But it seemed as if the death of John had really deprived the extreme party in Prague of their chances of final success; for, when in May, 1422, Korybut arrived in Prague, he was able, with apparently little trouble, to remove the Councillors of the extreme party, and to restore the Calixtines.
For a time Korybut seemed to give new strength and coherence to the Utraquist movement; but his reign was not of long duration. Martin V. had been extremely alarmed at the sympathies shown in Poland and Lithuania for the Utraquist cause; and by his orders the Polish clergy persuaded King Ladislaus to organise a new expedition against the Utraquists, while they induced Witold of Lithuania to recall Prince Korybut. But, though the summons for a third crusade was sent out to Poles, Lithuanians, Swedes, and Norwegians, yet the Pope soon found that it was easier to cajole kings than to convert peoples. Not only did the Poles and Ruthenians refuse to serve in the crusade; but, in spite of Ladislaus’s rebukes, they hastened to take up arms for the Bohemians; and so the third crusade collapsed even more ignominiously than the former ones.
[Illustration: OLD PICTURE OF Z̆IZ̆KA IN HEAVEN.
The fear of a foreign invasion being thus removed, the nobles resolved on a final struggle for power with the Taborites. Z̆iz̆ka had reluctantly consented to recognise Korybut as king; but the recall of the latter broke this link between the nobles and the Taborite leader. He had resented the treacherous murder of John of Z̆elív; and he had special causes of his own for distrusting the leading nobles. He himself belonged to that Order of Knights, or gentry, which was in continual rivalry with the greater nobility; while his intense religious zeal, and his scorn of caste, had drawn him close to the fiery peasants of Mount Tabor, and increased his contempt for the vacillations and treacheries of C̆enek of Wartenberg and Ulric of Rosenberg. The struggle which now followed was a fierce and bloody one; but it ended in the complete victory of Z̆iz̆ka, and the consent of the nobles to return to the popular cause. They were the more willing to come to terms as the King had just mortally offended Bohemian feeling by granting the province of Moravia to Albert, Duke of Austria, and had recognised him as his heir in Bohemia. Korybut had now escaped from his uncle and returned to Bohemia; and, though he was no longer recognised as their legal ruler, he was welcomed as an ally and a captain in their wars, and he marched with the united Utraquist army into Moravia, to deliver it from Albert of Austria. Z̆iz̆ka, though now completely blind, also led his forces into Moravia.