“The noble and gallant King of Bohemia, also known as John of Luxemburg because he was the son of the Emperor Henry of Luxemburg, was told by his people that the battle had begun. Although he was in full armour and equipped for combat, he could see nothing because he was blind. He asked his knights what the situation was and they described the rout of the Genoese and the confusion which followed King Philip’s order to kill them. Ha,’ replied the King of Bohemia. ‘That is a signal for us.’ […] ‘My lords, you are my men, my friends and my companions-in-arms. Today I have a special request to make of you. Take me far enough forward for me to strike a blow with my sword.

Because they cherished his honor and their own prowess, his knights consented. [..] In order to acquit themselves well and not lose the King in the press, they tied all their horses together by the bridles, set their king in front so that he might fulfil his wish, and rode towards the enemy.

There also was Lord Charles of Bohemia, who bore the title and arms of King of Germany, and who brought his men in good order to the battlefield. But when he saw that things were going badly for his side, he turned and left. I do not know which way he went.

Not so the good King his father, for he came so close to the enemy that he was able to use his sword several times and fought most bravely, as did the knights with him. They advanced so far forward that they all remained on the field, not one escaping alive. They were found the next day lying round their leader, with their horses still fastened together.“

Anyone with even a passing interest in late medieval history will remember this scene from Froissart’s description of the Battle of Crecy on August 26^th, 1346. The Blind King of Bohemia, the epitome of chivalric culture riding into the midst of a battle striking at an enemy he cannot see, relying on his comrades to guide him.

This deed made such an impression on the Edward, the Prince of Wales, known as the Black Prince that he honored his foe by adding the Bohemian ostrich feathers and the dead king’s motto “Ich Dien”, to his own coat of arms. So to this day the Blind King’s heraldic symbols and German motto features on Prince William’s coat of arms, the Welsh Rugby Union Badge, some older 2p coins and various regiments in Britain, Australia, Canada and even Sri Lanka.

But this death, call it heroic or foolish, was only the end of an astounding life. John Of Bohemia, very much against his own intentions, played a crucial role in the establishment of the key counterweight to French hegemony in Europe. No, not England, but a power centred on Prague, Vienna, Buda and Pest.

Let’s dive into this story…

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 154 – The Blind King John of Bohemia, also Episode 17 of Season 8 – From the Interregnum to the Golden Bull.

The noble and gallant King of Bohemia, also known as John of Luxemburg because he was the son of the Emperor Henry of Luxemburg, was told by his people that the battle had begun. Although he was in full armour and equipped for combat, he could see nothing because he was blind. He asked his knights what the situation was and they described the rout of the Genoese and the confusion which followed King Philip’s order to kill them. Ha,’ replied the King of Bohemia. ‘That is a signal for us.’ […] ‘My lords, you are my men, my friends and my companions-in-arms. Today I have a special request to make of you. Take me far enough forward for me to strike a blow with my sword.

Because they cherished his honour and their own prowess, his knights consented. [..] In order to acquit themselves well and not lose the King in the press, they tied all their horses together by the bridles, set their king in front so that he might fulfil his wish, and rode towards the enemy.

There also was Lord Charles of Bohemia, who bore the title and arms of King of Germany, and who brought his men in good order to the battlefield. But when he saw that things were going badly for his side, he turned and left. I do not know which way he went.

Not so the good King his father, for he came so close to the enemy that he was able to use his sword several times and fought most bravely, as did the knights with him. They advanced so far forward that they all remained on the field, not one escaping alive. They were found the next day lying round their leader, with their horses still fastened together. End quote

Anyone with even a passing interest in late medieval history will remember this scene from Froissart’s description of the Battle of Crecy on August 26^th, 1346. The Blind King of Bohemia, the epitome of chivalric culture riding into the midst of a battle striking at an enemy he cannot see, relying on his comrades to guide him.

