Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/183

for differently are horsemen equipped and differently foot-soldiers, to whom it is an unaccustomed thing [to fight on horseback]; for if you wish to learn something, before you get used to it some time is required and a certain leisure.^[1] On the sixth^[2] day of the march he moved away from the slope, as he [Žižka] had to reach the hills;^[3] and he had on this day to form his wagons in but one column, for he could not advance in any other way. Then the Hungarians, seeing this, pursued him with large forces, hoping that neither his [military] organisation nor his order-of-battle would any longer avail him, and that his men would be obliged to leave the wagons, and he thus prepared his defence: he took up a position close to some forests under a hill, and this was done that, should they fire at him from their guns, they should overshoot them-selves. He himself with his artillery took up a position on the summit of this height. Then he ordered the horses from the wagons to be unharnessed and told his men to mount the horses, and he armed them with hatchets, shovels, and spades, that they might explore the road, whether it was in any way obstructed; this was done that the [Hungarian] horsemen should not attack his wagons from the flanks, and he ordered the road to be carefully repaired. Then when he had to march his men out of the forest he ordered a new road to be built at a distance of 1 1/2 ‘hons’^[4] from the old one on one side and also on the other, and this was done for the reason that if the enemies should overtake him, he could direct his guns and foot-soldiers to the old road, and if the enemies wanted to dispute his passage through the fields, through which he intended to leave the forests, he could in this way fire at

 

1. The meaning of this passage is that the distress in Žižka’s camp was caused by the fact that his soldiers were unable to leave their wagon-forts because of the superiority of the enemy’s cavalry. The passage also conveys the impression that Žižka may have thought of establishing some sort of mounted infantry.
2. Really the seventh.
3. i. e. the mountains which divide Hungary from Moravia.
4. An old Bohemian measure. See p. 106, n. 1.

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