLIS, CONSTANTINOPLE; EXPERIENCED IN HIS CAPTIVITY; AND AFTER HIS HAPPY RETURN TO HIS COUNTRY, COMMITTED TO WRITING IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1599.

LITERALLY TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL BOHEMIAN

Introduction

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THE work to which I have come forward to ask the attention of the British public was written as long ago as 1599, and was then intended, apparently, only for private circulation. It was written in the Bohemian or Czesko-Slavonic language, by one who was perfect master of it, and the book itself is described by Jungmann, in his Historie Literatury Czeské, in the following words:—“The author relates his journey, and much about the manners and customs of the Turks in a natural, vigorous, pure, and manly style.” It remained in manuscript till 1777, when it was published by Pelzel at Prague, and a second edition was published by Kramerius in 1807. I have made my translation from the latter edition, and it will be found to differ very widely from the German translation of 1786, in which the translator, for instance, introduces a violent tirade against the celibacy of the clergy, not one word of which is in the printed Bohemian edition, which I possess; omits the pathetic and deeply pious peroration of the whole; and actually makes Mount Olivet, instead of Mount Olympus, visible from Constantinople. The work is divided into four books, the first of which treats of the journey to, the second the residence at, Constantinople, the third gives an account of the captivity of the author and his companions, and the fourth of their deliverance and return. It is rarely that a mere boy has gone through so much for the sake of his religion, and still more rarely does it occur that so great a sufferer is able to give so clear and graphic an account of his own misfortunes, and those of others. The first book appears to have been taken from a journal actually sent home to the writer’s family, and afterwards interspersed with anecdotes and digressions on Turkish life and manners; the rest were manifestly written from a very vivid, and often very painful, recollection of the scenes which they describe. It will, perhaps, be some additional recommendation to Baron Wratislaw’s work to mention, at the outset, that the ambassadors of Queen Elizabeth of England, and Henry IV. of France, whose names I find, from Von Hammer, to have been respectively Edward Burton, and M. de Brèves, took a prominent part in the liberation of the captives; and that it was to the Christian friendship of the former that they were in debted for their eventual escape through Hungary. An account of the embassy was also written in German by the apothecary, Frederic Seidel, but I have been unable to obtain a copy of it.

The Czesko-Slavonic or Bohemian language is spoken by the race inhabiting Bohemia watered by the Elbe, or Labe, and the Moldau, or Veltava; Moravia, watered by the March, or Morava,—and Slovakia, or the district of the Slovaks, in the north of Hungary. It is altogether spoken by about eight millions of people. It differs from the Polish in not having retained the nasal sounds of a and e, which connect the objective case feminine, in Polish, with the am and em of the Latin accusative. In Polish, also, the accent falls almost invariably on the penultimate; in Bohemian on the first syllable of every word. Bohemian is connected with Greek by possessing prosodiacal quantity, i. e. long and short vowels, independently of accent—a peculiarity which has been lost by every Slavonic dialect except the Servian, and in that it is said to be far less distinct than in the Bohemian. All the Slavonic dialects agree in retaining the locative case, which appears occasionally in Greek, and in Latin is found only in the names of places, and in some few other words, as humi, domi, ruri. They also agree in a use of the instrumental case almost exactly corresponding to that which is commonly called the dativus propositi, but which would be far more properly designated the idiomatic dative of the predicate in Latin, being simply an occasional artifice to distinguish the predicate from the subject, when both are substantives, in the absence of an article, of which the uncorrupted Slavonic dialects are equally destitute with the Latin and early Greek.

The early history of Bohemia is very mythological, and has been well treated, for the first time, in a philosophical spirit, by the historian Francis Palacky. During great part of the ninth century Moravia was the seat of government of a powerful kingdom, whose prince, Moymir, became a Christian. In 844 fourteen Bohemian Lechs, or lords, determined to embrace Christianity, betook themselves to King Louis the German at Ratisbon, and were solemnly baptized on the 1st of January, 845. But the principal glory of the conversion of the Slavonians belongs to Cyrillus and Methodius, the sons of the patrician Leo of Thessalonica, a town then inhabited by a half Greek, half Slavonic population. Rastislaw of Moravia heard of the conversion of the Bulgarian monarch. Boris, by the younger of the two brothers, Methodius, and sent, in 862, an embassy to the Emperor Michael of Constantinople to request the presence of Slavonic Christian teachers, as the German priests were unable to instruct his people in their own language. Cyrillus and Methodius came themselves in answer to this petition. After four years and a-half of activity in Moravia, the brothers visited, and were well received by Pope Adrian II, at Rome. Cyrillus, the inventor of the so-called Cyrillic alphabet, on which the modern Russian is founded, died at Rome in 868, but his brother Methodius was appointed by the Pope to the dignity of archbishop in Moravia and Pannonia.

