The Hussite Revolution Part 3
“To our great shame and sorrow, we must acknowledge how our brethren have been cleverly seduced by Satan, and how they have departed from Holy Scriptures in strange and unheard-of ideas and acts. When Satan first came to them it was not with an open face, as the devil, but in the shining garb of voluntary poverty, [..], and in the zealous work of preaching to and serving the people and in giving them the Body and Holy Blood of God. And [..] a great many people flocked to them.
Then the devil came to them clothed in other garb, in the prophets and the Old Testament, and from these they sought to confect the imminent Day of Judgement, saying that they were angels who had to eliminate the scandals of Christ’s kingdom, and that they were to judge the world. And so they committed many killings and impoverished many people; but they did not judge the world according to their words, for the predicted time has elapsed with which they terrified the people, telling them strange things.” End quote.
Strange things indeed were happening in Bohemia. Peter Chelcicky whose words you just heard reported how the radical Hussites had called the End of Days for February 14th, 1420. But when that day came, and instead of all the enemies of the faith lying dead with their noses pointing skywards, royalist forces surrounded the radical Hussites in the city of Pilzen. Now the end really seemed nigh, but cometh the time, cometh the man, even if the man is a one-eyed, gruff ex-Highwayman.
To listen on Spotify – click here
To listen on Apple Podcast – click here
To listen on YouTube – click here
TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 177 – The Day after the End of Days, which is also episode 14 of Season 9 The Reformation before the Reformation.
“To our great shame and sorrow, we must acknowledge how our brethren have been cleverly seduced by Satan, and how they have departed from Holy Scriptures in strange and unheard-of ideas and acts. When Satan first came to them it was not with an open face, as the devil, but in the shining garb of voluntary poverty, [..], and in the zealous work of preaching to and serving the people and in giving them the Body and Holy Blood of God. And [..] a great many people flocked to them.
Then the devil came to them clothed in other garb, in the prophets and the Old Testament, and from these they sought to confect the imminent Day of Judgement, saying that they were angels who had to eliminate the scandals of Christ’s kingdom, and that they were to judge the world. And so they committed many killings and impoverished many people; but they did not judge the world according to their words, for the predicted time has elapsed with which they terrified the people, telling them strange things.” End quote.
Strange things indeed were happening in Bohemia. Peter Chelcicky whose words you just heard reported how the radical Hussites had called the End of Days for February 14th, 1420. But when that day came, and instead of all the enemies of the faith lying dead with their noses pointing skywards, royalist forces surrounded the radical Hussites in the city of Pilzen. Now the end really seemed nigh, but cometh the time, cometh the man, even if the man is a one-eyed, gruff ex-Highwayman.
Before we get to the delights only a full blown apocalypse can offer, let me offer you nothing, nothing to buy, nothing to sign up for, nothing but the gratitude of your fellow listeners and your humble podcaster. Protecting us against an ever rising wave of advertising is a noble pursuit you can indulge in at historyofthegermans.com/support. Hence we thank all the lords and ladies who have so graciously lent a hand, namely Phil Grass, Hendrik N., Brian K., Chris C., John F., Martin W. and special thanks also to Historygirl Susan E. whose generosity and support all across social media is much appreciated.
And with that, back to the show.
Last week we left the Hussites at a low point. Though they had won the battle of the Lesser Town of Prague, their subsequent truce and kowtow before emperor Sigismund had wiped out all of this success. A massive Catholic backlash against the religious reformers was under way. Sigismund had ordered the magistrates of Prague to lift the siege of the Royal Castle and to dismantle their fortifications, an order they were too weak to resist. The monks and nuns returned to their ransacked monasteries and the German merchant elite re-occupied their houses in Prague. The mining town of Kutna Hora became a centre of the repression of the Hussites who were thrown down mine shafts, some dead but also some still alive.
