‘His oaken spear
Was true to that knight forlorn,
When the hosts of a thousand were scattered like deer
At the blast of the hunter's horn,—
When he strode on the wreck of each well-fought field,
With the (raven) haired chiefs of his native land,
His lance was not shivered on helmet or shield,
And the sword that seemed fit for archangel to wield
Was light in his terrible hand.'
T. CAMPBELL.
CHLUM’S strong will sustained his fainting frame until he had clothed Vaclav in the beautiful coat of Venetian mail, had clasped the girdle round his waist, and given into his hands the good Damascus blade. ‘For vengeance, strike thou not one blow,' he said. ‘For faith, for freedom, and for God, strike till thou halt conquered, or fallen upon the field.'
The mail hung loosely round the slender form of the tall stripling of seventeen, in spite of the thickly-padded jerkin that he wore beneath it; but his young heart was as brave and strong as that of any man in all Bohemia.
Hubert's suit of plate armor, the one given him when he came to Pihel, though less rare and costly than Vaclav's, was still very valuable. It had been always precious in his eyes as the first gift of Kepka, and now it was made a treasure beyond price by the touch of the small hands that clasped strap and buckle so deftly and so carefully, each in its place.
‘For this, dear heart,' he said to her, recalling the words with which they plighted troth by the grave of Frantisek and Aninka.
‘Yes, for this,' she answered steadfastly. ‘For doing or for suffering the will of God. For life and death, and for the long forever.' Then came the parting kiss, which lingered yet on the lips of the young soldier of God as he rode away.
It was a gallant band which rode forth from the gates of Pihel to join the Army of the Cup. Besides the soldierly retainers of Kepka, nearly all the fugitives, not ill or disabled, swelled the ranks. As they passed through the village their host was augmented by a crowd of peasants, armed with their formidable flails or with clubs and reaping-hooks, and full of zeal for the cause. Almost every hamlet through which their way led them added a similar contingent.
All the land, as they passed along, was full of the sounds and sights of war. Tidings reached them on their way of a great victory at Tabor; they heard with wondering joy how the knightly hosts that beset ‘the mount of God' had fallen beneath the iron flails of undisciplined peasants.
The coal-diggers, it was said, had risen also against their oppressors, and, armed with their axes, had stormed a strong fortress in the Kuttenberg district. Hubert, hearing this, smiled inly, remembering his companions in misfortune at the mine. But other tidings came to them also, thick and fast as leaves in autumn. The crusading hosts were drenching the land with blood and scarring it with fire. The worst and most appalling atrocities shall be here unnamed, as they ought to be. Enough to say, that the horrors of the death of fire were no longer reserved for professed, ‘impenitent heretics' like Pastor Wenzel and his companions. It was the common fate of all their prisoners, Hussite and Catholic alike. To beg for mercy in the Bohemian tongue was quite enough to consign the suppliant to the flames. The war was fast becoming a war of race as much as a war of religion.
At last the Pihel men drew near to Prague. As they rode over against the Monastery of the Holy Cross and the Church of St. Valentine, they saw above them on the heights the vast camp of the Kaiser and the crusaders. Nor were they themselves unseen. Stones and darts were thrown at them, and a motley crowd of crusaders and camp followers loitering on the nearest hill mocked them with shouts and cries of, ‘Huss! Huss! Heretics! Heretics!’ and imitated the cackling of geese and the barking of dogs.
Still, no serious attack was made upon them. Guided skilfully by Ostrodek, they passed with safety, under the very eyes of the crusaders, to the Vitkov or Gallows Hill, on the east side of the city, over which was floating the black flag with the red cup upon it, the Standard of Zisca.
