The fiery Pope, however, was determined to make one last appeal to arms; and this time he chose an Italian cardinal, Giuliano Cesarini, to organise a crusade. Before the crusade could start, Martin V. died; but Cesarini was as determined as the Pope had been on leading the expedition to its triumph. The Margrave of Brandenburg was again appointed commander, though the suspicions which his previous flight had caused were so great, that the Cardinal and the Electors insisted on checking his power by a Council of Nine. Sigismund declared his approval of the crusade, and then wrote to Prague to assure the citizens of his desire for peace.
In the meantime Procop had rallied his forces and advanced to the borders of Bavaria; but they waited so long for the enemy that their food began to fail, and some of the troops dropped off to forage for supplies. The Germans, encouraged by this laxity, once more advanced to the town of Tachov. The Cardinal desired them to storm the town; but the generals decided to delay the attack; and the townsmen succeeded in so well fortifying the town that the German army abandoned the siege, and finally retreated to Taus (Domaz̆lic̆e). In the meantime the Bohemians had collected their forces, and on Aug. 14, 1431, they advanced towards Domaz̆lic̆e, singing one of their favourite hymns, “Kdoz̆ jste Boz̆i bojovnici”—“Ye who are the soldiers of the Lord.” The Cardinal went up the hill to consult the Duke of Saxony about the arrangements of the battle, when suddenly he observed a strange confusion, and heard loud cries in the camp of the Margrave of Brandenburg. Soon after, Frederick himself came hastily to him, to tell him that his army was in full flight and could not be checked. The panic quickly spread; and this time it was so complete, that even the waggons and firearms were left behind; while among the spoil the Bohemians had the satisfaction of finding, not only the coat and crucifix of Cardinal Cesarini, but even the Papal Bull sanctioning the crusade against Bohemia. So ended the fifth and last attempt to crush out the Hussite heresy by force; and it was now to be tried whether the Doctors of the Church could succeed in convincing the heretics who could not be conquered by the sword.
XI.
FROM THE OPENING OF THE COUNCIL OF BASEL TO THE FALL OF TABOR.
(1437-1452.)
The Council of Basel seemed to many to be the natural result of the Council of Constance. The conception of a constitutional check on the power of the Popes, and of a better provision for the orderly government of the Church, was an idea which had become familiar to the leading theologians of Europe during the bitter ecclesiastical divisions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. And it must be remembered that, however unsatisfactory the results of the Council of Constance may seem to us, the dignity of its members and the apparent vigour of its action left a very different impression on the minds of many of its contemporaries. It had succeeded in deposing and electing Popes; it had burnt the heretics whom it had condemned; it had found princes ready to enforce its decrees by fire and sword. And if that last exercise of its power had ended in failure and disgrace, it might be plausibly urged that the greater part of the war which it had initiated had been carried on after the dissolution of the Council itself; and it was held therefore by many that the summoning of a similar Council would revive an influence in Europe more capable than the Pope’s of crushing out heresy and restoring power to the Church. It was just this consciousness of the popular expectation from the new Council which strengthened the opposition of Martin V. to the demand for its convocation. He may, no doubt, have honestly believed that his personal initiative was more likely to produce the desired effect on the crusaders than the necessarily divided counsels of a large body of princes and clergy. But at the same time he was very anxious that the experiment should not be tried of setting up so dangerous a rival to the Papal authority.
For the time, however, the feeling of the orthodox world seemed, with few exceptions, to be overwhelmingly opposed to his; and, even before his death, the Council of Basel had already begun its deliberations. But, from an early stage in the preparations for the Council, a very different conception had been put forward of the purposes for which it might be used. The Utraquists had from the first maintained that they had not had a fair hearing before the Council of Constance; and their early victories had roused a hope that some less partial tribunal might give them that opportunity of discussion of which they had been defrauded. In the dispute after the battle of the Z̆iz̆ka Hill, they had had a taste of those delights of argument for which they hungered; and the later victories of Z̆iz̆ka had induced Ulric of Rosenberg to demand, and Sigismund to promise, that even the Taborites should have their share in such a discussion.