14 July 1420, evening
The sally from the city
A priest carrying the sacrament leads out of the city about 50 shooters and peasants without armour, armed with flails, by Laurence of Březová, or several hundred people by the Old Czech Annals. They leave the New Town by the Mountain Gate and climb the vineyards on the south slope of Vítkov into the flank of the crusaders on the ridge.
After the Battle of Vítkov, by Alfons Mucha, from The Slav Epic, 1923Wikimedia Commons, Alfons Mucha, Public domain (Po bitvě na Vítkově.jpg)
At the sound of the priest’s bell and the shouting the crusaders turn and run. Pressed against the northern edge of the ridge, many fall down the rocks and break their necks, and others are cut down in the pursuit. Heinrich of Isenburg is mortally wounded. Laurence counts nearly 300 dead within an hour, and the Old Czech Annals 500.
The flight carries the horse on the Spital field with it, and they hurry back across the Vltava to their camps, where many drown at the ford. The next day Žižka has the ditches deepened, and a chronicle of his life calls the works Žižkov after him.
Sources
- Laurence of Březová, Hussite Chronicle, Czech edition Husitská kronika (1979).
- Old Czech Annals, in Ze starých letopisů českých (1980).
- Petr Čornej, Velké dějiny zemí Koruny české V (2000).
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