[Illustration: FIGURE OF MINER WITH MINING LAMP AND STAFF IN CHURCH OF ST. BARBARA AT KUTTENBERG (KUTNA HORA).] [Illustration: KUTNA HORA, OFFICE WHERE THE COINS WERE STRUCK BY THE ITALIANS BROUGHT TO KUTNA HORA BY WENCESLAUS II.] Each party was now conscious of the strength of its opponents; and, under such circumstances, those moderate citizens of Prague who combined a zeal for freedom with a desire for peace, were able to hold the balance between the contending parties. So a compromise was effected, by which the queen and the nobles were pledged to protect religious liberty and especially Communion in both kinds; while the citizens, on their part, consented to restore the fortress of Vys̆ehrad to the Queen, and to abstain from any injuries to churches or images. Z̆iz̆ka, however, distrusted the Queen’s party, and was discontented with these terms. So he withdrew with most of his troops to his chief fortress of Pilsen (Plz̆en). [Illustration: TOWN COUNCIL HOUSE OF PILSEN (PLZEN).] Although the recovery of the Vys̆ehrad was an important gain to the royalist cause, the great centre of the extreme Catholic feeling was the town of Kutna Hora. That town, from its importance as a mining centre, and from the special favour shown to it by the kings, had become a kind of rival to Prague; and in a time of civil war such rivalry naturally ripened into active hostility of the fiercest description. In spite of the occasional fierceness of such outbursts as that which had produced the slaughter of the Councillors of the New Town, there had been, till now, little organised cruelty in the contest between the two parties. Now, however, whether actuated by municipal rivalry or religious hostility, the men of Kutna Hora began to inaugurate a system of persecution which was to produce terrible reprisals. They seized upon all the Utraquists whom they could find, and even paid other towns so much a head to send them victims. Some of these they buried alive in pits; some they burnt, and some they beheaded; so that in a short time more than sixteen hundred had been put to death. In the meantime Sigismund had returned from Hungary to Moravia; and in Christmas, 1419, he and Queen Sophia held a meeting at Brünn (Brno). The citizens of Prague sent a deputation to this assembly to entreat for terms of peace. Sigismund ordered them at once to pull down all the chains which they had placed across the streets; to destroy all their new fortifications; and to bring back the Catholic priests who had been driven out. The citizens were so anxious to avoid a collision with Sigismund that they consented to these terms; and they destroyed their fortifications amid the jeers of the Catholics and Germans.