16 June 1426, from midday
The sally and the flight
The Hussites drive the knights out of the ring, open the wagons and come out with horse and foot. The townsmen and peasant levies of the relief army flee first, and the nobles fight on as the rear guard. By the Old Czech Annals, 24 counts and lords kneel with their swords stuck in the ground to surrender and are killed where they kneel. Part of the horse escapes north-east to Hrbovice and Předlice, where the Hussites surround the villages and set them on fire.
Jakoubek of Vřesovice tries to carry off the wounded lord of Waldenburg on his horse, as the Old Czech Annals tell it, drawing by Věnceslav Černý, 1926Wikimedia Commons, Věnceslav Černý, Public domain (Jakoubek of Vřesovice trying to save old Waldenburg, who is hit in his back, on his horse (V. Černý).png)
The Hussite horse pursues the fugitives for a mile and a half towards the Ore Mountains. Bartošek of Drahonice counts about 2,000 killed in the pursuit and as many dead of heat and exhaustion, and later chroniclers give 6,000 to 50,000. Among the dead are the counts Ernst and Frederick of Gleichen, Henry of Hartenstein, the last burgrave of Meissen, and the count of Beichlingen. The Hussites lose 19 men by the Old Czech Annals. Lützow records the tradition that the brook below the hill and the pond it runs into turned red, and that the pond was afterwards called the Blutteich, the pond of blood.
After the battle of Ústí, drawing by Mikoláš AlešWikimedia Commons, Mikoláš Aleš, Public domain (Mikoláš Aleš; Po bitvě u Ústí.jpg)
Prokop wants to follow the beaten army across the border, but the Praguers and the lords turn back to Ústí. Its garrison and many burghers flee, and the next day the town is stormed, plundered and burned. Jakoubek of Vřesovice holds it for the next ten years.
Lake Milada, the flooded brown coal mine that took the southern part of Běhání hillWikimedia Commons, RomanM82, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Jezero Milada - západní břeh obr01.jpg)
Sources
- Petr Čornej and Pavel Bělina, Slavné bitvy naší historie (1993), pp. 68 to 74.
- Count Lützow, The Hussite Wars (1914), ch. 5.
- Jan Durdík, Husitské vojenství (1953), pp. 153 to 156.
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