This deed made such an impression on the Edward, the Prince of Wales, known as the Black Prince that he honoured his foe by adding the Bohemian ostrich feathers and the dead king’s motto “Ich Dien”, to his own coat of arms. So to this day the Blind King’s heraldic symbols and German motto features on Prince William’s coat of arms, the Welsh Rugby Union Badge, some older 2p coins and various regiments in Britain, Australia, Canada and even Sri Lanka.

But this death, call it heroic or foolish, was only the end of an astounding life. John Of Bohemia, very much against his own intentions, played a crucial role in the establishment of the key counterweight to French hegemony in Europe. No, not England, but a power centred on Prague, Vienna, Buda and Pest.

Let’s dive into this story…

But before we start the usual reminder that whilst I do all this for fun and giggles, the whole enterprise is only possible if some of you feel it in their heart to support the show. I know that you do not get an awful lot for that apart from my eternal gratitude and the even more important gratitude of your fellow listeners. If you sign up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on historyofthegermans.com/support you become the one who puts the coins into the Jukebox so that everyone can hear the music. And let me thank Paul A., Sam, James A., Ben G., Dan A., Rip D. and Luca B. who have taken the plunge already.

King John of Bohemia has become the “where is Wally” in practically every episode since #145, and he had appeared even earlier in the Teutonic Knights’ season. He was a man of such abundant energy and sturdy gluteus maximus that for more than 30 years he could appear at almost every event of significance between Kaliningrad and Florence and between Toulouse and Prague.  

King John of Bohemia was born as a mere count of Luxemburg on August 10, 1296 in the town of Luxemburg. His father was count Henry VII of Luxemburg, ruler of a middling principality that had recently experienced a catastrophic defeat at the battle of Worringen.

As always little is known about his youth, but by the age of 8 or 9 he is sent to live at the court of the king of France. At that time his family had firmly hitched their fortunes to the Capetian monarchs. His father had fought in various battles for king Philip the Fair, had sworn an oath of loyalty to him. N return the French king used his influence with the pope to elevate John’s uncle Balduin to the archepiscopal seat of Trier at the tender age of 22. 

The link between the Luxemburgs in general and John in particular was not merely political. Paris was by now the cultural capital of europe. 14^th century art, literature, learning and most importantly the code of chivalry reached their apotheosis here. And John embraced all of these. Throughout his life he would travel to Paris at every conceivable opportunity to take part in tournaments, banquets, festivities and even the occasional war, just to immerse himself in the splendor of the French court. He allegedly also studied the liberal arts at the celebrated university of Paris. Judging by his later life, the lure of a damsel in distress much outweighed the intellectual delights of Thomas Aquinas and Marsilius of Padua.

This stay in Paris comes to an end when his father was elected king of the Romans in 1308. Though the French monarch initially endorses Henry VII’s ascension to the throne, even though that derailed his brother’s ambition for the same job, he quickly began to regret that. The new king of the Romans main policy focus was to gain the imperial crown in Rome, which put him on a collision course with King Philip the Fair of France. And as a side-effect of that, young John had to leave Paris.

In 1310 a delegation from Prague arrived in Henry VII’s camp that brought an offer that fundamentally changed John’s life trajectory.

The visitors, led by the abbot of the Cistercian abbey of Aula Regia or -and I will butcher this terribly now: Zbraslav in Czech. It also included members of the Bohemian nobility as well as leading burghers of the two largest cities, Prague and Kutna Hora. And the offer they brought was nothing less than the crown of Bohemia, the richest, largest and most august of the principalities in the empire.

Weirdly John’s father was a bit lukewarm about the prospect of making his 14-year old son the king of Bohemia. For one, this adventure in the east might detract him from his #1 objective, the coronation as emperor, the first in almost a hundred years and key to avoiding a transfer of the imperial title to the kings of France. Moreover, Bohemian politics were extremely convoluted and many astute politicians, like Albrecht of Habsburg and Henry of Carinthia had failed to tame its unruly estates. And finally he was concerned about his son’s emotional wellbeing – or at least pretended to be. The crown came with a bride attached, Elisabeth, daughter of the great Premyslid king Wenceslaus II and sister to the murdered king Wenceslaus III, veteran of multiple palace coups and 18 years of age, too much for his tender son he said.