At that time it might almost have been said of Prague that it was at once besieging and besieged. For the whole city was in the hands of the Hussites—indeed, nearly the whole city except the Neustadt was Hussite; only the strong fortress of the Vyssherad, under its governor, Czenko, held out for the Kaiser. While the citizens, under Zisca, were endeavoring to reduce the Vyssherad, the vast host of the crusaders had gathered its scattered masses, welded its huge, unwieldy bulk into something like unity, and was rolling onward, an overwhelming, devastating flood, to take upon the heretical city such vengeance as should never be forgotten so long as the world lasted.
The inhabitants very well knew what mercy they had to expect if the crusaders entered their gates. Every man able to bear arms either joined the skirmishing parties that went forth continually from the town, or stood upon the ramparts. Women carried off the wounded at the peril of their lives, and sometimes even mingled in the fray, or hurled stones from the wall upon the enemy. Boys acted as scouts and messengers, or caught stray horses in the field and brought them to their friends. Aged folks and little children, who could do nothing else, flocked to the churches, and spent their days in impassioned prayer to the God of battles.
The first thing the Pihel men did when they reached the Vitkov was to lay aside their armor and their weapons, to take pickaxe, spade and shovel, and to dig, dig, dig, as if their very lives depended on it. So they probably did; and the lives of the helpless thousands beneath them in Prague. For Zisca, in hot haste, was fortifying the hill, having discerned with the eye of genius that it was the true key to the city. That safe, all might be safe. That taken, Prague would lie at the mercy of the savage horde who knew not what mercy meant.
Those Pihel men who lived to look back upon that wild time scarce knew how they spent the days, digging the fosse, carrying earth, piling stones. They only knew that they worked on madly, stopping hardly at all for sleep, hardly long enough to eat the food women brought them from the town in baskets, or to drain the wine-cups they held to their lips. Hubert, Václav and Lucaz Leffle set an example of untiring industry to the rest. Ostrodek was otherwise occupied, being in immediate personal attendance upon Zisca.
Their toil, happily almost ended, was broken rudely in upon by the sound of trumpets and the call to arms. Spades and shovels were dropped, and swords and pikes grasped in an instant; whilst Hubert, Vaclav, and the others who had defensive armor threw it hastily on, and got their comrades to buckle it for them.
Not a moment too soon. The flower of the crusading chivalry, eight thousand strong, led by the Duke of Misnia, were spurring onwards to storm the Vitkov Hill. In the desperate fight that followed, sword to sword and hand to hand, each man only saw his own antagonist, only knew how his own sword rose and fell, which strokes he parried and which he returned, how that man at his side sunk beneath the horse-hoofs, and that other plunged his sword into the breast of his foe. Yet each man knew he was fighting not for his own life alone, but for the lives of tens of thousands. Nor could he have fought better had he also known that the attack on the Vitkov was a preconcerted part of a grand assault upon the whole city, and that this was, for Prague, ‘the day of decision.'
At an early hour of that terrible day Hubert was near Zisca, who stood leaning on his great two-handed sword, and surveying the field with his single eye of fire.
He pointed to a small, roughly-constructed wooden tower or shed, with an overhanging roof and a little balcony, and said briefly, 'Englishman, keep that as long as thou canst.' Accordingly Hubert, Vaclav, and some of their men threw themselves into it just in time to receive the shock of the advancing foe. A few peasants armed with pikes were already there, and three women, who had come to them with provisions. These fought as bravely as the rest, hurling stones at the enemy, either with their hands or from a rude but effective machine which projected from the balcony.
Hour after hour they fought on—bravely, desperately, amidst showers of stones and darts, bolts from many a crossbow, and bullets from many an arquebus. Charge after charge of horsemen shook the frail fort to its foundations, yet could not daunt the steadfast hearts that held it still ‘for God and the Cup.'