In 871 the Duke of Bohemia, Borzivoy, and his wife Ludmilla, the latter of whom has a statue and chapel, as a saint, in the cathedral at Prague, were baptized. The Slavonic and Latin liturgies appear to have both been in use in Bohemia from the earliest times. Borzivoy was succeeded by Spitihnew I, and he by his brother Wratislaw I, whose wife, Drahomira, could never be converted to Christianity. After the death of Wratislaw, Drahomira had her mother-in-law, Ludmilla, murdered, and excited her younger son, Boleslaw, to murder his Christian brother Wenceslaw in 936. Boleslaw the Cruel was a successful ruler and warrior, and left the crown to his son, Boleslaw II, surnamed the Pious, in whose reign the first monasteries were founded in Bohemia (967-999). Under the sons of Boleslaw II, Bohemia was conquered by Boleslaw the Brave, of Poland, who was afterwards expelled, and the old native dynasty of the Przemyslides replaced on the throne. The power of Bohemia was restored by Bretislaw I, who was followed by Spitihnew II, whose brother and successor, Wratislaw II, obtained a royal crown from the Emperor Henry IV, and the Pope in 1086. Under Wratislaw’s successor, Bretislaw II, the Slavonic ritual, which had long been upheld by popular favour against the efforts of Rome, appears to have become confined to a single monastery, and to have been at length absolutely forbidden by Pope Gregory VII. in 1094; but the Slavonic monks were not ejected from their monastery on the Sazava till 1096. The history from that time to 1197 is comparatively uninteresting, and the only thing to remark in it is the increase of power obtained by the bishops and clergy, and their constant interference in state affairs.

With Przemysl Ottakar I. matters took a decisive turn, and Bohemia became, and continued for several centuries, a powerful and independent kingdom. Under this king and his successor, Wenzel I, new orders of monks and nuns were introduced into the country. But Bohemia’s greatest splendour was reached under the next king, Przemysl Ottakar II, who ruled from the Riesengebirge in the north to the Adriatic in the south, and whose protection was sought not merely by many dukes in Poland and Silesia, but even by Verona, Friuli, and many other important Italian towns. But it was the fate of Ottakar to be encompassed by treacherous friends, and he was finally defeated and killed by the Emperor Rudolf of Hapsburg in 1278. Wenzel II, succeeded to a kingdom greatly reduced in power, and with Wenzel III, the ancient dynasty of the Przemyslides ended in 1306.

During the preceding century the people had been gradually forming themselves into regular hereditary classes, which were now legally recognized. Great intestine troubles were finally healed by the marriage of the Bohemian Princess Elizabeth with John, the only son of the King of the Romans, Henry VII. of Luxemburg, in 1310. Till 1333, King John ruled alone, when he associated with him his son Charles, under the title of Margrave of Moravia. In 1340, King John became blind, and, in 1346, he fell at Creçy, repulsing the entreaties of his barons that he would leave the hopeless field with the memorable words:—“Tot bohdá nebude, by kral Czesky z boje utiekal;” “Please God it will never come to pass that a king of Bohemia flees out of battle.” He was succeeded by his son Charles, who founded the University of Prague in 1348, and was crowned Emperor at Rome, in 1355, by the title of Charles IV. Both the Emperor and the Pope, Gregory XI, died in the same year, 1378.