Henry proposed his brother, Walram, instead; an accomplished warrior and though maybe not the greatest of diplomats, but better than a teenage dilettante. The Bohemians however remained firm. They wanted the emperor’s flesh and blood. Either that or they would go out looking for someone else. And that was no idle threat. Sometime in the last century and a half the Bohemian estates had gained the right to choose their ruler by themselves leaving their imperial overlord with no more than the privilege to confirm the chosen ruler.

With options and time running out, Henry VII relented and gave the boy to the Bohemians. Within a month the young man was married to the hastily dispatched Elisabeth, enfeoffed with Luxemburg and Bohemia and given a modest military detachment to gain his kingdom.

The story goes that John and Elisabeth disliked each other from the very first moment they set eyes on each other. Though as we will see their relationship will fall apart later, it is unlikely this had been the case right from the beginning. A noble lady in the 14^th century knew that she would not be able to choose her future husband, nor should she expect him to have any attributes she might like in a man. Cases of outright refusal as we have seen in the case of John’s sister Marie are massive exceptions. All Elisabeth could legitimately expect was for John to treat her with the respect owed to her station, but not much more. The groom had a bit more discretion, but when it came to a marriage with such immense political benefit, he might as well have married a 50-year old without teeth as the abbot of Zbraslav put it.

In October 1310 John bade farewell to his mother and father and set off for Bohemia. He would not see either of them again. Both died from the exertions of the ultimately doomed Italian campaign as we talked about in episode #146 and #147.

Given John’s young age and lack of experience, his father had surrounded him with his most experienced advisors. Chief amongst them Peter von Aspelt, the archbishop of Mainz, most senior of the electors, descendant of a former servant of the Luxemburg family and, the former chancellor of the Premyslid kings of Bohemia. Peter knew the kingdom and its complex politics well. Alongside him rode the count of Henneberg, Werner von Castell and the Landgraf of Leuchtenberg, all men from the western side of the empire and loyal to the house of Luxemburg.

When they arrived in Bohemia, they found the gates of Prague and Kutna Hore closed to them. Because on the Hradčany/Hradschin, the castle overlooking the city of Prague there was already a king of Bohemia. Our old friend Henry of Carinthia, the father of Margarete Maultasch. Henry was married to Elisabeth’s older sister, had been elected king and had no intention to yield his position, even though he had lost the support of the majority of the Bohemian elites.

After some to and fro the patricians from Prague who had been part of the delegation convinced their fellow burghers inside the city to open the gates and let John in. Henry of Carinthia realized that he did not have enough support to repel John and his supporters and yielded. And with that John of Luxemburg entered the royal castle and a few days later was crowned king of Bohemia by Peter von Aspelt.

John had gained an entire kingdom without a single blow, which was great, but John had gained an entire kingdom without a single blow, which was also bad. Bad, because his regime had been created and was hence entirely dependent upon the support of the Bohemian high aristocrats and the elites in the great cities. And that was no coincidence.

The last of the Premyslid kings of Bohemia, Wenceslaus III had died in 1306 and with him the last remains of the centralised command and control structures his grandfather Ottokar II had installed, collapsed. The high aristocracy of Bohemia had stepped into this vacuum, cycled through three kings in 5 years thereby asserting their right to elect and, as just demonstrated, remove the king, approve or refuse taxes and make decisions about war and peace.

John, or more precisely his mentor, Peter von Aspelt tried to push back the power of the barons and recreate the old centralized state infrastructure with its bureaucrats and royal power. Support for this approach came from the cities, the church and a small number of barons. The vast majority of the aristocracy however refused to yield and conflict became inevitable.

