contained most of the finest art treasures of Bohemia, caused great displeasure to the more moderate opponents of the papal cause. When Sigismund, therefore, sent envoys to Prague to treat for a truce in view of a pacification of the country, he found a willing hearing with Čeněk of Wartenberg. Čeněk, deserting the party he had so recently joined, concluded a private, and at first secret, treaty with the king. On the conditions of an amnesty for himself and for his children, and the guarantee of freedom to all the tenants on his estates to continue to receive communion in both kinds, he abandoned the cause of the Praguers, and even admitted the king's troops into the royal castle on the Hradčany. The first result of this step was a renewal of the street-fighting at Prague, as the citizens attempted to storm the castle, but were repulsed by the troops of Čeněk. An attack the Praguers made on the Vyšehrad castle was also repulsed by the garrison which held it for King Sigismund. During these repeated struggles in the streets a large part of the "small quarter" (Malá Strana) of Prague, and of that part of the "new town" which lies at the foot of the Vyšehrad were burnt.
These events inspired the citizens with a desire for peace, and they decided to send envoys to Sigismund. The king, who was then at Kutna Hora in the midst of a population entirely devoted to the papal cause, not improbably, judging the general feeling by his immediate surroundings, over-rated the strength of that party. He received the deputies of Prague very haughtily, and again ordered them to remove all the street barricades, and to deliver up all their arms to his troops in the castles of Hradčany and Vyšehrad. It was only after every show of resistance had ceased that the king was prepared to let the citizens know what degree of mercy would be shown them.
This demand of unconditional surrender could not even be considered by the envoys of Prague, who were indeed among the most moderate adherents of the utraquist party, but who had at home to fear the opposition of a large part of the townsmen, headed by many of the priests, and these had from the first declared all hopes of an agreement with Sigismund to be futile. War to death became the watchword, and the Praguers applied for aid to all the nobles and towns who had not already submitted to Sigismund. Their most important decision, however, was to sink all difference