Sigismund, rather than entering Prague for a coronation went on to Breslau for an imperial diet. At that diet the Electors and princes signed up for a crusade against the Hussites. That crusade was initially intended to defend Hungary against the Ottomans, but pope Martin V had allowed for it to be diverted to eradicate the heretics of Bohemia. And to make it abundantly clear that there was no room for reconciliation between even moderate Hussite demands and the imperial will, the diet convicted another Hussite priest, dragged him behind a horse over the cobblestones and when he still refused to die, burned him next to the abattoir.
What made all this even more disconcerting for the people was that most of that calamity had been self-inflicted. On November 5th, 1419 the Hussites were a cohesive movement. The citizens of Prague, both the more radical artisans and labourers in the New Town and the more affluent patricians of the Old Town, the provincial communitarians who had come from their mountains to support their brethren and many of the Bohemian barons had all been united in their opposition to the royalists up in the castle. They had fought together, they had died together and they had won together.
But just 8 days later, the moderate factions in Prague had agreed a truce with the Royalists which allowed the Catholics to retaliate. The Radicals were opposed to the truce and the movement splintered into factions.
For these radical Hussites who had come from the provinces, this turn of events was almost impossible to understand. How could they get through the canon fire on the Charles Bridge and put experienced and well-armed mercenaries to flight, only to see the enemies of the faith triumph.
And this was not the first time they had experienced hardship. This is the early 15th century and the four horsemen of the Apocalypse are riding high.
The rider on the white horse had brought the plague, the plague that had begun in 1348 but had come back again, and again and again taking its grim toll.
The rider of the red horse had come to take peace from the earth and to make men slay other men. He had brought war, incessant war between the kings of France and England, between the princes of the empire over this, that or the other parcel of land, and the war between Wenceslaus, his barons, his cousins and at times his brother that devastated Bohemia the once richest and most august of the principalities of the empire.
The rider of the black horse came with a pair of scales weighing what little bread was allowed in times of famine. And now that the climate was turning colder and colder, even a good harvest in 1410 was no better than a poor harvest 150 years earlier. Those who have stayed on their land and failed to negotiate better wages found themselves re-enslaved following the plague whilst many who had left for the bright lights of the cities found themselves as menial labourers or domestic servants.
And the fourth rider on his pale horse of death was ever present, the catch all for those who had not succumbed to disease, war or famine.
It was a brutally tough time to be alive, very much the opposite of the beautifully illuminated images that the early renaissance masters, the Giottos, Lorenzettis, Martinis and Masaccios produced during that time.
And for the men and women who had left their homesteads in the autumn of 1419 to come to the aid of Prague, all this felt even more dystopian. Not only had they suffered the agony of disease, war, famine and death, they thought they had found the reason for their suffering. And that reason had been the corruption of the church, the church that turned its back on the example of the apostles, that had them denied the sacrament of bread and wine, without which there was no salvation. And they had not only found the reason for their suffering, they had begun remedying these ills. They had gathered on the mountains and had taken the bread and wine, they had shared their worldly goods as the apostle had done and they had listened to and tried to live by the scripture.
If they had done all that was required, how could it be that they found themselves leaving the city of Prague in fear of persecution and with nowhere to go?
Their priests were as confused as they were themselves and sought the answers in the one place they knew had all the answers, the holy scripture. Here is what our chronicler, Lawrence of Brezova reports they did next quote: “during this time some Taborite priests were preaching to the people Christ’s Second Coming, during which time all evil ones and adversaries of the truth deserved to perish and be annihilated, and all the righteous ones would be saved in five towns. [they were] warning that everyone who wished to escape the wrath of almighty God, which was supposed to be sent into the entire world, should move from their towns, castles and villages like Lot from Sodom to the five cities of refuge. These were the names of the cities: Pilsen, which they called the city of the sun, Zatec, Louny, Klatovy and Slany. This was on account of the fact that almighty God wanted to annihilate the entire world, with only those who fled to the aforementioned towns being spared” end quote.
Medieval history is full of predictions of the end of the world, from the millennial fears that gripped the contemporaries of Otto III and Henry II to the predictions of Joachim of Fiore that called upon Frederick Barbarossa to go to Jerusalem to bring about the 1000 years of bliss that preceded the coming of antichrist.