Hostilities kicked off shortly after Peter von Aspelt had left Prague to deal with the process of electing a new emperor after John’s father, the emperor Henry VII had perished in Italy in 1313.

What provoked the uprising was something that John would become famous for, his constant changing of tack, an unsteadiness that frustrated his supporters and left his allies suspicious of his next move.

In 1313 John had yielded to the demands of the Bohemians to remove his German speaking advisors he had brought in from the west and replace them with local senior barons. But within just months of this attempt at reconciliation, John changed his mind and threw the Bohemians out again and re-established his friends as marshal and chancellor of the kingdom.

The backlash came immediately and with force. The barons took up arms and threatened to put a call into the Habsburg dukes of Austria whether they would like to become king of Bohemia. John and Elizabeth’s position deteriorated rapidly as forces from Luxemburg took a long tome to arrive and were insufficient to suppress the entirety of the Bohemian barons. Quite quickly, the royal cause was in trouble. John then did what a great chivalric knight is supposed to do in this situation, he left the country, deserting his wife.  Aspelt made a last attempt to sort things out in 1317 but returned to Mainz having despaired of the complexity of the situation and his frazzled ward.

The queen, Elisabeth tried to rally her supporters in Prague and Kutna Hora to fend off the barons which provided another half year of relief before John finally reappeared with Luxemburg troops. But these prove again to be insufficient and the royal couple was pushed back into the westernmost quarter of the kingdom. At that point John had enough.

He capitulated and agreed with the nobles on a kind of Magna Carta for Bohemia. The barons were to take control of the financial management of the kingdom, including the taxation of the major cities and the proceeds of the great gold and silver mines in the Ore Mountains and Kutna Hora. This set-up was to remain the basis of royal power in Bohemia until the 30 Years War, interrupted only during the reign of John’s son Charles.

This is the moment when the marriage of John and Elisabeth reached breaking point. Elisabeth had grown up at the court of her father Wenceslaus II, one of the richest monarchs in western europe, who had been crowned king of Poland and had even placed a claim on the kingdom of Hungary. All this Premyslid dominance was now gambled away by this feckless teenager the barons had forced her to marry.

Whilst John was celebrating the resolution of the conflict with hunting and feasting on the castle of one of the great barons, Elisabeth was plotting revenge. A few months later, Elisabeth and her allies, the citizens of Prague attempted a coup against her own husband. But that coup failed. The aristocrats now backed John and with some glee and traditional fiscal incompetence suppressed the citizen rights of Prague, which lost its freedoms for the next hundred years.

The marriage of John and Elisabeth never recovered, even though he forced her into 3 more pregnancies thereafter. As for Bohemia, John never spent any more time there than strictly necessary. He would call an assembly of the barons to award him funds for his endless campaigns and adventures and once he had received the cash, would leave and let the barons get on with whatever they wanted to do. Meanwhile Elisabeth and her children watched in horror as royal power seeped away.

Freed from the constraints of actually ruling a kingdom, John embarked on a frantic lifestyle somewhere between an international diplomat and an errant knight in search of glory and maybe political gain. Theoretically his base was Luxemburg, but even there he rarely stayed more than a few weeks.

His political aim, if he had any, was to expand his lands, ideally creating a contiguous territory where he could not just widen but also deepen his influence. He had two realistic options. One was to try to build out his position in the west of the empire, adding neighboring duchies and counties to Luxemburg. Option 2 was to expand his kingdom of Bohemia either northwards into Silesia, westwards into the region around Eger/Cheb and maybe even revive his predecessor Wenceslaus II’s claims on the Polish and Hungarian crowns. And, being John of Bohemia, he also believed there was a third option, the option many a northern potentate had fallen for, ever since the Markomanni had crossed the Danube in 167 AD, John wanted to conquer Northern Italy. And there was a fourth option which was to simply travel around and go wherever the sound of war was heard

Juggling three major projects across three corners of the empire all at the same time resulted not just in a punishing travel schedule, but also in a massively convoluted foreign policy stance. If he wanted to expand in the west of the empire, he needed the support of the French king, if he wanted to expand Bohemia into Poland or Hungary, he needed the support of Ludwig the Bavarian, and if he wanted to go down to Italy he needed access to the Alpine passes which meant either an alliance with the Habsburgs or one with Henry of Carinthia.

