The Flagellants did not content themselves with these public manifestations of self-sacrifice. They formed a regular religious order, with officers and laws, and property in common. At night, before sleeping, each indicated to his brothers by gestures the sins which weighed most heavily on his conscience, not a word being spoken until absolution was granted by one of them in the following form:
Had this been all they might have been left to their own devices, but they went farther. The day of judgment, they declared, was at hand. A letter had been addressed from Jerusalem by the Creator to his sinning creatures, and it was their mission to spread this through Europe. They preached, confessed, and forgave sins, declared that the blood shed in their flagellations had a share with the blood of Christ in atoning for sin, that their penances were a substitute for the sacraments of the church, and that the absolution granted by the clergy was of no avail. They taught that all men were brothers and equal in the sight of God, and upbraided the priests for their pride and luxury.
These doctrines and the extravagances of the Flagellants alarmed the pope, Clement VI., who launched against the enthusiasts a bull of excommunication, and ordered their persecution as heretics. This course, at first, roused their enthusiasm to frenzy. Some of them even pretended to be the Messiah, one of these being burnt as a heretic at Erfurt. Gradually, however, as the plague died away, and the occasion for this fanatical outburst vanished, the enthusiasm of the Flagellants went with it, and they sunk from sight. In 1414 a troop of them reappeared in Thuringia and Lower Saxony, and even surpassed their predecessors in wildness of extravagance. With the dying out of this manifestation this strange mania of the middle ages vanished, probably checked by the growing intelligence of mankind.
On a sunny autumn morning, in the far-off year 1315, a gallant band of horsemen wound slowly up the Swiss mountains, their forest of spears and lances glittering in the ruddy beams of the new-risen sun, and extending down the hill-side as far as the eye could reach. In the vanguard rode the flower of the army, a noble cavalcade of knights, clad in complete armor, and including nearly the whole of the ancient nobility of Austria. At the head of this group rode Duke Leopold, the brother of Frederick of Austria, and one of the bravest knights and ablest generals of the realm. Following the van came a second division, composed of the inferior leaders and the rank and file of the army.
Switzerland was to be severely punished, and to be reduced again to the condition from which seven years before it had broken away; such was the dictum of the Austrian magnates. With the army came Landenberg, the oppressive governor who had been set free on his oath never to return to Switzerland. He was returning in defiance of his vow. With it are also said to have been several of the family of Gessler, the tyrant who fell beneath Tell's avenging arrow. The birds of prey were flying back, eager to fatten on the body of slain liberty in Switzerland.
Up the mountains wound the serried band, proud in their panoply, confident of easy victory, their voices ringing out in laughter and disdain as they spoke of the swift vengeance that was about to fall on the heads of the horde of rebel mountaineers. The duke was as gay and confidant as any of his followers, as he proudly bestrode his noble war-horse, and led the way up the mountain slopes towards the district of Schwyz, the head-quarters of the base-born insurgents. He would trample the insolent boors under his feet, he said, and had provided himself with an abundant supply of ropes with which to hang the leaders of the rebels, whom he counted on soon having in his power.
All was silent about them as they rode forward; the sun shone brilliantly; it seemed like a pleasure excursion on which they were bound.
"The locusts have crawled to their holes," said the duke, laughingly; "we will have to stir them out with the points of our lances."
"The poor fools fancied that liberty was to be won by driving out one governor and shooting another," answered a noble knight. "They will find that the eagle of Hapsburg does not loose its hold so easily."
Their conversation ceased as they found themselves at the entrance to a pass, through which the road up the mountains wound, a narrow avenue, wedged in between hills and lakeside. The silence continued unbroken around the rugged scene as the cavalry pushed in close ranks through the pass, filling it, as they advanced, from side to side. They pushed forward; beyond this pass of Morgarten they would find open land again and the villages of the rebellious peasantry; here all was solitude and a stillness that was almost depressing.
Suddenly the stillness was broken. From the rugged cliffs which bordered the pass came a loud shout of defiance. But more alarming still was the sound of descending rocks, which came plunging down the mountain side, and in an instant fell with a sickening thud on the mail-clad and crowded ranks below. Under their weight the iron helmets of the knights cracked like so many nut-shells; heads were crushed into shapeless masses, and dozens of men, a moment before full of life, hope, and ambition, were hurled in death to the ground.
Down still plunged the rocks, loosened by busy hands above, sent on their errand of death down the steep declivities, hurling destruction upon the dense masses below. Escape was impossible. The pass was filled with horsemen. It would take time to open an avenue of flight, and still those death-dealing rocks came down, smashing the strongest armor like pasteboard, strewing the pass with dead and bleeding bodies.
And now the horses, terrified, wounded, mad with pain and alarm, began to plunge and rear, trebling the confusion and terror, crushing fallen riders under their hoofs, adding their quota to the sum of death and dismay. Many of them rushed wildly into the lake which bordered one side of the pass, carrying their riders to a watery death. In a few minutes' time that trim and soldierly array, filled with hope of easy victory and disdain of its foes, was converted into a mob of maddened horses and frightened men, while the rocky pass beneath their feet was strewn thickly with the dying and the dead.
Yet all this had been done by fifty men, fifty banished patriots, who had hastened back on learning that their country was in danger, and stationing themselves among the cliffs above the pass, had loosened and sent rolling downwards the stones and huge fragments of rock which lay plentifully there.
While the fifty returned exiles were thus at work on the height of Morgarten, the army of the Swiss, thirteen hundred in number, was posted on the summit of the Sattel Mountain opposite, waiting its opportunity. The time for action had come. The Austrian cavalry of the vanguard was in a state of frightful confusion and dismay. And now the mountaineers descended the steep hill slopes like an avalanche, and precipitated themselves on the flank of the invading force, dealing death with their halberds and iron-pointed clubs until the pass ran blood.
On every side the Austrian chivalry fell. Escape was next to impossible, resistance next to useless. Confined in that narrow passage, confused, terrified, their ranks broken by the rearing and plunging horses, knights and men-at-arms falling with every blow from their vigorous assailants, it seemed as if the whole army would be annihilated, and not a man escape to tell the tale.
Numbers of gallant knights, the flower of the Austrian, nobility, fell under those vengeful clubs. Numbers were drowned in the lake. A halberd-thrust revenged Switzerland on Landenberg, who had come back to his doom. Two of the Gesslers were slain. Death held high carnival in that proud array which had vowed to reduce the free-spirited mountaineers to servitude.
Such as could fled in all haste. The van of the army, which had passed beyond those death-dealing rocks, the rear, which had not yet come up, broke and fled in a panic of fear. Duke Leopold narrowly escaped from the vengeance of the mountaineers, whom he had held in such contempt. Instead of using the ropes he had brought with him to hang their chiefs, he fled at full speed from the victors, who were now pursuing the scattered fragments of the army, and slaying the fugitives in scores. With difficulty the proud duke escaped, owing his safety to a peasant, who guided him through narrow ravines and passes as far as Winterthur, which he at length reached in a state of the utmost dejection and fatigue. The gallantly-arrayed army which he had that morning led, with blare of trumpets and glitter of spears, with high hope and proud assurance of victory, up the mountain slopes, was now in great part a gory heap in the rocky passes, the remainder a scattered host of wearied and wounded fugitives. Switzerland had won its freedom.