Wenzel IV, succeeded both as King of Bohemia and King of the Romans, but was deposed from the latter dignity in 1400. It was during his reign that the great schism in the Roman Church occurred, and that the intellectual movement began in Bohemia, which resulted in the great Hussite wars. Conrad Waldhauser, Milicz of Kremsier, and Mathias of Janow, caused a great deal of religious enthusiasm by preaching and writing. And the University of Prague had become so famous that there is reason to believe it contained, in 1408, no less than 200 doctors and masters, 500 bachelors, and above 30,000 students, all divided into four nations,—the Bohemian, Bavarian, Saxon, and Polish. Doctors and masters might lecture as they pleased, but bachelors were obliged to make use of the works of some known master of the universities of Prague, Paris, or Oxford. Thus some of Wycliffe’s works became known at Prague even in his lifetime, and after the marriage of the Bohemian Princess Anne with Richard II. of England, in 1381, the intercourse between the two countries became very close and active, and several influential Bohemian doctors more or less adopted and defended the views of the great Englishman.

But the leading spirits of those to whom the principles of Wycliffe became more than mere matters of speculative dis- cussion were John Hus and Jerome of Prague. John Hus was born, in 1369, in the village of Husinetz, of plebeian parents in comparatively easy circumstances. He took the degree of Bachelor of Arts at Prague in September, 1393, that of Bachelor of Divinity in 1394, and, finally, that of Master of Arts in January, 1396. In 1398 he appeared as a public teacher in the university, and, in 1399, came to an open rupture with his colleagues in a disputation held at the parsonage of St. Michael, in the old town of Prague, through defending some of the principles of Wycliffe. He was, nevertheless, elected Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy on Oct. 16, 1401, and presented to the Preachership at the Bethlehem Chapel at Prague. In October, 1402, he obtained the highest academic dignity, the Rectorship of the University, which he held to the end of April, 1403.

Jerome of Prague was a member of a family belonging to the inferior order of nobility, and was several years younger than Hus, with whom he early contracted an intimate friendship. More vivacious and less steadfast than his grave and stable friend, he wandered through Europe as a student, and brought from Oxford several of Wycliffe’s works, which had been previously unknown in Bohemia. He took the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Sept. 1498, obtained a dispensation from the duty of teaching in schools for two years, visited the universities of Cologne and Heidelberg, and took the degree of Master of Arts at the University of Paris. He appears to have taken an ad eundem degree at Prague in 1407. He visited Palestine and Jerusalem, and was, according to his own statement, at the latter place when the first condemnation of Wycliffe’s principles took place at Prague in 1403, in which twenty-one articles alleged to be taken out of Wycliffe’s works were condemned, in addition to the twenty-four condemned in the Council of London, in 1382.

Of the four nations of which the University of Prague was composed, followers of Wycliffe were found only among the Bohemians. Indeed, as each separate nation possessed a vote, the Bohemians were regularly outvoted by the Germans in the university, the Polish nation having since the foundation of the University of Cracow consisted almost entirely of German Silesians, Pomeranians, and Prussians. An appeal upon university affairs was made to King Wenzel, who spoke with the greatest severity to Hus, who soon afterwards was seized with so serious an illness that his life was despaired of. But soon, through the influence of Nicholas of Lobkovitz, supported by the representatives of the King of France, and the University of Paris, King Wenzel, finding that the three votes of the foreigners rested on no statute, but only on custom, issued an edict, (Jan. 18, 1409,) that from thenceforth the Bohemian nation should have three votes, and the foreigners only one. The final result was that the German professors and students almost entirely left Prague, and the numbers of those who quitted the university must have been very large, from the fact that no less than two thousand were counted departing in a single day.

In 1409 the singular spectacle of three rival Popes was exhibited to the Christian world, and in 1410, that of three rival Kings of the Romans. On July 16, 1410, the prelates and clergy solemnly burned the books of Wycliffe at Prague, and on the 18th the archbishop formally excommunicated Hus and his friends. Hus was protected by the court and by a large party in the country, and refused to give up preaching, saying that it was his duty to obey God rather than man. His appeal was rejected, and the proceedings of the archbishop confirmed by Pope John XXIII, and he himself was cited to appear at the Court of Rome to defend himself within a given time. In 1411 the archbishop laid the whole town of Prague under an interdict. King Wenzel felt himself personally aggrieved by these proceedings of the spiritual power, and took violent measures against the archbishop and clergy. Seeing the uselessness of the course he had taken, the archbishop, on July 6, became formally reconciled to both the king and the adherents of Hus, but soon afterwards died.