Previous historians had blamed the frazzled political agenda and the constant shifting of alliances and projects on John’s personality, and that argument carries some weight. But he also operated in a political environment that was inherently unstable. Three political groupings contested the lead of the empire, the Wittelsbach, the Habsburg and his own family, the Luxemburgs. The fragility of this three body problem forced all players to act instantly every time the system got out of balance and grab whatever was in the vicinity. Though arguably John was the one whose actions were more likely than that of the others to tilt the balance.

In the early years of John’s reign as king of Bohemia his allegiances were relatively stable. The Habsburgs were his natural opponents due to the proximity between Vienna and Prague and the still dormant claim the Habsburgs had on Bohemia. The Habsburg claim was the nuclear option the Bohemian nobles kept mentioning every time John tried to knock them back.

Being opposed to the Habsburgs meant that John had to support Ludwig the Bavarian. In fact Ludwig had been chosen by the Luxemburg party as their candidate for the imperial crown once they had realized that they could not gain enough votes to raise John himself to the throne.

That is why John of Bohemia fought with Ludwig at Mühldorf against Frederick the Handsome, a battle where he showed his mettle both as a fighter and as a war leader.

But after the battle relations between the emperor and the king of Bohemia cooled down rapidly. As we said, one of John’s ambitions was to expand his territory from Bohemia. As reward for both the support at the election and in the civil war he had received the lands around the city of Eger/Cheb, an area that later formed part of the so-called Sudetenland. But John wanted more. He did acquire first lower and then upper Lusatia to the north and had his eyes on the margraviate of Brandenburg.

The last margrave of Brandenburg of the house of Anhalt had died in 1319 and the local powers had begun carving up the territory. John expected to be enfeoffed with Brandenburg by his great friend Ludwig, but Ludwig did not want another electoral vote to go to the Luxemburgs and hence granted the margraviate to his son. This decision brought the end of the Wittelsbach-Luxemburg alliance. To avoid the Luxemburgs and Habsburgs ganging up on  him, Ludwig offered Frederick the Handsome the curious joint rule we discussed in episode 151. John was now isolated. To shore up his position he got himself the backing of the king of France and the Pope.

We are now in 1325 and the pope had excommunicated Ludwig and moved heaven and earth to stop him from acquiring the imperial crown. The papal opposition preoccupied Ludwig who set off for Rome. The Habsburgs at the same time suffered the loss of the energetic Leopold leaving only the rather sluggish Frederick the Handsome pursuing the interests of the House of Austria. These circumstances meant John had pretty much free reign to pursue his politics in Poland and Hungary despite his isolation.

Poland at this point was just beginning to recover from its long period of fragmentation that had followed the death of Boleslaw Wrymouth. First king Wladislaw Lokietek, Ladislas the elbow-high and the Casimir the Great were consolidating the dozens of duchies back into a functioning kingdom. One part of Poland, Silesia had experienced a particularly extreme form of fragmentation. According to Wikipedia there were a total of 46 Silesian duchies, which I think is a bit extreme, but an estimate of about 20 different dukedoms, held by descendants of one 12^th century duke of Silesia is not a bad estimate. Their weakness and the geographic position between Bohemia, Poland and the empire made Silesia easy prey for the intrepid king of Bohemia. 17 Silesian dukes became vassals of the king of Bohemia between 1327 and 1335. Given Silesia was still part of Poland these efforts brough John in conflict with the king of Poland. Ladislaus and later Kasimir tried to prevent the defection of Silesia and allied with the Lithuanians in an attack on Bohemia. In return John allied with the Teutonic Knights and participated in three winter crusades in Lithuania in1328/29, 1335 and 1345/46.