The day before the Swiss confederates, apprised of the approach of the Austrians, had come together, four hundred men from Uri, three hundred from Unterwald, the remainder from Schwyz. They owed their success to Rudolphus Redin, a venerable patriot, so old and infirm that he could scarcely walk, yet with such reputation for skill and prudence in war that the warriors halted at his door in their march, and eagerly asked his advice.
"Our grand aim, my sons," said he, "as we are so inferior in numbers, must be to prevent Duke Leopold from gaining any advantage by his superior force."
He then advised them to occupy the Morgarten and Sattel heights, and fall on the Austrians when entangled in the pass, cutting their force in two, and assailing it right and left. They obeyed him implicitly, with what success we have seen. The fifty men who had so efficiently begun the fray had been banished from Schwyz through some dispute, but on learning their country's danger had hastily returned to sacrifice their lives, if need be, for their native land.
Thus a strong and well-appointed army, fully disciplined and led by warriors famed for courage and warlike deeds, was annihilated by a small band of peasants, few of whom had ever struck a blow in war, but who were animated by the highest spirit of patriotism and love of liberty, and welcomed death rather than a return to their old state of slavery and oppression. The short space of an hour and a half did the work. Austria was defeated and Switzerland was free.
If genius to madness is allied, the same may be said of eccentricity, and certainly Wenceslas, Emperor of Germany and King of Bohemia, had an eccentricity that approached the vagaries of the insane. The oldest son of Charles IV., he was brought up in pomp and luxury, and was so addicted to sensual gratification that he left the empire largely to take care of itself, while he gave his time to the pleasures of the bottle and the chase. Born to the throne, he was crowned King of Bohemia when but three years of age, was elected King of the Romans at fifteen, and two years afterwards, in 1378, became Emperor of Germany, when still but a boy, with regard for nothing but riot and rude frolic.
So far as affairs of state were concerned, the volatile youth either totally neglected them or treated them with a ridicule that was worse than neglect. Drunk two-thirds of his time, he now dismissed the most serious matters with a rude jest, now met his councillors with brutal fits of rage. The Germans deemed him a fool, and were not far amiss in their opinion; but as he did not meddle with them, except in holding an occasional useless diet at Nuremberg, they did not meddle with him. The Bohemians, among whom he lived, his residence being at Prague, found his rule much more of a burden. They were exposed to his savage caprices, and regarded him as a brutal and senseless tyrant.
That there was method in his madness the following anecdote will sufficiently show. Former kings had invested the Bohemian nobles with possessions which he, moved by cupidity, determined to have back. This is the method he took to obtain them. All the nobles of the land were invited to meet him at Willamow, where he received them in a black tent, which opened on one side into a white, and on the other into a red one. Into this tent of ominous hue the waiting nobles were admitted, one at a time, and were here received by the emperor, who peremptorily bade them declare what lands they held as gifts from the crown.
Those who gave the information asked, and agreed to cede these lands back to the crown, were led into the white tent, where an ample feast awaited them. Those who refused were dismissed with frowns into the red tent, where they found awaiting them the headsman's fatal block and axe. The hapless guests were instantly seized and beheaded.
This ghastly jest, if such it may be considered, proceeded for some time before the nobles still waiting learned what was going on. When at length a whisper of the frightful mystery of the red tent was borne to their ears, there were no longer any candidates for its favors. The emperor found them eagerly willing to give up the ceded lands, and all that remained found their way to the white tent and the feast.
The emperor's next act of arbitrary tyranny was directed against the Jews. One of that people had ridiculed the sacrament, in consequence of which three thousand Jews of Prague were massacred by the populace of that city. Wenceslas, instead of punishing the murderers, as justice would seem to have demanded, solaced his easy conscience by punishing the victims, declaring all debts owed by Christians to Jews to be null and void.
His next act of injustice and cruelty was perpetrated in 1393, and arose from a dispute between the crown and the church. One of the royal chamberlains had caused two priests to be executed on the accusation of committing a flagrant crime. This action was resented by the Archbishop of Prague, who declared that it was an encroachment upon the prerogative of the church, which alone had the right to punish an ecclesiastic. He, therefore, excommunicated the chamberlain.
This action of the daring churchman threw the emperor into such a paroxysm of rage that the archbishop, knowing well the man he had to deal with, took to flight, saving his neck at the expense of his dignity. The furious Wenceslas, finding that the chief offender had escaped, vented his wrath on the subordinates, several of whom were seized. One of them, the dean, moved by indignation, dealt the emperor so heavy a blow on the head with his sword-knot as to bring the blood. It does not appear that he was made to suffer for his boldness, but two of the lower ecclesiastics, John of Nepomuk and Puchnik, were put to the rack to make them confess facts learned by them in the confessional. They persistently refused to answer. Wenceslas, infuriated by their obstinacy, himself seized a torch and applied it to their limbs to make them speak. They were still silent. The affair ended in his ordering John of Nepomuk to be flung headlong, during the night, from the great bridge over the Moldau into the stream. A statue now marks the spot where this act of tyranny was performed.
The final result of the emperor's cruelty was one which he could not have foreseen. He had made a saint of Nepomuk. The church, appreciating the courageous devotion of the murdered ecclesiastic to his duty in keeping inviolate the secrets of the confessional, canonized him as a martyr, and made him the patron saint of Bohemia.
Puchnik escaped with his life, and eventually with more than his life. The tyrant's wrath was followed by remorse,—a feeling, apparently, which rarely troubled his soul,—and he sought to atone for his cruelty to one churchman by loading the other with benefits. But his mad fury changed to as mad a benevolence, and he managed to make a jest of his gratuity. Puchnik was led into the royal treasury, and the emperor himself, thrusting his royal hands into his hoards of gold, filled the pockets, and even the boots, of the late sufferer with the precious coin. This done, Puchnik attempted to depart, but in vain. He found himself nailed to the floor, so weighed down with gold that he was unable to stir. Before he could move he had to disgorge much of his new-gained wealth, a proceeding to which churchmen in that age do not seem to have been greatly given. Doubtless the remorseful Wenceslas beheld this process with a grim smile of royal humor on his lips.
The emperor had a brother, Sigismund by name, a man not of any high degree of wisdom, but devoid of his wild and immoderate temper. Brandenburg was his inheritance, though he had married the daughter of the King of Hungary and Poland, and hoped to succeed to those countries. There was a third brother, John, surnamed "Von Glörlitz." Sigismund was by no means blind to his brother's folly, or to the ruin in which it threatened to involve his family and his own future prospects. This last exploit stirred him to action. Concerting with some other princes of the empire, he suddenly seized Wenceslas, carried him to Austria, and imprisoned him in the castle of Wiltberg, in that country.
