The broken-hearted Emperor was now accused of personal cowardice. A fifth crusade was resolved upon; it was to be conducted by a cardinal. Preparations were made on a very great scale. Four large armies, amounting to about two hundred thousand men, crossed the Bohemian frontier. The force which the Taborites were able to muster amounted to thirty-one thousand. But the great papal enterprise ended in the most disgraceful failure. The Germans, on coming in sight of Ziska with his wild war-chariots, were seized with a panic; the Cardinal Julian alone conducted himself with courage. As he was advancing, he met his troops fleeing in abject terror. With crucifix in hand, he entreated them by the most solemn considerations of religion to rally, but in vain. He himself was constrained to fly; he hardly escaped in the disguise of a common soldier, and left behind him the papal bull, his cardinal's hat, and his pontifical robes. These trophies were preserved for two centuries in the church of Taas, and the captured banners were hung in the Tron church in Prague. The Germans lost ten thousand men in this scandalous flight, besides many more who, in their retreat, were pursued and slain by the peasantry.
After carrying on the war for thirteen years, Ziska died. So greatly was he lamented by the Taborites, that they changed their name to Orphans. He was succeeded by Procopius, a name almost equally famous in the history of the Bohemian war. But the Emperor was not disposed to continue so ruinous a contest. The retributive sword of Ziska had shorn him of his glory in the field, and frustrated his intentions of strengthening the church. At the battle, or rather the slaughter, of Aussig in 1426, the estimated loss of the Germans varies from nine to fifteen thousand men, while the Bohemians lost only fifty. And almost every outward vestige of the Romish religion had been swept away by the overwhelming flood. Churches were burnt with those who had taken refuge in them. Sylvius, the Roman historian, describes the churches and convents of Bohemia as more numerous, more magnificent, more highly adorned, than those of any other European country; but, with few exceptions, all were demolished by the irresistible Taborites. More than five hundred churches and monasteries, with all their symbols of idolatry, were utterly destroyed. Such was the terrible retributive providence of God in His righteous dealings with the murderers of Huss and Jerome. The fearful visitation fell, and with the most withering severity, on both the empire and the church of Rome.