The conflict ended when John gained the overlordship over Silesia from king Casimir the great of Poland against the promise to drop his claim on the Polish crown and a sizeable cash payment. He got the same approval from Ludwig the Bavarian in exchange for his ultimate sign off on the Kurverein zu Rhens he had initially refused.

These transactions almost doubled the size of the kingdom of Bohemia. When the king of Bohemia had previously been the richest and most powerful of the imperial princes, anyone who could tame the unruly Bohemian barons would now be towering over all the other electors. Silesia became an economic powerhouses of eastern europe. Its wealth benefitted the Luxemburg and later the Habsburg kings of Bohemia until in 1740 Frederick the Great seized Silesia in an unprovoked attack that led to the Three Silesian war and the Seven Years War that created Prussia’s position as a major European power and – as they say – the rest is history.

At the same time as John was expanding his kingdom of Bohemia, he also worked hard at an even more ambitious project, the conquest of Northern Italy. This project was again bult more on a suite of coincidences than long term planning. It kicked off with the rapprochement between John and his predecessor as king of Bohemia, Henry of Carinthia. John organized a bride for the ailing duke of Carinthia and, even more importantly, married his son Johann-Heinrich to Henry’s daughter, Margarete Maultasch of episode #152’ fame.

This alliance opened the route into Italy via the Brenner pass. And that route he took in 1330 with 400 armored knights and headed for Brescia. You as faithful listeners of the History of the Germans will remember that Brescia had been the city that broke the army of emperor Henry VII and the disease that arose from the corpses of the men and horses had ultimately killed his wife, the mother of John of Bohemia. But Brescia had called for John to come and to take over the protection of the city.  Whatever John’s feelings may have been when he saw these fateful walls, if he had any, it did not show. He gladly accepted the declarations of eternal loyalty from the citizens and took up residence in the city palace. His arrival caused more and more cities to seek his protection against the increasingly overbearing Visconti of Milan, the della Scala of Verona and the Este of Ferrara. In just a couple of weeks John of Bohemia became the ruler of Lombardy. Even the tree powerful Lombard families submitted to him. All this reminds one of the enthusiastic welcome his father Henry VII had received in Milan. And very much in the same way as it happened to his dad, the vibe as my son would call it, changed rapidly. The Bohemian Rhapsody lasted just 18 months. One by one the cities called off their allegiance as John had the audacity to ask for funds to maintain his army. By 1332 he and most of his troops were back home north of the alps.

All that this adventure yielded was even more conflict between John and the emperor Ludwig the Bavarian and a dimming of the enthusiasm for John’s antics at the French court. Even his uncle Balduin, the Archbishop of Trier was drifting into the imperial camp.

But indefatigable John put in the hours on horseback and managed to appear in Prague, Frankfurt and Paris within the same month, picking up cash in Bohemia, negotiating with Ludwig and having a long sit-down with the king of France.

Parallel to the acquisition of Silesia and the conquest of Lombardy, John pursued anther project closer to his home county of Luxemburg, or more precisely several projects. One was to help his uncle Balduin to become archbishop of Mainz on top of the archbishopric of Trier he already held. Then he wanted to get hold of the Palatinate which would have created a Luxemburg territory stretching from Koblenz to Heidelberg dominating the Rhine and Moselle river with its trade and rich wine production. The Palatinate was however core to the interests of Ludwig the Bavarian. And open warfare was not a real option. Instead John tried to trade. At one point he offered the kingdom of Bohemia in exchange which made him even more unpopular in Prague if that was at all possible. Later he put the Tyrol on the table which, guess what, seriously irritated the Tyrolians and drove the final nails in the coffin of the marriage of his son with Margarete Maultasch.

So, one out of three projects worked out, he expanded Bohemia massively but had failed in Italy, Tyrol and the Middle Rhine.