A fair disposal, this, of a man who was scarcely fit to run at large, most reasonable persons would say; but all did not think so. John von Görlitz, the younger brother of the emperor, fearing public scandal from such a transaction, induced the princes who held him to set him free. It proved a fatal display of kindness and family affection for himself. The imperial captive was no sooner free than, concealing the wrath which he felt at his incarceration, he invited to a banquet certain Bohemian nobles who had aided in it. They came, trusting to the fact that the tiger's claws seemed sheathed. They had no sooner arrived than the claws were displayed. They were all seized, by the emperor's order, and beheaded. Then the dissimulating madman turned on his benevolent brother John, who had taken control of affairs in Bohemia during his imprisonment, and poisoned him. It was a new proof of the old adage, it is never safe to warm a frozen adder.
The restoration of Wenceslas was followed by other acts of folly. In the following year, 1395, he sold to John Galcazzo Visconti, of Milan, the dignity of a duke in Lombardy, a transaction which exposed him to general contempt. At a later date he visited Paris, and here, in a drunken frolic, he played into the hands of the King of France by ceding Genoa to that country, and by recognizing the antipope at Avignon, instead of Boniface IX. at Rome. These acts filled the cup of his folly. The princes of the empire resolved to depose him. A council was called, before which he was cited to appear. He refused to come, and was formally deposed, Rupert, of the Palatinate, being elected in his stead. Ten years afterwards, in 1410, Rupert died, and Sigismund became Emperor of Germany.
Meanwhile, Wenceslas remained King of Bohemia, in spite of his brother Sigismund, who sought to oust him from this throne also. He took him prisoner, indeed, but trusted him to the Austrians, who at once set him free, and the Bohemians replaced him on the throne. Some years afterwards, war continuing, Wenceslas sought to get rid of his brother Sigismund in the same manner as he had disposed of his brother John, by poison. He was successful in having it administered to Sigismund and his ally, Albert of Austria, in their camp before Zuaym. Albert died, but Sigismund was saved by a rude treatment which seems to have been in vogue in that day. He was suspended by the feet for twenty-four hours, so that the poison ran out of his mouth.
The later events in the life of Wenceslas have to do with the most famous era in the history of Bohemia, the reformation in that country, and the stories of John Huss and Ziska. The fate of Huss is well known. Summoned before the council at Constance, and promised a safe-conduct by the Emperor Sigismund, he went, only to find the emperor faithless to his word and himself condemned and burnt as a heretic. This base act of treachery was destined to bring a bloody retribution. It infuriated the reformers in Bohemia, who, after brooding for several years over their wrongs, broke out into an insurrection of revenge.
The leader of this outbreak was an officer of experience, named John Ziska, a man who had lost one eye in childhood, and who bitterly hated the priesthood for a wrong done to one of his sisters. The martyrdom of Huss threw him into such deep and silent dejection, that one day the king, in whose court he was, asked him why he was so sad.
"Huss is burnt, and we have not yet avenged him," replied Ziska.
"I can do nothing in that direction," said Wenceslas; adding, carelessly, "you might attempt it yourself."
This was spoken as a jest, but Ziska took it in deadly earnest. He, aided by his friends, roused the people, greatly to the alarm of the king, who ordered the citizens to bring their arms to the royal castle of Wisherad, which commanded the city of Prague.
Ziska heard the command, and obeyed it in his own way. The arms were brought, but they came in the hands of the citizens, who marched in long files to the fortress, and drew themselves up before the king, Ziska at their head.
"My gracious and mighty sovereign, here we are," said the bold leader; "we await your commands; against what enemy are we to fight?"
Wenceslas looked at those dense groups of armed and resolute men, and concluded that his purpose of disarming them would not work. Assuming a cheerful countenance, he bade them return home and keep the peace. They obeyed, so far as returning home was concerned. In other matters they had learned their power, and were bent on exerting it.
Nicolas of Hussinez, Huss's former lord, and Ziska's seconder in this outbreak, was banished from the city by the king. He went, but took forty thousand men with him, who assembled on a mountain which was afterwards known by the biblical name of Mount Tabor. Here several hundred tables were spread for the celebration of the Lord's Supper, July 22, 1419.
Wenceslas, in attempting to put a summary end to the disturbance in the city, quickly made bad worse. He deposed the Hussite city council in the Neustadt, the locality of greatest disturbance, and replaced it by a new one in his own interests. This action filled Prague with indignation, which was redoubled when the new council sent two clamorous Hussites to prison. On the 30th of July Ziska led a strong body of his partisans through the streets to the council-house, and sternly demanded that the prisoners should be set free.
The councillors hesitated,—a fatal hesitation. A stone was flung from one of the windows. Instantly the mob stormed the building, rushed into the council-room, and seized the councillors, thirteen of whom, Germans by birth, were flung out of the windows. They were received on the pikes of the furious mob below, and the whole of them murdered.
This act of violence was quickly followed by others. The dwelling of a priest, supposed to have been that of the seducer of Ziska's sister, was destroyed and its owner hanged; the Carthusian monks were dragged through the streets, crowned with thorns, and other outrages perpetrated against the opponents of the party of reform.
A few days afterwards the career of Wenceslas, once Emperor of Germany, now King of Bohemia, came to an abrupt end. On August 16 he suddenly died,—by apoplexy, say some historians, while others say that he was suffocated in his palace by his own attendants. The latter would seem a fitting end for a man whose life had been marked by so many acts of tyrannous violence, some of them little short of insanity.
Whatever its cause, his death removed the last restraint from the mob. On the following day every church and monastery in Prague was assailed and plundered, their pictures were destroyed, and the robes of the priests were converted into flags and dresses. Many of these buildings are said to have been splendidly decorated, and the royal palace, which was also destroyed, had been adorned by Wenceslas and his father with the richest treasures of art. We are told that on the walls of a garden belonging to the palace the whole of the Bible was written. While the work of destruction went on, a priest formed an altar in the street of three tubs, covered by a broad table-top, from which all day long he dispensed the sacrament in both forms.
The excesses of this outbreak soon frightened the wealthier citizens, who dreaded an assault upon their wealth, and, in company with Sophia, the widow of Wenceslas, they sent a deputation to the emperor, asking him to make peace. He replied by swearing to take a fearful revenge on the insurgents. The insurrection continued, despite this action of the nobles and the threats of the emperor. Ziska, finding the citizens too moderate, invited into the city the peasants, who were armed with flails, and committed many excesses.
Forced by the moderate party to leave the city, Ziska led his new adherents to Mount Tabor, which he fortified and prepared to defend. They called themselves the "people of God," and styled their Catholic opponents "Moabites," "Amalekites," etc., declaring that it was their duty to extirpate them. Their leader entitled himself "John Ziska, of the cup, captain, in the hope of God, of the Taborites."
