OVERTHROW OP THE TABORITES. 535 It is not likely that any results would have been reached but for events which at lirst seemed to threaten the continuance of the negotiations. The Taborites could only have consented to treat on the basis, so inadequate to them, of the four articles, in the con- fidence that the practical application would cover a vastly wider sphere. After the preUminary agreement of November 26 the |. construction assumed by the legates of the council made them ••• draw back. The affair was reaching a conclusion, and it was necessary to have a definite understanding of that to which they were binding themselves. After the departure of the legates from Prague, m January, 1434, hot discussions arose between them and the Calixtins as to the continuance of the negotiations There were political as well as religious differences between them The Taborites were mostly peasants and poor folk ; they wanted no nobles or gentlemen in their ranks, and seem to have had repub- hcan tendencies, as they desired to add to the four articles two others, providing for the independence of Bohemia and for the re . tention of all confiscated property. Both parties became exasper- T ated, and flew to arms for a contest decisive as to their respective mastery. The Taborites had for some time been besieging Risen a city which held out for Sigismund. Learning that their friends' m the Neustadt of Prague had been slaughtered without distinc- tion of age or sex, to the number, it is said, of twenty-two thou- sand, they raised the siege. May 9, to take vengeance on the city but after a demonstration before it, they withdrew towards Mora' via. Meanwhile the Calixtins had formed an aUiance with the Catholic barons, who had been liberally subsidized by the council and followed them with a formidable force. The shock came at Lipan, on Sunday, May 30. AU day and night the battle raged and until the third hour of Monday morning. When it was over' Procopius, Lupus, and thirteen thousand of the bravest Taborites lay dead upon the field, and the murderous nature of the strife is seen in the fact that but seven hundred prisoners were taken though we may question the claim of the victors that the battle cost them but two hundred men, and we may hope that there is in Prague infantile communion w^forbidden by the legate of the council oa he ground that the Compactata only guaranteed the privilege to those who had been accustomed to it, and that infants born since then were therefore not en- titled to it.-Jo. de Turonis Regest. (Mon. C. Gen. Ssc. XV T I p 865)