But this could not last forever; a pause and stir amongst the crusaders announced a new mode of attack. With a great shout they dragged forward a cumbrous mangonel, or cannon, and planted it near the wall—which, indeed, was already tottering. Even the bravest knew that hope was over now. Some spoke of surrender. While the words were yet on their lips, the iron throat of the mangonel gave forth its thunder, and a breach yawned in the wall beneath them. But one of the women cried aloud, Christian believers ought not to give ground to Antichrist,' and taking up a stone hurled it at the first crusader who tried the breach. She soon fell, covered with wounds. Hubert meanwhile saw just a chance of preserving the lives of the rest. He formed them rapidly into a solid square, with the two surviving women in the midst, and bade them fight their way through the enemy. These, content with what they had gained, and no doubt fearing the desperation of the Hussites, gave way before them, and they reached their comrades in safety—a sorely diminished band, who had won no victory, and yet had rendered inestimable service to the cause, by detaining a multitude of crusaders at an insignificant point during the crisis of the battle.
Their friends, who thought them dead, received them with shouts of joy. Together they hurried to the relief of Zisca, who was personally hard pressed by the foe. For one perilous moment he even lost his footing, and the hoofs of the crusaders might easily have crushed out the strongest hope of the Hussites. But a score of dauntless brothers ' rushed to his help, and succeeded in placing him in safety. Just then they became aware, amidst all the noise and turmoil, of strange sounds from the city beneath them. Every bell in Prague was ringing its loudest, but yet hoarser and more deafening was the clamor that rose from ten times ten thousand throats. Such shouts as rent the heavens that day were surely never heard before, nor would be again until the Day of Judgment. Crusader and Hussite alike suspended their desperate conflict to listen and to look. From the height of Vitkov they beheld a strange procession issuing forth from the gate of Prague. A priest went first bearing the Host, fifty archers followed him, lastly came a crowd of peasants armed with hooks and flails. As they marched they sang—to an air plaintive in itself yet, like ‘the Dorian mood of flutes and soft recorders,' all the more mighty to stir the pulses of fighting-men—the song of Zisca and the Cup—
‘Soldiers of God, arise,
And combat for His laws!
Implore His present help,
Maintain His holy cause!
For He who owns the Lord His friend
Must ever conquer in the end.
The Lord commands His own
To have no fear of death;
The worst of mortal foes
Can take but mortal breath.
Be strong, then, soldiers, in His might
Go forth, and combat for the right!
Christ shall repay your loss
A hundred-fold and more;
Who gives his life for Him
Shall have, when death is o'er,
A glorious, blessed life on high,
In everlasting victory.
Therefore, who bends the bow,
Who wields the knightly brand,
Who swings the deadly flail,
Arise, at God's command,
And, thinking on His promised grace,
Let each man combat in his place I
Dread not the foeman's might,
Nor fear his vast array;
Lift up your hearts to God,
And fight for Him this day;
No foot-breadth to the foeman yield,
But die, or conquer on the field.'
It was the hour of the Lord's deliverance. As the procession moved towards them and the solemn strain sounded in their ears, a wild uncontrollable panic seized upon the crusaders. They thought the whole city, mad with fury, was pouring out upon them in the wake of this strange vanguard. Watching from their height, the defenders of Vitkov saw that their foemen in the plain were wavering—beginning to flee. They raised a deafening shout of triumph, and with strength renewed by hope and joy rushed once more on their assailants. They drove them out of the entrenchments, slaying many, and hurling more over the rocks into the valley beneath.
Ere sunset the battle was won. The brave defenders of the Vitkov—henceforth and forever to be called the Ziscaberg, the hill of Zisca—marched back to the town in triumph, to congratulate their friends, and to be congratulated by them. It is needless to say that all were not there. In the Words of a greater soldier and general even than Zisca, ‘There is nothing sadder in the world than a victory, except a defeat.'
Those, however, whose names we know, and who had been on the Vitkov, were all there. Some of the Pihel men had fallen, but Hubert could only be thankful that the loss was not greater, and especially that Vaclav was safe. Lucaz was wounded, but not seriously. He himself, notwithstanding his desperate valor, had escaped with no worse harm than a slight cut in the left leg, through the joint of his armor, between the ‘cuisse ' and the ‘greave.'