In 1412, John XXIII, issued bulls proclaiming a crusade against Ladislaw, King of Naples, and promising to all who should take the cross in person, or provide armed substitutes, or contribute money towards the expenses of the war, the same indulgences and remission of sins that had been granted to those who assumed the cross for the liberation of the Holy Sepulchre. The publication of these bulls in Prague caused fresh excitement; Hus and his adherents publicly preached against them, and commented severely on the anti-Christian conduct of the Pope. One of the king’s favourites, Woksa of Waldstein, and Jerome of Prague, contrived a satirical procession, in imitation of that which had preceded the burning of Wycliffe’s works, and finished by publicly burning the bulls. Three young persons were put to death for contradicting the clergy in different churches, and maintaining that the promised remission was a mere deception. When accused of not giving in his views in writing to the Dean of Theology, Hus replied that he was ready to do so, as soon as his opponents, who accused him of heresy, engaged to prove him a heretic, under pain, in case of failure, of suffering the same penalty, viz. that of being burned as heretics, which they were endeavouring to impose upon him,—an invitation which they declined. In July, 1412, Hus was excommunicated in the most severe and horrible manner; no one, under penalty of the same, was allowed to give him food, drink, or shelter, and the faithful were called upon to arrest and deliver him up; neither did King Wenzel offer any impediment to the publication of this excommunication.

The king appointed a commission for the purpose of healing the breaches in the national church, and was so offended by the conduct of the papal party that he deposed and banished the four theological professors of the university. Hus, during these proceedings, spent most of his time in a castle built on the spot where afterwards rose the town of Tabor. Here he wrote his Tractatus de Ecclesiâ, his Bohemian Postilla, and many other works, besides carrying on a considerable correspondence with his friends. He also invented the system of Bohemian orthography, which is now almost entirely dominant; but his Latin treatise on the subject has not yet been printed. While in the country, Hus took every opportunity of preaching to the people on marketdays and similar occasions, and thus made his exile contribute to the promulgation of his doctrines.

In the beginning of 1413, Pope John XXIII, held a small council at Rome, at which the forty-five articles selected from Wycliffe’s works were again condemned by a bull, dated Feb. 2, which was subjected in Bohemia to brief but very biting criticism. This criticism is found in manuscripts under the name of Hus, who, however, always disowned its authorship, and ascribed it to his friend Magister Jesenetz. On Dec. 9, 1413, the bull was issued which appointed a General Council to meet at Constance, on the 1st of Nov. 1414. Sigismund, the brother of King Wenzel, had succeeded the deposed Bohemian monarch as King of the Romans, had been formally reconciled to him, and was now exerting himself in every possible way to forward the great work of the Council. Sigismund entered into direct correspondence with Hus, and invited him to appear personally at Constance, promising not only a safe-conduct, but also every assistance towards bringing matters to a satisfactory conclusion, and Hus engaged to appear.

On Nov. 28, Hus was arrested at Constance, in spite of the protest of the Bohemian nobles, to whom his safety had been entrusted. King Sigismund at first protested against the arrest as a violation of his safe-conduct, and was only with great difficulty induced to acquiesce in it. In March, 1415, Pope John fled from Constance, and on Palm-Sunday, March 24, the keys of Hus’s prison were given up to King Sigismund, who, instead of setting him at liberty, placed him in the hands of the Bishop of Constance, by whom he was imprisoned in chains at his castle of Gottlieben. On the 4th of April, Jerome of Prague, in spite of the warnings of Hus, came to Constance, challenged a trial, and demanded a safe-conduct. Finding that proceedings would be immediately taken against him, he fled, but was arrested at Hirschau, not far from the frontiers of Bohemia, and brought back to Constance. Hus was heard thrice, with a manifest determination to put him to death, and, in fact, a Bohemian who had, on the first hearing, got behind the clerk, who read the documents aloud, saw the sentence of condemnation all ready prepared among the other papers, and it was only prevented from being read by the urgent remonstrances of the king. But after the third hearing, on July 8, Sigismund, in a confidential conversation with a number of cardinals and prelates, warned them against placing any confidence either in Hus or in Jerome, even if they recanted, and urged them to make an end of the matter as quickly as possible, as he should himself soon be obliged to leave the council.