But having brought the story of the Emperor Wenceslas to an end, we must stop at this point. The after-life of John Ziska was of such stir and interest, and so filled with striking events, that we shall deal with it by itself, in a sequel to the present story.
Seventy years had passed since the battle of Morgarten, through which freedom came to the lands of the Swiss. Throughout that long period Austria had let the liberty-loving mountaineers alone, deterred by the frightful lesson taught them in the bloody pass. In the interval the confederacy had grown more extensive. The towns of Berne, Zurich, Soleure, and Zug had joined it; and now several other towns and villages, incensed by the oppression and avarice of their Austrian masters, threw off the foreign yoke and allied themselves to the Swiss confederacy. It was time for the Austrians to be moving, if they would retain any possessions in the Alpine realm of rocks.
Duke Leopold of Austria, a successor to the Leopold who had learned so well at Morgarten how the Swiss could strike for liberty, and as bold and arrogant as he, grew incensed at the mountaineers for taking into their alliance several towns which were subject to him, and vowed not only to chastise these rebels, but to subdue the whole country, and put an end to their insolent confederacy. His feeling was shared by the Austrian nobles, one hundred and sixty-seven of whom joined in his warlike scheme, and agreed to aid him in putting down the defiant mountaineers.
War resolved upon, the Austrians laid a shrewd plan to fill the Swiss confederates with terror in advance of their approach. Letters declaring war were sent to the confederate assembly by twenty distinct expresses, with the hope that this rapid succession of threats would overwhelm them with fear. The separate nobles followed with their declarations. On St. John's day a messenger arrived from Würtemberg bearing fifteen declarations of war. Hardly had these letters been read when nine more arrived, sent by John Ulric of Pfirt and eight other nobles. Others quickly followed; it fairly rained declarations of war; the members of the assembly had barely time to read one batch of threatening fulminations before another arrived. Letters from the lords of Thurn came after those named, followed by a batch from the nobles of Schaffhausen. This seemed surely enough, but on the following day the rain continued, eight successive messengers arriving, who bore no less than forty-three declarations of war.
It seemed as if the whole north was about to descend in a cyclone of banners and spears upon the mountain land. The assembly sat breathless under this torrent of threats. Had their hearts been open to the invasion of terror they must surely have been overwhelmed, and have waited in the supineness of fear for the coming of their foes.
But the hearts of the Swiss were not of that kind. They were too full of courage and patriotism to leave room for dismay. Instead of awaiting their enemies with dread, a burning impatience animated their souls. If liberty or death were the alternatives, the sooner the conflict began the more to their liking it would be. The cry of war resounded through the country, and everywhere, in valley and on mountain, by lake-side and by glacier's rim, the din of hostile preparation might have been heard, as the patriots arranged their affairs and forged and sharpened their weapons for the coming fray.
Far too impatient were they to wait for the coming of Leopold and his army. There were Austrian nobles and Austrian castles within their land. No sooner was the term of the armistice at an end than the armed peasantry swarmed about these strongholds, and many a fortress, long the seat of oppression, was taken and levelled with the ground. The war-cry of Leopold and the nobles had inspired a different feeling from that counted upon.
It was not long before Duke Leopold appeared. At the head of a large and well-appointed force, and attended by many distinguished knights and nobles, he marched into the mountain region and advanced upon Sempach, one of the revolted towns, resolved, he said, to punish its citizens with a rod of iron for their daring rebellion.
On the 9th of July, 1386, the Austrian cavalry, several thousands in number, reached the vicinity of Sempach, having distanced the foot-soldiers in the impatient haste of their advance. Here they found the weak array of the Swiss gathered on the surrounding heights, and as eager as themselves for the fray. It was a small force, no stronger than that of Morgarten, comprising only about fourteen hundred poorly-armed men. Some carried halberds, some shorter weapons, while some among them, instead of a shield, had only a small board fastened to the left arm. It seemed like madness for such a band to dare contend with the thousands of well-equipped invaders. But courage and patriotism go far to replace numbers, as that day was to show.
Leopold looked upon his handful of foes, and decided that it would be folly to wait for the footmen to arrive. Surely his host of nobles and knights, with their followers, would soon sweep these peasants, like so many locusts, from their path. Yet he remembered the confusion into which the cavalry had been thrown at Morgarten, and deeming that horsemen were ill-suited to an engagement on those wooded hill-sides, he ordered the entire force to dismount and attack on foot.
The plan adopted was that the dismounted knights and soldiers should join their ranks as closely as possible, until their front presented an unbroken wall of iron, and thus arrayed should charge the enemy spear in hand. Leaving their attendants in charge of their horses, the serried column of footmen prepared to advance, confident of sweeping their foes to death before their closely-knit line of spears.
Yet this plan of battle was not without its critics. The Baron of Hasenburg, a veteran soldier, looked on it with disfavor, as contrasted with the position of vantage occupied by the Swiss, and cautioned the duke and his nobles against undue assurance.
"Pride never served any good purpose in peace or war," he said. "We had much better wait until the infantry come up."
This prudent advice was received with shouts of derision by the nobles, some of whom cried out insultingly,—
"Der Hasenburg hat ein Hasenherz" ("Hasenburg has a hare's heart," a play upon the baron's name).
Certain nobles, however, who had not quite lost their prudence, tried to persuade the duke to keep in the rear, as the true position for a leader. He smiled proudly in reply, and exclaimed with impatience,—
"What! shall Leopold be a mere looker-on, and calmly behold his knights die around him in his own cause? Never! here on my native soil with you I will conquer or perish with my people." So saying, he placed himself at the head of the troops.
And now the decisive moment was at hand. The Swiss had kept to the heights while their enemy continued mounted, not venturing to face such a body of cavalry on level ground. But when they saw them forming as foot-soldiers, they left the hills and marched to the plain below. Soon the unequal forces confronted each other; the Swiss, as was their custom, falling upon their knees and praying for God's aid to their cause; the Austrians fastening their helmets and preparing for the fray. The duke even took the occasion to give the honor of knighthood to several young warriors.
The day was a hot and close one, the season being that of harvest, and the sun pouring down its unclouded and burning rays upon the combatants. This sultriness was a marked advantage to the lightly-dressed mountaineers as compared with the armor-clad knights, to whom the heat was very oppressive.
The battle was begun by the Swiss, who, on rising from their knees, flung themselves with impetuous valor on the dense line of spears that confronted them. Their courage and fury were in vain. Not a man in the Austrian line wavered. They stood like a rock against which the waves of the Swiss dashed only to be hurled back in death. The men of Lucerne, in particular, fought with an almost blind rage, seeking to force a path through that steel-pointed forest of spears, and falling rapidly before the triumphant foe.
