to resist the onslaught of King Sigismund. In accordance with the king, Pope Martin V had, on March 1, 1420, proclaimed a crusade against Bohemia, calling the whole Christian world to arms against that nation, and promising the usual indulgences. A great number of German princes joined Sigismund at Breslau to concert as to the coming campaign, and volunteers from almost every country of Europe rallied round the standard of the cross.
When the news of the intended crusade reached Bohemia indignation was general. For a time even the most moderate utraquists were prepared to resist the attacks of King Sigismund. The terms of crusade, which, it was said, should only have been employed in warfare against pagans or Mahomedans, and which stigmatized the whole country as heretical, incensed every Bohemian against Sigismund, to whose influence the decree was attributed. The highest official of the land, Čeněk of Wartenberg, had been present at the deliberations of Breslau, but now thoroughly aware of the feelings of the court of Sigismund, he decided "as a Bohemian and a Hussite" to throw in his cause with that of his country. He concluded an alliance with the Praguers, and issued a proclamation to the country in the name of the whole utraquist nobility. This document warned all Bohemians and Moravians against obeying any orders of Sigismund, King of Germany and Hungary, who was the enemy of the Bohemian nation, and who had not been crowned king (of Bohemia).
The consequences of this proclamation probably went far beyond the expectations of Wartenberg. The whole people of Bohemia rose in arms, and in many places vented their rage on the papal clergy. Large numbers of churches and convents in all parts of Bohemia were plundered and burnt, and in retribution of the cruelties of the Catholics at Kutna Hora and elsewhere, several Catholic priests and monks suffered the same death as Hus.
Sigismund, whose allies were slowly moving onward from all countries, had meanwhile entered Bohemia from Silesia, and captured the town of Králove Hradec without much resistance. From there he marched to Kutna Hora, where the German inhabitants had already proved themselves zealous adherents of the papal cause.
The cruelties practised on Catholic priests, and the barbarous destruction of churches and convents, which