Seeing the defeat of their side and hearing that Sigismund was about to arrive in Bohemia to strike the final blow, the Taborite priests wrote quote: “The lion has gone forth from his lair and the heathen pillage has arisen..[..] the King of Hungary has gone forth to lay waste your land. Your cities will be wiped out..[..] therefore, knowing these things give diligent heed to the lord God himself and do not be tardy; He is at the gates.” end quote
And they gave a date for when he, Christ, not Sigismund, was to arrive – they said soon, very soon, in fact in just three months, in mid-February 1420.
And with that date being so close, the persecution of heretics in full swing across the country and a crusade against them being called, thousands of ordinary people left their homes, sold their belongings and took their husbands or wives, their children and their livestock to seek safety in one of these five cities. At this stage the biggest concentration was in the city of Pilsen, today more famous for Pilsener beer, the original Lager. Pilsen was turned into a fortress, many of its citizens who did not adhere to the Taborite beliefs left or, according to some accounts, were thrown out or even killed. The monasteries were ransacked as were the churches and the homes of the rich. In line with the tradition they been had established in their gatherings on the mountains before, they pooled their possessions, or as the our rather biased chronicler said, threw their money at the feet of their priests.
Conditions within these five cities must have been very difficult. Pilsen may have been a city of a few thousand people if that and the influx of thousands of pilgrims from the countryside must have led to massive overcrowding. Moreover, these people had no business in these towns, no work or income. And since they were there only to wait out the coming apocalypse, there was no incentive for them to set up shops or create much of a society. Feeding these masses was a challenge even before the cities were put under siege. And then there was the question on how to defend the city with nothing but pilgrims, most of them peasants and artisans and very few soldiers
The answer to that last question had already arrived in November 1419, a grizzled old soldier with only one eye who had fought for decades but had never held command of a major force.
I have promised to talk about Jan Zizka for three episodes now, and finally we are getting there. And at this point a big thank you to Czech listener Jiri D. who kindly summarised some of the recent Czech historical research for us.
There is precious little information about the first fifty years of the great Czech hero, the man who broke the dominance of the armoured knights and whose bronze equestrian statue overlooking Prague is the third largest in the world. But recently a major works has been published by professor Petr Čornej that sheds more light on his life before the Hussite Revolt. And from that we can conclude that Jan Žižka had already lived and survived more lives than the proverbial stray cat before he came into historical focus.
Jan Žižka was born between 1360-1363 most likely in Trocnov, 16km southeast of Budvar, yes, another town that makes great beer and also gave its name to something called Budweiser. The family background was petty landed gentry which provided him with a coat of arms of a red crayfish on a silver field, but not an awful lot more.
His parents and relatives owned two farms, covering together not more than 40-50 hectares of very poor soil. The place was later deserted and converted into pastures, so not enough to maintain the standards of even just the lowest level of gentry.
The name Žižka by which he is known, was actually a nickname. It means “one eyed” as Jan lost an eye quite early, probably due to an accident roughhousing with a childhood friend.
His early years, upbringing or education left no trace. He first appears in public records in four documents dated between 1378 – 1384, presenting him as a poor manager and householder, constantly in debt and incapable of taking care of his farm. He gradually sold off all of his land and assets and disappeared from the local land register. In the meantime, Jan had two short-lived marriages. Both wives died very early, probably in childbirth, leaving him with only one surviving child, his daughter Catherine.
Jan Žižka initially served Heinrich von Rosenberg, the all-powerful lord of Southern Bohemia, but must have fallen out with him fairly early on. Jan Žižka and his brothers, once their money had run out, joined a gang of Highwaymen under a certain “Matthew the Leader”, which operated between the years 1404-1409 in the border region between Bohemia, Moravia and Austria. They were a particular menace to the lands of his former master, the Rosenbergs and the citizens of Budvar. Jan Žižka did what a highwayman does, he took a load of herrings from the Rosenbergs, killing one of the lord’s men, shook down two brothers for cash and fleeced the merchants travelling between Vienna and Prague.