Numbers of the mountaineers lay dead or wounded. The line of spears seemed impenetrable. The Swiss began to waver. The enemy, seeing this, advanced the flanks of his line so as to form a half-moon shape, with the purpose of enclosing the small body of Swiss within a circle of spears. It looked for the moment as if the struggle were at an end, the mountaineers foiled and defeated, the fetters again ready to be locked upon the limbs of free Switzerland.
But such was not to be. There was a man in that small band of patriots who had the courage to accept certain death for his country, one of those rare souls who appear from time to time in the centuries and win undying fame by an act of self-martyrdom. Arnold of Winkelried was his name, a name which history is not likely soon to forget, for by an impulse of the noblest devotion this brave patriot saved the liberties of his native land.
Seeing that there was but one hope for the Swiss, and that death must be the lot of him who gave them that hope, he exclaimed to his comrades, in a voice of thunder,—
"Faithful and beloved confederates, I will open a passage to freedom and victory! Protect my wife and children!"
With these words, he rushed from his ranks, flung himself upon the enemy's steel-pointed line, and seized with his extended arms as many of the hostile spears as he was able to grasp, burying them in his body, and sinking dead to the ground.
His comrades lost not a second in availing themselves of this act of heroic devotion. Darting forward, they rushed over the body of the martyr to liberty into the breach he had made, forced others of the spears aside, and for the first time since the fray began reached the Austrians with their weapons.
A hasty and ineffective effort was made to close the breach. It only added to the confusion which the sudden assault had caused. The line of hurrying knights became crowded and disordered. The furious Swiss broke through in increasing numbers. Overcome with the heat, many of the knights fell from exhaustion, and died without a wound, suffocated in their armor. Others fell below the blows of the Swiss. The line of spears, so recently intact, was now broken and pierced at a dozen points, and the revengeful mountaineers were dealing death upon their terrified and feebly-resisting foes.
The chief banner of the host had twice sunk and been raised again, and was drooping a third time, when Ulric, a knight of Aarburg, seized and lifted it, defending it desperately till a mortal blow laid him low.
"Save Austria! rescue!" he faltered with his dying breath.
Duke Leopold, who was pushing through the confused throng, heard him and caught the banner from his dying hand. Again it waved aloft, but now crimsoned with the blood of its defender.
The Swiss, determined to capture it, pressed upon its princely bearer, surrounded him, cut down on every side the warriors who sought to defend him and the standard.
"Since so many nobles and knights have ended their days in my cause, let me honorably follow them," cried the despairing duke, and in a moment he rushed into the midst of the hostile ranks, vanishing from the eyes of his attendants. Blows rained on his iron mail. In the pressure of the crowd he fell to the earth. While seeking to raise himself again in his heavy armor, he cried, in his helpless plight, to a Swiss soldier, who had approached him with raised weapon,—
"I am the Prince of Austria."
The man either heard not his words, or took no heed of princes. The weapon descended with a mortal blow. Duke Leopold of Austria was dead.
The body of the slain duke was found by a knight, Martin Malterer, who bore the banner of Freiburg. On recognizing him, he stood like one petrified, let the banner fall from his hand, and then threw himself on the body of the prince, that it might not be trampled under foot by the contending forces. In this position he soon received his own death-wound.
By this time the state of the Austrians was pitiable. The signal for retreat was given, and in utter terror and dismay they fled for their horses. Alas, too late! The attendants, seeing the condition of their masters, and filled with equal terror, had mounted the horses, and were already in full flight.
Nothing remained for the knights, oppressed with their heavy armor, exhausted with thirst and fatigue, half suffocated with the scorching heat, assailed on every side by the light-armed and nimble Swiss, but to sell their lives as dearly as possible. In a short time more all was at an end. The last of the Austrians fell. On that fatal field there had met their death, at the hands of the small body of Swiss, no less than six hundred and fifty-six knights, barons, and counts, together with thousands of their men-at-arms.
Thus ended the battle of Sempach, with its signal victory to the Swiss, one of the most striking which history records, if we consider the great disproportion in numbers and in warlike experience and military equipment of the combatants. It secured to Switzerland the liberty for which they had so valiantly struck at Morgarten seventy years before.
But all Switzerland was not yet free, and more blows were needed to win its full liberty. The battle of Næfels, in 1388, added to the width of the free zone. In this the peasants of Glarus rolled stones on the Austrian squadrons, and set fire to the bridges over which they fled, two thousand five hundred of the enemy, including a great number of nobles, being slain. In the same year the peasants of Valais defeated the Earl of Savoy at Visp, putting four thousand of his men to the sword. The citizens of St. Gall, infuriated by the tyranny of the governor of the province of Schwendi, broke into insurrection, attacked the castle of Schwendi, and burnt it to the ground. The governor escaped. All the castles in the vicinity were similarly dealt with, and the whole district set free.
Shortly after 1400 the citizens of St. Gall joined with the peasants against their abbot, who ruled them with a hand of iron. The Swabian cities were asked to decide the dispute, and decided that cities could only confederate with cities, not with peasants, thus leaving the Appenzellers to their fate. At this decision the herdsmen rose in arms, defeated abbot and citizens both, and set their country free, all the neighboring peasantry joining their band of liberty. A few years later the people of this region joined the confederation, which now included nearly the whole of the Alpine country, and was strong enough to maintain its liberty for centuries thereafter. It was not again subdued until the legions of Napoleon trod over its mountain paths.
Sigismund, Emperor of Germany, had sworn to put an end to the Hussite rebellion in Bohemia, and to punish the rebels in a way that would make all future rebels tremble. But Sigismund was pursuing the old policy of cooking the hare before it was caught. He forgot that the indomitable John Ziska and the iron-flailed peasantry stood between him and his vow. He had first to conquer the reformers before he could punish them, and this was to prove no easy task.
The dreadful work of religious war began with the burning of Hussite preachers who had ventured from Bohemia into Germany. This was an argument which Ziska thoroughly understood, and he retorted by destroying the Bohemian monasteries, and burning the priests alive in barrels of pitch. "They are singing my sister's wedding song," exclaimed the grim barbarian, on hearing their cries of torture. Queen Sophia, widow of Wenceslas, the late king, who had garrisoned all the royal castles, now sent a strong body of troops against the reformers. The army came up with the multitude, which was largely made up of women and children, on the open plain near Pilsen. The cavalry charged upon the seemingly helpless mob. But Ziska was equal to the occasion. He ordered the women to strew the ground with their gowns and veils, and the horses' feet becoming entangled in these, numbers of the riders were thrown, and the trim lines of the troops broken.
Seeing the confusion into which they had been thrown, Ziska gave the order to charge, and in a short time the army that was to defeat him was flying in a panic across the plain, a broken and beaten mob. Another army marched against him, and was similarly defeated; and the citizens of Prague, finding that no satisfactory terms could be made with the emperor, recalled Ziska, and entered into alliance with him. The one-eyed patriot was now lord of the land, all Bohemia being at his beck and call.
