After the failure of the third crusade in 1422, Bohemia was left to herself for five years. Nicolas of Husinec had died in 1421, Ziska was carried off by the plague in 1424, and the leadership of the militant party passed to a general of hardly less ability, Prokop. With the removal of external danger, the bond which had held parties together was broken, the old divisions and quarrels reappeared, and the country was a prey to the horrors of civil war. An attempt was made to identify the common interests of the Slav race in opposition to Germany by offering the crown to [Sidenote: Bohemia and Poland.] Ladislas of Poland. But Ladislas was afraid of compromising his position by an alliance with heretics, and though his nephew Korybut was for a time sent into Bohemia, the opportunity of forming a powerful Slav monarchy on the frontier of Germany was allowed to slip. Meanwhile the humiliation of successive and crushing defeats had made a profound impression in Germany. The battle of Brescia (_v._ p. 196) had already shown the weakness of German arms; but the failure to crush the Hussites proved that the military and political systems of Germany were equally [Sidenote: Attempted reforms in Germany.] rotten. The more patriotic of the princes, like Frederick of Brandenburg, were driven to consider the necessity of some drastic reform. The restoration of monarchical authority was the most obvious remedy for disorder, but the general distrust of Sigismund put that out of the question. The old alliance of the Hohenzollerns with the Luxemburg kings had now come to an end. In 1422 Albert III., the last of the Ascanian electors of Saxony, died, leaving no obvious heir. His only daughter was married to the eldest son of the Elector of Brandenburg. A few years earlier Sigismund would have welcomed the opportunity of increasing the territorial and political influence of his chief supporter in Germany. But things had changed since the Council of Constance, the Hohenzollern claims were disregarded, and the vacant electorate was conferred by Sigismund upon Frederick of Meissen, the founder of the Wettin line in Saxony, which rules there in the present day. This marks the final rupture between Sigismund and the Elector of Brandenburg; and in attempting to reform the constitution of Germany the latter found himself in opposition to his former patron. In 1422 it had been proposed at a diet at Nürnberg to raise a mercenary army in place of the feudal troops, and to defray the expense by levying a general imperial tax of one per cent., ‘the hundredth penny,’ as it was called. But this project was foiled by the opposition of the towns, who feared that they would have to pay the money while the princes would pocket it. In 1424 the electors formed a close league among themselves, and practically assumed to act as if they were the joint heads of a federation. Sigismund was furious at this open disregard of his authority, and prepared to go to