He is pictured as a short, broad-shouldered man, with a large, round, and bald head.  His forehead was deeply furrowed, and he wore a long moustache of a fiery red hue.  This, with his blind eye and his final complete blindness, yields a well-defined image of the man, that fanatical, remorseless, indomitable, and unconquerable avenger of the martyred Huss, the first successful opponent of the doctrines of the church of Rome whom history records.

The conclusion of the story of the Hussites may be briefly given.  For years they held their own, under two leaders, known as Procop Holy and Procop the Little, defying the emperor, and at times invading the empire.  The pope preached a crusade against them, but the army of invasion was defeated, and Silesia and Austria were invaded in reprisal by Procop Holy.

Seven years after the death of Ziska an army of invasion again entered Bohemia, so strong in numbers that it seemed as if that war-drenched land must fall before it.  In its ranks were one hundred and thirty thousand men, led by Frederick of Brandenburg.  Their purposes were seen in their actions.  Every village reached was burned, till two hundred had been given to the flames.  Horrible excesses were committed.  On August 14, 1431, the two armies, the Hussite and the Imperialist, came face to face near Tauss.  The disproportion in numbers was enormous, and it looked as if the small force of Bohemians would be swallowed up in the multitude of their foes.  But barely was the Hussite banner seen in the distance when the old story was told over again, the Germans broke into sudden panic, and fled en masse from the field.  The Bavarians were the first to fly, and all the rest speedily followed.  Frederick of Brandenburg and his troops took refuge in a wood.  The Cardinal Julian, who had preached a crusade against Bohemia, succeeded for a time in rallying the fugitives, but at the first onset of the Hussites they again took to flight, suffering themselves to be slaughtered without resistance.  The munitions of war were abandoned to the foe, including one hundred and fifty cannon.

It was an extraordinary affair, but in truth the flight was less due to terror than to disinclination of the German soldiers to fight the Hussites, whose cause they deemed to be just and glorious, and the influence of whose opinions had spread far beyond the Bohemian border.  Rome was losing its hold over the mind of northern Europe outside the limits of the land of Huss and Ziska.

Negotiations for peace followed.  The Bohemians were invited to Basle, being granted a safe-conduct, and promised free exercise of their religion coming and going, while no words of ridicule or reproach were to be permitted.  On January 9, 1433, three hundred Bohemians, mounted on horseback, entered Basle, accompanied by an immense multitude.  It was a very different entrance from that of Huss to Constance, nearly twenty years before, and was to have a very different termination.  Procop Holy headed the procession, accompanied by others of the Bohemian leaders.  A signal triumph had come to the party of religious reform, after twenty years of struggle.