Meanwhile Sigismund, the emperor, was slowly gathering his forces to invade the rebellious land. The reign of cruelty continued, each side treating its prisoners barbarously. The Imperialists branded theirs with a cup, the Hussites theirs with a cross, on their foreheads. The citizens of Breslau joined those of Prague, and emulated them by flinging their councillors out of the town-house windows. In return the German miners of Kuttenberg threw sixteen hundred Hussites down the mines. Such is religious war, the very climax of cruelty.
In June, 1420, the threatened invasion came. Sigismund led an army, one hundred thousand strong, into the revolted land, fulminating vengeance as he marched. He reached Prague and entered the castle of Wisherad, which commanded it. Ziska fortified the mountain of Witlow (now called Ziskaberg), which also commanded the city. Sigismund, finding that he had been outgeneralled, and that his opponent held the controlling position, waited and temporized, amusing himself meanwhile by assuming the crown of Bohemia, and sowing dissension in his army by paying the Slavonian and Hungarian troops with the jewels taken from the royal palaces and the churches, while leaving the Germans unpaid. The Germans, furious, marched away. The emperor was obliged to follow. The ostentatious invasion was at an end, and scarcely a blow had been struck.
But Sigismund had no sooner gone than trouble arose in Prague. The citizens, the nobility, and Ziska's followers were all at odds. The Taborites—those strict republicans and religious reformers who had made Mount Tabor their head-quarters—were in power, and ruled the city with a rod of iron, destroying all the remaining splendor of the churches and sternly prohibiting every display of ostentation by the people. Death was named as the punishment for such venial faults as dancing, gambling, or the wearing of rich attire. The wine-cellars were rigidly closed. Church property was declared public property, and it looked as if private wealth would soon be similarly viewed. The peasants declared that it was their mission to exterminate sin from the earth.
This tyranny so incensed the nobles and citizens that they rose in self-defence, and Ziska, finding that Prague had grown too hot to hold him, deemed it prudent to lead his men away. Sigismund took immediate advantage of the opportunity by marching on Prague. But, quick as he was, there were others quicker. The more moderate section of the reformers, the so-called Horebites,—from Mount Horeb, another place of assemblage,—entered the city, led by Hussinez, Huss's former lord, and laid siege to the royal fortress, the Wisherad. Sigismund attempted to surprise him, but met with so severe a repulse that he fled into Hungary, and the Wisherad was forced to capitulate, this ancient palace and its church, both splendid works of art, being destroyed. Step by step the art and splendor of Bohemia were vanishing in this despotic struggle between heresy and the papacy.
As the war went on, Ziska, its controlling spirit, grew steadily more abhorrent of privilege and distinction, more bitterly fanatical. The ancient church, royalty, nobility, all excited his wrath. He was republican, socialist, almost anarchist in his views. His idea of perfection lay in a fraternity composed of the children of God, while he trusted to the strokes of the iron flail to bear down all opposition to his theory of society. The city of Prachaticz treated him with mockery, and was burnt to the ground, with all its inhabitants. The Bishop of Nicopolis fell into his hands, and was flung into the river. As time went on, his war of extermination against sinners—that is, all who refused to join his banner—grew more cruel and unrelenting. Each city that resisted was stormed and ruined, its inhabitants slaughtered, its priests burned. Hussite virtue had degenerated into tyranny of the worst type. Yet, while thus fanatical himself, Ziska would not permit his followers to indulge in insane excesses of religious zeal. A party arose which claimed that the millennium was at hand, and that it was their duty to anticipate the coming of the innocence of Paradise, by going naked, like Adam and Eve. These Adamites committed the maddest excesses, but found a stern enemy in Ziska, who put them down with an unsparing hand.
In 1421 Sigismund again roused himself to activity, incensed by the Hussite defiance of his authority. He incited the Silesians to invade Bohemia, and an army of twenty thousand poured into the land, killing all before them,—men, women, and children. Yet such was the terror that the very name of Ziska now excited, that the mere rumor of his approach sent these invaders flying across the borders.
But, in the midst of his career of triumph, an accident came to the Bohemian leader which would have incapacitated any less resolute man from military activity. During the siege of the castle of Raby a splinter struck his one useful eye and completely deprived him of sight. It did not deprive him of power and energy. Most men, under such circumstances, would have retired from army leadership, but John Ziska was not of that calibre. He knew Bohemia so thoroughly that the whole land lay accurately mapped out in his mind. He continued to lead his army, to marshal his men in battle array, to command them in the field and the siege, despite his blindness, always riding in a carriage, close to the great standard, and keeping in immediate touch with all the movements of the war.
Blind as he was, he increased rather than diminished the severity of his discipline, and insisted on rigid obedience to his commands. As an instance of this we are told that, on one occasion, having compelled his troops to march day and night, as was his custom, they murmured and said,—
"Day and night are the same to you, as you cannot see; but they are not the same to us."
"How!" he cried. "You cannot see! Well, set fire to a couple of villages."
The blind warrior was soon to have others to deal with than his Bohemian foes. Sigismund had sent forward another army, which, in September, 1421, invaded the country. It was driven out by the mere rumor of Ziska's approach, the soldiers flying in haste on the vague report of his coming. But in November the emperor himself came, leading a horde of eighty thousand Hungarians, Servians, and others, savage fellows, whose approach filled the moderate party of the Bohemians with terror. Ziska's men had such confidence in their blind chief as to be beyond terror. They were surrounded by the enemy, and enclosed in what seemed a trap. But under Ziska's orders they made a night attack on the foe, broke through their lines, and, to the emperor's discomfiture, were once more free.
On New Year's day, 1422, the two armies came face to face near Zollin. Ziska drew up his men in battle array and confidently awaited the attack of the enemy. But the inflexible attitude of his men, the terror of his name, or one of those inexplicable influences which sometimes affect armies, filled the Hungarians with a sudden panic, and they vanished from the front of the Bohemians without a blow. Once more the emperor and the army which he had led into the country with such high confidence of success were in shameful flight, and the terrible example which he had vowed to make of Bohemia was still unaccomplished.
The blind chief vigorously and relentlessly pursued, overtaking the fugitives on January 8 near Deutschbrod. Terrified at his approach, they sought to escape by crossing the stream at that place on the ice. The ice gave way, and numbers of them were drowned. Deutschbrod was burned and its inhabitants slaughtered in Ziska's cruel fashion.
This repulse put an end to invasions of Bohemia while Ziska lived. There were intestine disturbances which needed to be quelled, and then the army of the reformers was led beyond the boundaries of the country and assailed the imperial dominions, but the emperor held aloof. He had had enough of the blind terror of Bohemia, the indomitable Ziska and his iron-flailed peasants. New outbreaks disturbed Bohemia. Ambitious nobles aspired to the kingship, but their efforts were vain. The army of the iron flail quickly put an end to all such hopes.
