Page:Lectures on The Historians of Bohemia by Count Lutzow (1905).djvu/58

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
46
LAWRENCE OF BŘEZOV
[II

through the upper grounds along the high road, and thence to attack the army of Prague. They then attacked in both directions the Praguers who, though they were behind entrenchments, at first took to flight and crowded round the church of St. Pankrace. Then Lord Krušina[1], seeing this, addressed them in a loud voice, saying, “Dear brethren, turn back and be to-day brave soldiers in Christ’s war, for it is God’s not your own battle that you are fighting to-day; you will see that the Lord God will deliver into your hands all His enemies and your own.” Hardly had he finished speaking when some one cried out: “The enemies fly! they fly!” Hearing this they all rushed manfully forward, drove the enemies from the entrenchments and turned them to flight. The Praguers and the nobles, who were on their side, struck down cruelly those who were flying, some near the marshes and fishponds, many in the fields and vineyards.’

A few, however, were spared, for Březov writes somewhat later: ‘Lord Henry of Plumlov was mortally wounded and made a prisoner; he was conveyed to the cemetery of St. Pankrace, and expired there after receiving communion in the two kinds.’

Březov then gives a long list of the Moravian nobles who fell in this memorable battle. I will, however, only quote the last words of his account, obviously written just after he had visited the battlefield; he writes: ‘What man who was not more cruel than a pagan could pass through these fields and vineyards, and view the brave bodies of the dead without compassion? What Bohemian, unless he were a madman, could see these dainty and robust warriors, these men so curly-

  1. The leader of the national army.