He was still lingering with his friends in the Grosser Ring, hearing the details of the battle from some who had fought in the plain, when a lad in a smart jerkin forced his way through the group and caught him by the arm. ‘Master Hubert Bohun’ he cried breathless. ‘At last! I have been seeking thee everywhere. I have an errand unto thee.'
‘Who art thou? I have never seen thee before to my knowledge,' said Hubert, looking at him. He spoke German, but his face showed him unmistakably a Jew.
‘But I have seen thee at Leitmeritz. At the funeral, when they buried those the Elbe gave back. I am the assistant and the pupil of the great Doctor Nathan Solito, physician-in-ordinary to his Highness the Kaiser,' the urchin continued grandly.
‘Then what business had thou here?’ cried Prokop, who was standing near. ‘Go back to thy master, and tell him he serves a word-breaker and a murderer.'
‘Ay, go—lest we throw thee over the wall,' added another.
‘I will go back to my master when I have done my master's errand. Master Hubert Bohun, he bids me tell thee that thy friend Ostrodek—whom he saw at Pihel—and ten other prisoners with him, are to be burned to-night in one great fire by the crusaders, by way of consoling themselves for their fright and discomfiture.'
Exclamations of rage and horror came from all the group. Ostrodek, not having been with them on the Vitkov, had not been missed hitherto. If they had time to think of him at all, they concluded Zisca had sent him somewhere; as indeed he had, and the errand had proved the occasion of his capture. There was no reason to doubt the horrible fate intended for him and his companions. The crusaders were not likely to show more mercy to their prisoners after their defeat than before it.
There was only one improbable feature in the story. ‘Ostrodek would never let himself be taken alive,' said Václav. ‘His sword arm was broken,' returned the youth briefly. Hubert, who had been sitting on the ledge of a shop window, stood up and said, ‘There is but one thing to do. I, at least, shall not break bread till I save Ostrodek or die in the attempt.'
‘I also,' said Vaclav, laying his hand on his sword. But others, more prudent, would have held them back. ‘Take care,' they said. ‘It may all be a snare. How know we that you urchin's tale is true? He may be bribed by the crusaders. It may be a trick to lead us out of the city, that we may be taken ourselves and burnt like the rest.'
‘They spoke in Czech, but the Jewish boy, who had been bred in Prague, understood them perfectly. He came close to Hubert and said, My master gave me a token for thee, Master Hubert, to show that I speak the truth.'
‘What is it?' asked Hubert eagerly.
‘This. He swears to thee that this thing is true, by the faithful witness in heaven, who kept her tryst so well on the night of Leap Year Day.'
‘Good. But canst thou lead us rightly to the place, boy?’
‘That I can, and will, I stake my life upon it. That is to say, if these gentlemen do not prefer first throwing me over the wall.'
‘Nay! If we save our friends we will reward thee instead.' ‘Ay,' cried Václav. ‘Lead us on, boy. We must save Ostrodek.'
‘You say you will not break bread till it is done,' said a citizen, standing by. ‘I pray of you break bread first, that you may do it. Else you will faint by the way.'
There was reason in this. Hubert and Vaclav, and the eager band who volunteered to join them, consented reluctantly to a brief delay, just sufficient to swallow the food and wine which the citizens brought out to them from their houses.
Thus, instead of rest for the weary Pihel men and their friends, there was still a rally and skirmish that night.
Such rescue parties as theirs were not uncommon, and, what is strange, they seem often to have been successful. This may have been owing to the great extent of country over which the vast, unwieldy, crusading host had spread itself; to the lack of communication between its many divisions and subdivisions; and to the want of proper outposts, and other military precautions. The night succeeding the battle afforded an exceptionally favorable opportunity for such an expedition, on account of the confusion and disorder which pervaded the panic-stricken host.