In 1423 Ziska invaded Moravia and Austria, to keep his troops employed, and lost severely in doing so. In 1424 his enemies at home again made head against him, led an army into the field, and pursued him to Kuttenberg. Here he ordered his men to feign a retreat, then, while the foe were triumphantly advancing, he suddenly turned, had his battle-chariot driven furiously down the mountain-side upon their lines, and during the confusion thus caused ordered an attack in force. The enemy were repulsed, their artillery was captured, and Kuttenberg set in flames, as Ziska's signal of triumph.
Shortly afterwards, his enemies at home being thoroughly beaten, the indomitable blind chief marched upon Prague, the head-quarters of his foes, and threatened to burn this city to the ground. He might have done so, too, but for his own men, who broke into sedition at the threat.
Procop, Ziska's bravest captain, advised peace, to put an end to the disasters of civil war. His advice was everywhere re-echoed, the demand for peace seemed unanimous, Ziska alone opposing it. Mounting a cask, and facing his discontented followers, he exclaimed,—
"Fear internal more than external foes. It is easier for a few, when united, to conquer, than for many, when disunited. Snares are laid for you; you will be entrapped, but it will not be my fault."
Despite his harangue, however, peace was concluded between the contending factions, and a large monument raised in commemoration thereof, both parties heaping up stones. Ziska entered the city in solemn procession, and was met with respect and admiration by the citizens. Prince Coribut, the leader of the opposite party and the aspirant to the crown, came to meet him, embraced him, and called him father. The triumph of the blind chief over his internal foes was complete.
It seemed equally complete over his external foes. Sigismund, unable to conquer him by force of arms, now sought to mollify him by offers of peace, and entered into negotiations with the stern old warrior. But Ziska was not to be placated. He could not trust the man who had broken his plighted word and burned John Huss, and he remained immovable in his hostility to Germany. Planning a fresh attack on Moravia, he began his march thither. But now he met a conquering enemy against whose arms there was no defence. Death encountered him on the route, and carried him off October 12, 1424.
Thus ends the story of an extraordinary man, and the history of a series of remarkable events. Of all the peasant outbreaks, of which there were so many during the mediæval period, the Bohemian was the only one—if we except the Swiss struggle for liberty—that attained measurable success. This was due in part to the fact that it was a religious instead of an industrial revolt, and thus did not divide the country into sharp ranks of rich and poor; and in greater part to the fact that it had an able leader, one of those men of genius who seem born for great occasions. John Ziska, the blind warrior, leading his army to victory after victory, stands alone in the gallery of history. There were none like him, before or after.
He is pictured as a short, broad-shouldered man, with a large, round, and bald head. His forehead was deeply furrowed, and he wore a long moustache of a fiery red hue. This, with his blind eye and his final complete blindness, yields a well-defined image of the man, that fanatical, remorseless, indomitable, and unconquerable avenger of the martyred Huss, the first successful opponent of the doctrines of the church of Rome whom history records.
The conclusion of the story of the Hussites may be briefly given. For years they held their own, under two leaders, known as Procop Holy and Procop the Little, defying the emperor, and at times invading the empire. The pope preached a crusade against them, but the army of invasion was defeated, and Silesia and Austria were invaded in reprisal by Procop Holy.
Seven years after the death of Ziska an army of invasion again entered Bohemia, so strong in numbers that it seemed as if that war-drenched land must fall before it. In its ranks were one hundred and thirty thousand men, led by Frederick of Brandenburg. Their purposes were seen in their actions. Every village reached was burned, till two hundred had been given to the flames. Horrible excesses were committed. On August 14, 1431, the two armies, the Hussite and the Imperialist, came face to face near Tauss. The disproportion in numbers was enormous, and it looked as if the small force of Bohemians would be swallowed up in the multitude of their foes. But barely was the Hussite banner seen in the distance when the old story was told over again, the Germans broke into sudden panic, and fled en masse from the field. The Bavarians were the first to fly, and all the rest speedily followed. Frederick of Brandenburg and his troops took refuge in a wood. The Cardinal Julian, who had preached a crusade against Bohemia, succeeded for a time in rallying the fugitives, but at the first onset of the Hussites they again took to flight, suffering themselves to be slaughtered without resistance. The munitions of war were abandoned to the foe, including one hundred and fifty cannon.
It was an extraordinary affair, but in truth the flight was less due to terror than to disinclination of the German soldiers to fight the Hussites, whose cause they deemed to be just and glorious, and the influence of whose opinions had spread far beyond the Bohemian border. Rome was losing its hold over the mind of northern Europe outside the limits of the land of Huss and Ziska.
Negotiations for peace followed. The Bohemians were invited to Bâsle, being granted a safe-conduct, and promised free exercise of their religion coming and going, while no words of ridicule or reproach were to be permitted. On January 9, 1433, three hundred Bohemians, mounted on horseback, entered Bâsle, accompanied by an immense multitude. It was a very different entrance from that of Huss to Constance, nearly twenty years before, and was to have a very different termination. Procop Holy headed the procession, accompanied by others of the Bohemian leaders. A signal triumph had come to the party of religious reform, after twenty years of struggle.
For fifty days the negotiations continued. Neither side would yield. In the end, the Bohemians, weary of the protracted and fruitless debate, took to their horses again, and set out homewards. This brought their enemies to terms. An embassy was hastily sent after them, and all their demands were conceded, though with certain reservations that might prove perilous in the future. They went home triumphant, having won freedom of religious worship according to their ideas of right and truth.
They had not long reached home when dissensions again broke out. The emperor took advantage of them, accepted the crown of Bohemia, entered Prague, and at once reinstated the Catholic religion. The fanatics flew to arms, but after a desperate struggle were annihilated. The Bohemian struggle was at an end. In the following year the emperor Sigismund died, having lived just long enough to win success in his long conflict. The martyrdom of Huss, the valor and zeal of Ziska, appeared to have been in vain. Yet they were not so, for the seeds they had sown bore fruit in the following century in a great sectarian revolt which affected all Christendom and permanently divided the Church.
The empire of Rome finally reached its end, not in the fifth century, as ordinarily considered, but in the fifteenth; not at Rome, but at Constantinople, where the Eastern empire survived the Western for a thousand years. At length, in 1453, the Turks captured Constantinople, set a broad foot upon the degenerate empire of the East, and crushed out the last feeble remnants of life left in the pygmy successor of the colossus of the past.
And now Europe, which had looked on with clasped hands while the Turks swept over the Bosphorus and captured Constantinople, suddenly awoke to the peril of its situation. A blow in time might have saved the Greek empire. The blow had not been struck, and now Europe had itself to save. Terror seized upon the nations which had let their petty intrigues stand in the way of that broad policy in which safety lay, for they could not forget past instances of Asiatic invasion. The frightful ravages wrought by the Huns and the Avars were far in the past, but no long time had elapsed since the coming of the Magyars and the Mongols, and now here was another of those hordes of murderous barbarians, hanging like a cloud of war on the eastern skirt of Europe, and threatening to rain death and ruin upon the land. The dread of the nations was not amiss. They had neglected to strengthen the eastern barrier to the Turkish avalanche. Now it threatened their very doors, and they must meet it at home.