Endeavours were made to induce Hus to recant; but he uniformly refused to do so, unless proofs of his errors were produced to him out of the Scriptures, the decision of which alone he professed himself ready to recognize. But he was never allowed to defend himself, or prove the innocence of any of his doctrines, being simply required to answer yes or no to the questions put to him. On the 6th of July, 260 passages from Wycliffe’s works were read aloud and condemned, and then thirty articles taken out of the writings of Hus along with the other evidence and the whole proceedings against him. Not only accusations, which he believed himself to have refuted, were brought against him, but even such absurdities as that he had represented himself to be the fourth person in the Holy Trinity. Sigismund blushed when Hus reminded him that he had come thither voluntarily under the protection of his safe-conduct. Hus was then condemned to be degraded from the priesthood, and delivered over to the secular arm. The sentence was immediately carried into execution, and the ashes of the martyr were gathered together and flung into the Rhine.

Jerome of Prague recanted on Sept. 10, 1415, relapsed again on the opening of a fresh process against him, and was finally condemned and martyred in 1416.

Meanwhile the favourers of Hus were splitting into two parties, that of the inhabitants of Prague—afterwards called the Calixtines, from Pope Calixtus III, negotiations with whom appeared at one time likely to take a favourable turn—whose views originated with learned professors and masters, and in the university, and that which arose from a spontaneous fermentation in the popular mind, which afterwards became known as the sect of the Taborites. The University of Prague took a middle course between the Fathers of Constance and the extreme Hussites; but on March 10, 1417, it spoke decidedly to the effect that, while those who received the communion in only one kind ought to be borne with, yet the right and original manner of receiving it was under both kinds. Hence the Utraquist doctrine of the reception of the communion sub utrâque specie took fast root in Bohemia.

In 1419, King Wenzel began at length to take measures against the Hussites, although his courtiers and enlightened favourites had always been among the most zealous and resolute adherents of the new doctrines. Several of these, in consequence, left his service; among whom the most remarkable were Nicolas of Pistna, Hus or Husinetz, and the famous one-eyed John Ziska of Trotznow. Orthodox priests were placed in all the benefices; communion in both kinds was refused to the laity; and many undertook long pilgrimages in order to meet with clergymen who would not refuse them the cup. And the Hussite clergy, who were even driven from their old head-quarters at Austi, encamped in tents on a broad hill near the river Luznitz, which was surrounded on three sides by deep ravines full of water, and only connected with the mainland by an isthmus, thus forming a natural fortress. Here, in the summer of 1419, they held service in the open air, with the peasantry, who crowded to them, and named the place, in their almost exclusively Biblical language, Mount Tabor, a word which also signifies a camp in Slavonic. On July 22 no less than 42,000 persons assembled there for devotional purposes, and separated again with perfect quiet. But on Aug. 16, King Wenzel himself died, and his legitimate successor was his brother King Sigismund, under whose auspices the Council of Constance had been held, and Hus and Jerome condemned to the flames.

Sigismund was in Hungary at the time, and determined to postpone his Bohemian affairs to the prosecution of the war against the Turks, in which he was engaged. The Bohemian Estates met and required their future king to promise complete religious freedom, free use of the cup in the communion in all churches, prohibition of the publication of papal bulls before their approval by the royal council, and of all insults to the memory of Huss and Jerome, and the use of the Bohemian language in courts of justice. To these things the town of Prague added a request, that, at the celebration of the mass, at least the gospel and epistle might be read in the vulgar tongue. Sigismund simply replied that he intended to carry on the government as his father, Charles IV, had done before him; and at Kuttenberg, on May 12, 1420, drove the deputies of the people of Prague from him with reproaches, demanding that all their weapons should be delivered up to him, and they should then see what favour he would show them. “War to the death!” became then the universal cry in Prague, and messengers were sent for help to Tabor, which had just been founded by the advice of Ziska, as a fortress of refuge for the Hussites, and to the other allied towns.

The first crusade against the Hussites now began in earnest. The Taborites entered Prague, and the host of Sigismund was entirely routed by the united forces of the Hussites before the walls of Prague, on July 14, 1420. The celebrated Four Articles of Prague were then drawn up as the public confession of the nation, to the following effect:—

1. “That the Word of God be published and preached in the kingdom of Bohemia by Christian priests without let or hindrance.