On occasion and at the behest of clients his gang would have a go at larger prey too. They tried to capture the royal castle of Hus and another time they planned to seize Nové Hrady, scaling the walls with rope ladders.
That brought the authorities on to the scene who systematically wiped out their local network and cornered, caught and hanged the gang members. Jan Žižka remained in hiding until he was saved by a royal pardon.
That royal pardon is seen as the great mysteries of his earlier life. Why would a king of Bohemia suddenly pardon a robber down in the south of the country who he may have never met before? Wenceslaus IV wrote to all concerned on July 27,1409 that “…he has accepted Jan the said Žižka, his beloved faithful, on his mercy, forgiving him graciously all the offences committed against Him and against the Crown of the Kingdom of Bohemia.”
Hmm, a state prosecutor pardons a gang member whose affiliates have all been hanged? Honi soit qui mal y pense as they said in the 14th century..
There is also a completely different story going round. Records of the court of Burgundy mentions a certain Jehan Susque de Behaigne which sound like Jan Zizka from Bohemia who acted as a go-between for King Wenceslaus and duke John the Fearless. This Jehan passed messages between the two princes, brought expensive horses to Dijon and accompanied the Burgundian chancellor on various diplomatic missions to eastern europe. The problem is that the timing of these two stories overlaps, and whilst one can move from convicted felon to ambassador, nobody can be a diplomat and a highwayman at the same time. So either Zizka was a highwayman and this Jehan person was someone else, or Zizka was indeed a diplomat and the pardon was granted to him for a crime committed on occasion of one of his missions.
By 1410 we are on firmer ground. We find him fighting as a mercenary for Jogaila of Poland and Lithuania in the war against the Teutonic Knights. He may or may not have participated in the battle of Tannenberg/Grunwald in 1410 but he was definitely involved in the campaign and the defence of the castle of Rheden/Radzyn. This must have given him a good idea of how detachments of knights operated on the battlefield and how royal armies conducted large scale sieges. And he also could see the use of fire weapons at scale, weapons that had only recently become deployed more broadly.
Sometimes between 1411-1414 Jan Žižka joined the household of King Wenceslaus as a “palace gatekeeper”, someone close to the king, acting as a bodyguard. Wenceslaus was famously unstable and erratic. As a member of his immediate entourage Zizka must have been good at gaging his master’s moods, information that was exceedingly valuable to anyone with business at court. That may explain why his financial situation finally improved. In 1414 Žižka bought a representative house close to Wenceslaus favourite palace, though he did not keep it for long. He sold it to fund his daughter’s dowry two years later. As a member of the royal court Žižka made friends with prominent political, religious and military figures. It also brought him in contact with the Bohemian reformers who had many powerful supporters at court. There is a story that Zizka regularly accompanied queen Sophia when she attended Jan Hus’ Sermons at the Bethlehem chapel.
In 1419 when the Hussite revolt kicks off, Jan Zizka is already in his mid to late Fifties. Very little makes him out to become one of the greatest military figures in European history. Not only is he a relatively old man, he is visually impaired, had never held command of significant military forces before and his backstory is, as we have seen, a little too checkered to lead a religious movement. But then he did all that. Cometh the day, cometh the man!
And that day when Jan Zizka first steps into the limelight of history was the 30th of July 1419, the day of the first Defenestration of Prague. Our chronicler Lawrence of Brezova tells us that the royal councillors were quote “outrageously slaughtered by the common people and Jan Zizka, courtier of the Czech king” end quote. Many biographers ascribe Zizka a significant role in this event, though there is no further evidence of him even being there. I personally think that it is unlikely that he was one of the ringleaders at this event, simply because if he had been, the chroniclers would have made a big song and dance about it. But they didn’t. Hence my guess is that at this point he was still only another man in the crowd.