The Turks were not long in making their purpose evident. Within two years after the fall of Constantinople they were on the march again, and had laid siege to Belgrade, the first obstacle in their pathway to universal conquest. The Turkish cannons were thundering at the doors of Europe. Belgrade fallen, Vienna would come next, and the march of the barbarians might only end at the sea.
And yet, despite their danger, the people of Germany remained supine. Hungary had valiantly defended itself against the Turks ten years before, without aid from the German empire. It looked now as if Belgrade might be left to its fate. The brave John Hunyades and his faithful Hungarians were the only bulwarks of Europe against the foe, for the people seemed incapable of seeing a danger a thousand miles away. The pope and his legate John Capistrano, general of the Capuchins, were the only aids to the valiant Hunyades in his vigorous defence. They preached a crusade, but with little success. Capistrano traversed Germany, eloquently calling the people to arms against the barbarians. The result was similar to that on previous occasions, the real offenders were neglected, the innocent suffered. The people, instead of arming against the Turks, turned against the Jews, and murdered them by thousands. Whatever happened in Europe,—a plague, an invasion, a famine, a financial strait,—that unhappy people were in some way held responsible, and mediæval Europe seemed to think it could, at any time, check the frightful career of a comet or ward off pestilence by slaughtering a few thousands of Jews. It cannot be said that it worked well on this occasion; the Jews died, but the Turks surrounded Belgrade still.
Capistrano found no military ardor in Germany, in princes or people. The princes contented themselves with ordering prayers and ringing the Turkish bells, as they were called. The people were as supine as their princes. He did, however, succeed, by the aid of his earnest eloquence, in gathering a force of a few thousands of peasants, priests, scholars, and the like; a motley host who were chiefly armed with iron flails and pitchforks, but who followed him with an enthusiasm equal to his own. With this shadow of an army he joined Hunyades, and the combined force made its way in boats down the Danube into the heart of Hungary, and approached the frontier fortress which Mahomet II. was besieging with a host of one hundred and sixty thousand men, and which its defender, the brother-in-law of John Hunyades, had nearly given up for lost.
On came the flotilla,—the peasants with their flails and forks and Hunyades with his trained soldiers,—and attacked the Turkish fleet with such furious energy that it was defeated and dispersed, and the allied forces made their way into the beleaguered city. Capistrano and his followers were full of enthusiasm. He was a second Peter the Hermit, his peasant horde were crusaders, fierce against the infidels, disdaining death in God's cause; neither leader nor followers had a grain of military knowledge or experience, but they had, what is sometimes better, courage and enthusiasm.
John Hunyades had military experience, and looked with cold disfavor on the burning and blind zeal of his new recruits. He was willing that they should aid him in repelling the furious attacks of the Turks, but to his trained eyes an attack on the well-intrenched camp of the enemy would have been simple madness, and he sternly forbade any such suicidal course, even threatening death to whoever should attempt it.
In truth, his caution seemed reasonable. An immense host surrounded the city on the land side, and had done so on the water side, also, until the Christian flotilla had sunk, captured, and dispersed its boats. Far as the eye could see, the gorgeously-embellished tents of the Turkish army, with their gilded crescents glittering in the sun, filled the field of view. Cannon-mounted earthworks threatened the walls from every quarter. Squadrons of steel-clad horsemen swept the field. The crowding thousands of besiegers pressed the city day and night. Even defence seemed useless. Assault on such a host appeared madness to experienced eyes. Hunyades seemed wise in his stern disapproval of such an idea.
Yet military knowledge has its limitations, when it fails to take into account the power of enthusiasm. Blind zeal is a force whose possibilities a general does not always estimate. It is capable of performing miracles, as Hunyades was to learn. His orders, his threats of death, had no restraining effect on the minds of the crusaders. They had come to save Europe from the Turks, and they were not to be stayed by orders or threats. What though the enemy greatly outnumbered them, and had cannons and scimitars against their pikes and flails, had they not God on their side, and should God's army pause to consider numbers and cannon-balls? They were not to be restrained; attack they would, and attack they did.
The siege had made great progress. The reinforcement had come barely in time. The walls were crumbling under the incessant bombardment. Convinced that he had made a practicable breach, Mahomet, the sultan, ordered an assault in force. The Turks advanced, full of barbarian courage, climbed the crumbled walls, and broke, as they supposed, into the town, only to find new walls frowning before them. The vigorous garrison had built new defences behind the old ones, and the disheartened assailants learned that they had done their work in vain.
This repulse greatly discouraged the sultan. He was still more discouraged when the crusaders, irrepressible in their hot enthusiasm, broke from the city and made a fierce attack upon his works. Capistrano, seeing that they were not to be restrained, put himself at their head, and with a stick in one hand and a crucifix in the other, led them to the assault. It proved an irresistible one. The Turks could not sustain themselves against these flail-swinging peasants. One intrenchment after another fell into their hands, until three had been stormed and taken. Their success inspired Hunyades. Filled with a new respect for his peasant allies, and seeing that now or never was the time to strike, he came to their aid with his cavalry, and fell so suddenly and violently upon the Turkish rear that the invaders were put to rout.
Onward pushed the crusaders and their allies; backward went the Turks. The remaining intrenchments were stubbornly defended, but that storm of iron flails, those pikes and pitchforks, wielded by the zeal of enthusiasts, were not to be resisted, and in the end all that remained of the Turkish army broke into panic flight, the sultan himself being wounded, and more than twenty thousand of his men left dead upon the field.
It was a signal victory. Miraculous almost, when one considers the great disproportion of numbers. The works of the invaders, mounted with three hundred cannon, and their camp, which contained an immense booty, fell into the hands of the Christians, and the power of Mahomet II. was so crippled that years passed before he was in condition to attempt a second invasion of Europe.
The victors were not long to survive their signal triumph. The valiant Hunyades died shortly after the battle, from wounds received in the action or from fatal disease. Capistrano died in the same year (1456). Hunyades left two sons, and the King of Hungary repaid his services by oppressing both, and beheading one of these sons. But the king himself died during the next year, and Matthias Corvinus, the remaining son of Hunyades, was placed by the Hungarians on their throne. They had given their brave defender the only reward in their power.
If the victory of Hunyades and Capistrano—the nobleman and the monk—had been followed up by the princes of Europe, the Turks might have been driven from Constantinople, Europe saved from future peril at their hands, and the tide of subsequent history gained a cleaner and purer flow. But nothing was done; the princes were too deeply interested in their petty squabbles to entertain large views, and the Turks were suffered to hold the empire of the East, and quietly to recruit their forces for later assaults.