2. “That the holy sacrament of the body and blood of Christ be freely offered under both forms of bread and wine to all faithful Christians, not incapacitated by deadly sin.

3. “That worldly possessions be taken from priests and monks, and that they live henceforth conformably to the Scripture, and to the life of Christ and the Apostles.

4. “That all deadly sins, and especially those of an open nature, be brought to judgment and punished, and that an end be put to the evil and false report of this land.”

On Oct. 31 the Crusaders suffered a second defeat while attempting to relieve the garrison of the Vyssegrad, or citadel of Prague, and Ziska led the Taborites to success after success in the south of Bohemia. On Feb. 6, 1421, a junction was effected between the forces of Ziska and those of Prague, the result of which was that Sigismund disbanded his army, and hastened out of Bohemia, which was soon overrun by the Hussites, who then entered Moravia. And on April 21, to the great astonishment of all men, Archbishop Conrad, of Prague, declared his adhesion to the Four Articles. Ziska lost his remaining eye at the siege of the castle of Rabi by an arrowshot, but still continued to act as general with similar success. In fact, this loss caused him to be more dependent on others, and thus spread a greater amount of military skill and science in his army.

Of the second great crusade, in the latter part of 1421, but little is known, except that it exercised great cruelties, besieged Saaz unsuccessfully, and was so disgracefully defeated that the common remark was that the Crusaders entertained so pious a horror of the infidel Hussites that they would not so much as look them in the face. Sigismund afterwards suffered a tremendous defeat at Deutsch-brod on Jan. 8, 1422.

Ziska himself, it must be remarked, was not a genuine Taborite, but headed a party which stood midway between the party of Prague, afterwards called the Calixtines, and the Taborites. This is proved by the fact of the separation of those more particularly attached to the person of “Father Ziska” from the Taborites, under the name of the “Orphans,” after his death. Indeed, in 1422 a quarrel took place between Ziska and the Taborites, who were never more than partially reconciled, though Ziska resumed the chief command of the army as before. In the same year Prince Sigismund Korybut of Poland was elected Regent of Bohemia, and recognized as such by Ziska.

The third crusade was determined upon at the Diet of Nuremberg, in September and October, 1422, but was ended by an armistice for a year, and the total disbandment of the crusading army in November. In 1423, Ziska carried his victorious arms not only into Moravia, but into Hungary. But 1424 was Ziska’s “bloody year,” during which, in his hatred of hypocrisy, and of what he supposed to be coquetting with Rome, he injured his own nation as much as the common enemy. He died of the plague, commending himself to God, not far from the Moravian frontier, on the 11th of Oct. 1424. His great victories were won through the extraordinary drill and discipline of his infantry and moving fortress of waggons, the celerity of his marches and manœuvres, and his skill in the employment of artillery.

Ziska was succeeded by Prokop the Bald, otherwise called Prokop the Great. Under him the Bohemians assumed the offensive, and victoriously invaded Austria and Silesia. On March 18, 1427, Pope Martin V, appointed Henry, Bishop of Winchester, his cardinal-legate, with most extensive powers, in Bohemia, Hungary, and Germany. A diet was held at Frankfort, and a fourth crusade against the Hussites begun. But on August 2 the whole army which had invaded Bohemia was seized with a panic, and the cardinal, when on his way to join it, met it in full retreat. The diet met again at Frankfort, and on Dec. 3 the Hussite-tax was imposed throughout the German Empire, for the purpose of carrying on the war. Mean- while the Bohemians were actively and victoriously invading the neighbouring districts of Germany.

Cardinal Julian Cesarini became the new legate in Germany and Bohemia. Martin V. died, and Eugene IV. succeeded to the tiara. Cardinal Julian determined once more to try the fortune of war before entering on negotiations, for the purpose of which the Council of Basel had been summoned, and ought to have been opened on March 3, 1431. Although his presence was required at Basel as President of the Council, he nevertheless entered Bohemia at the head of an army of 40,000 cavalry and 90,000 infantry, which fled in confusion at the mere sound of the waggons and warhymns of the Bohemians, near Tauss, on Aug. 14, 1431. Thus ended the fifth and last crusade against the Hussites.