ingly short duration. Žižka appears from the first to have disapproved of it, and when the Praguers and their allies entered Moravia (end of July 1423) to aid the utraquists of that country against their old enemy John "the Iron," now bishop of Olomonc, the Taborites took no part in the expedition.
The Bohemian arms were on the whole victorious in Moravia, but troubles at home soon prevented the patriot army from pursuing its advantages. The town of Kralové Hradec had from the first warmly upheld the Calixtine cause. The governor of the castle, Bořek of Miletinck, who held supreme authority in the city, was leader of the Bohemian troops then engaged in warfare in Moravia.
During his absence a democratic movement broke out in the town of Kralové Hradec, and the citizens applied for aid to Žižka; they asserted that Bořek of Miletinck (who had been appointed governor by Prince Sigismund Korybut) no longer had any right to claim lordship over their city, since the prince who had appointed him had left Bohemia. Žižka received their request favourably, and consented to become their leader. This caused an internal conflict more serious than any that had as yet occurred during the Hussite wars.
Bořek of Miletinck, with his army of Praguers and utraquist lords, abandoned their conquests in Moravia, and speedily returned to Bohemia to oppose the Taborites. A sanguinary encounter took place near Kralové Hradec (not far from the more celebrated battle-field of 1866),[1] in which the Taborites decisively defeated the moderate or Calixtine party. The contemporary writers mention this battle with great sorrow, as here "ark was ranged against ark."[2] One of the prisoners—a priest who had carried the monstrance before the soldiers of Prague—was brought before Žižka, who exclaiming, "Thus will I consecrate these priests of the Praguers," struck him on the head with a club so fiercely that he died.[3]
- ↑ The battle of Kralové Hradec, or Königgrätz, is, I think, better known in England under the name of the battle of Sadova.
- ↑ The utraquist priests of all denominations were at that period in the habit of carrying the holy sacrament before the troops in the moment of battle, and it had become habitual to call the monstrance "the ark," in conformity with the great predilection for Old Testament expressions that was so general in Bohemia at that time.
- ↑ Bienenberg, Geschichte der Stadt Königgräatz.