But then he got engaged in a fourth project, the one he became most famous for and that had no reward apart from the esteem of his fellow European high aristocrat. It was his involvement in the most significant conflict of the 14^th century, the 100 years’ War.

The trigger for the hostilities was a dynastic change in France. King Philip the Fair, he of the burning of the Templars had died in 1314 leaving behind three sons. All three of them died in quick succession and by February 1328 the house of Hugh Capet had died out. The seemingly inexhaustible Capetian loins had produced just one boy, born posthumously who survived just 4 days.

Two contenders for the crown now faced up to each other.  Philip of Valois, grandson of king Philip III through his father, Charles of Valois stood against Edward III, king of England and grandson of king Philip IV through his mother Isabella. It is quite frankly doubtful that anyone, even the English court believed this claim was valid. France had embraced the Salian law that ruled out inheritance in the female line hundreds of years ago. But Edward III was a lad and this cause was as good as any to kick off some jolly fighting.

The war did not really get going before 1337, in part because Edward III was not ready, but the build-up had been under way ever since Philip VI had ascended the throne.

John of Bohemia was extremely close to Philip of Valois, or Philip VI as he should be called. They ere the same age and had grown up together at the Paris court, both of noble blood but neither destined to become kings. Now they found themselves on the upper echelons of the European political stage. The Luxemburgs had been vassals of the French king for a long time, despite their status as imperial princes. Even his father, the emperor Henry VII had at some point sworn unconditional loyalty to the French king. John’s sister Marie, the beautiful girl who had refused to marry Henry of Carinthia, had ultimately wed the last of the Capetian kings, Charles IV.

And in 1332 John of Bohemia had married his daughter Jutta to the dauphin, the future king of France Jean, called the Good. Jutta changed her name into Bonne and though she died before jean became king, her children, the king Charles V, the dukes of Berry, Anjou and most significantly of Burgundy became the dominant figures during the middle of the 14^th century.

But apart from the enormous prestige that such family connections brought him, there wasn’t much tangible benefit coming from this connection. John tried to leverage the French relations and hence influence over the papacy in his negotiations with Ludwig the Bavarian who had was still excommunicated. But little came of it.

In 1338, John was made governor of Guyenne, facing off against the English in Gascony. Not sure what was in it for him, nor did he and so he returned back to the empire shortly afterwards.

In 1339/1340 John returned to the empire and reconciled with the emperor Ludwig the Bavarian. The emperor recognized John’s acquisitions in Eger and Silesia and in return John accepted the loss of Carinthia to the Habsburgs.

Ah, in all this manic back and forth I have almost forgotten the other thing he was so famous for. During his second crusade in Prussia he had suddenly experienced loss of vision in his right eye. Some believe it was a genetic disease common in the Luxemburg family, others blame a severe eye infection he caught during the cold and wet Baltic January. In any event he consulted a physician in Breslau in 1338 who made sure he lost all sight in the right eye. In 1340 having learnt little about the skills of medieval doctors, he went to another physician in Montpellier who knocked out the remaining good eye so that he was now completely blind.

That did not stop him from continuing his lifestyle as a knight errand rushing from one battle or tournament or banquet or wedding or imperial diet to the next.

But his luck was gradually leaving him. His son Johann Ludwig was chucked out of Tyrol in 1341 and Ludwig the Bavarian brought it into his orbit by granting Margarete Maultasch a civil divorce. His son in law, duke Henry of Lower Bavaria died and this duchy too went to the emperor Ludwig. Uncle Balduin had to give up his ambitions for the archbishopric of Mainz.

As the 1340s continued, John focused more on fun than frontline politics. It was his son Karl who took the lead in the next leg of the ascend of the House of Luxemburg leading to the final break with emperor Ludwig the Bavarian and Karl’s election as king of the Romans in 1346, something we will discuss next week.

As for John, he decided to go on another Reise into Prussia, fighting despite his blindness in Samigitia and even ended up in another confrontation with the King of Poland. Into all this joyous chivalric activity comes the news that king Edward III of England was putting together an invasion force. The 100-Years War was finally getting going for real. The King of France demanded the military assistance the king of Bohemia had promised again and again since 1332.

