On the morning of the twenty-eighth of March, the Hussite Army stood arrayed. The Tábor’s white, triangular standard with Veritas vincit and the Chalice was fluttering in the breeze, with Bolko Wołoszek’s Opole eagle on a tailed gonfalon alongside. Korybut also ordered his banerium unfurled, at which point it turned out he was riding into battle under the sign of the Pogoń. As was customary, Czech, Silesian and Polish field preachers rode out before the array. The soldiers bared their heads and began to loudly pray. The field resounded with the rumbling of many languages.

Bedřich of Strážnice rode out in front of the men. Now, not only by his posture and voice did he imitate Prokop, but he was even dressed like Prokop, in a typical calpac, brigantine and cloak with a wolf-fur collar. He brought his horse to a sliding stop just like Prokop and raised his hand just like Prokop.

“Warriors of God!” he called thunderously, just like Prokop. “Faithful Slavs! Here before you is the domain of the enemy of God and the one true faith! Here before you are the lands of your enemy, a cruel and fierce enemy, on whose hands the blood of the faithful and pious is not yet dry! An enemy who led crusading hordes against us in order to kill God’s truth! Now the time for vengeance is come!

“Vengeance, vengeance on the enemy! The Lord is the God of retribution when He says: And I will punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of his mouth that which he hath swallowed up! And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwelling place for jackals, an astonishment. I will drive out its people and I will dry up her sea and make her springs dry! The Lord sayeth: I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with he-goats! To the slaughter! To slaughter and destruction! Thus go onward! Do the will of God and make His Word deed! Onward! Onward into battle!”

Clanking with iron, blades bristling, over a mile long, numbering one thousand three hundred horse, eleven thousand foot and four hundred wagons, the punitive expedition entered the Koźle lands in a column.

For all its high-flown declarations and fiery ardour, the army did not do much. The Tábor field army, capable of marching eight miles a day, crawled like a tortoise through the Koźle lands, only covering the four miles to Koźle by the thirtieth of March. The forays sent ahead burned and plundered villages and small towns.