And so, in August 1346, 50 years old and blind, John and his son Karl found themselves on the field of Crecy facing Edward III and the Black Prince with their longbowmen. The outcome you have heard of at the top of this episode.

King John died how he liked to live, fighting for honor, not just material gain. Some have argued that his last attack was a veiled attempt at suicide of a disabled man who saw his extraordinarily talented son overtaking him. That is unlikely. John was by no means as pious as his son, but he was a good Christian and as such suicide was unthinkable. It is more likely that he acted in line with the chivalric code he had lived by all his life. After all the French knights ran up the hill at Crecy again and again and again, riding over the bodies of the dead and dying men and horses in the knowledge that they would likely die too. At the end of the battle the French had lost nine princes, 10 counts, a duke, and archbishop and a bishop. John was just one more high aristocrat perishing in the mud blinded not just by his disease but also by the search for glory.

What made him stand out in the eyes of his peers as one of the greatest of chivalric heroes was not just the courage to ride unseeing into the midst of a battle but also that he fought not for his own lands or material possessions, but to honour an oath he had given to another king.

John of Bohemia wasn’t the last knight, but he was a figure of a world that was slowly fading away. A world where armoured men on horseback were invincible and hence had to be tamed by a complex set of rules they called the chivalric code. For someone like John the dos and don’ts of the aristocratic society he lived in ranked pari passu with the demands of power politics. Fighting for the Teutonic Knights out of a crusading vow or for the king of France out of an obligation as a vassal was of equal importance, if not of higher importance than taking up arms against Ludwig the Bavarian to protect the Tyrol. Travelling half way across europe to attend a tournament in Paris even if that meant leaving your kingdom undefended was something he did without thinking about it.

Managing money and the nitty gritty of the administration of his kingdom was beneath a true knight. As were the concerns of the burghers and merchants let alone the wellbeing of the peasants.

John felt at home in Paris as much as in Luxemburg, Frankfurt or Pavia, maybe not so much in Prague where everybody hated him. He was a member of an international elite that intermarried and interacted without much thought about nationality and language.

Next week we will meet his son, Karl, emperor Karl IV who was nothing like his father. Where John is living by a system of knightly values believed to be ancient and unchanging, Karl is a much more modern figure, rational, calculating, ranking politics much above romantic notions of honor. Karl fought at Crecy too, but as the chronicler Froissart noted quote, “when he saw that things were going badly for his side, he turned and left.” Karl had better things to do than dying in the mud for the lost cause of a foreign king.

I hope you will join us again next week when we get to know this astounding new leader.

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Now if you have listened all the way to here, you deserve a last titbit about John of Bohemia. After the battle of Crecy his body was brought to Luxemburg where he was buried at the abbey of Altmünster. When that abbey was destroyed in 1543 his body was moved to another abbey nearby. In 1795 Luxemburg was taken by French revolutionary troops and the graves of the counts and dukes of Luxemburg were raided, its contents spread around or thrown into the river. It was a local industrialist from across the border, Pierre Joseph Boch, founder of what would later become Villeroy and Boch, makers of China and porcelain bowls who saved the ancient bones. John’s remains stayed in the attic of the Boch family in Mettlach until 1833 when king Frederick Wilhelm IV of Prussia toured the region. The Prussian king who claimed John as his ancestor ordered his chief architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel to build a chapel near Kastel-Staadt where the old king was buried again and  remained until 1945. It was in the last days of the war that a Luxemburg crack team of operatives stole John’s remains from this chapel in Germany and brought them back to Luxemburg, where they still lie in Notre-dame Cathedral.

So, when next time you drop your Savile row trousers made by appointment of his majesty the Prince of Wales and sit down on a Villeroy and Boch seat, you may feel the presence of king John of Bohemia, but do not worry, he cannot see you.