More interesting is the question why he was there. He was after all a royal servant, a “familiaris” of the king who had risen to wealth and prestige at court. Taking part in the insurrection, even in a minor role, was an act of treason. So why did he do it.
In a chronicle written about his life in 1436 it says simply, that he “took the field to fight against who did not take the Body and Blood of Christ in both kinds. Those he took for his enemies” end quote.
It was likely as simple as that. Jan Zizka, like almost everyone in Bohemia at that time had to make a decision, to stand either with the Hussites or with the Catholics. There was no middle ground. Zizka was close to the reformers at court who had just been dismissed. And he may simply have agreed with their view of scripture and decided to stand with the Hussites. And that was that.
From here on we find Zizka at the forefront of events. He led the attack on the monasteries following the death of Wenceslaus and then, as captain of the forces of the New Town, led the attack on Vysherad castle that kicked off the actual revolution.
During the battle for the Lesser Town some chroniclers ascribe Zizka a major role alongside the overall commander Nicolaus of Hus. And he seemed to have displayed a lot of personal courage during the fighting on the Charles Bridge.
Which is likely why he took the signing of the truce between the city of Prague and the Royal Castle so hard, in particular the decision to return the Vysherad to the Royalists. He had taken that castle, he understood its strategic importance and he knew what a foolish decision the truce had been. And like so many other disaffected radical Hussites, he left the city.
Passing through the gates of Prague he had once defended and where he once had a handsome house and position at court, he headed to one of the five cities the radical Hussites had declared the safe haven in times of the apocalypse. He went to Pilsen, the city of the sun where he arrived in the middle of November.
He had been invited to Pilsen by Wenceslas Koranda, a Hussite preacher who had already established himself as one of the leaders of the more extreme branch of the Hussites. Koranda was one of the most vocal Adventists who had predicted the second coming of Christ for mid-February 1420 and had urged the faithful to take refuge in one of the five cities.
After Koranda and Zizka had arrived, Pilsen began to fill up with those seeking safety from the Day of Wrath and/or protection from the brutal persecution by the Catholics that was kicking off.
As these people arrived, the demographics of Pilsen changed. Initially a city dominated by Hussite moderates, the radicals took up more and more space. That gave Wenceslaus Koranda the room to imprint more and more of his ideas on to the cityscape. He started with stripping the churches of their idolatry images before moving on to the destruction of the monasteries. The monks and the inhabitants unwilling to fall in line were expelled. And from there he whipped up the crowd with fear of the imminent Second Coming, which got ever more aggressive as news of the massacres at Kutna Hora spread.
I have by the way found another source for these events we discussed last week. A letter written by the magistrates of Prague to the city of Venice in July 1420 highlights both the incredible cruelty and the involvement of the largely German population. The leader of the atrocities was a certain Nicholas of Jemniste. Jemniste had initially been sympathetic and had warned Jan Hus against going to Constance, but he ended up a fanatic anti-Hussite. He is supposed to have devised the murder by mineshaft we discussed last week, earning him the nickname “the fierce”.
Naturally, Pilsen refused to sign up to the truce with the royalists. The government in Prague sent troops to bring Pilsen to heel. Initially this was a small army recruited mainly from the local nobility. They were unable to surround the city completely. Instead, they ran a campaign of destruction of neighbouring fields and villages, thereby reducing the availability of foodstuff in the overcrowded city.
Up until now the Taborites had been a peaceful lot, except for the destruction of churches and monasteries. Their whole ethos was to replicate the lives of the apostles who had spent their time preaching and living a communal life. But now that the armies of the enemy had gathered, the question is whether they were allowed to defend themselves. Zizka and his fellow commanders had already used military force in Prague, but the question was whether the faithful and even the priests could join them in this fight. After all the apostles had accepted martyrdom without resisting and does that not mean they should too? Zizka and his fellow commanders put this question to the masters of the university in Prague. And the masters concluded that it was appropriate for the laity to use violence in defence of their faith but reiterated the prohibition for priests to carry swords. That is often seen as the moment when Koronda and Zizka began to fall out, something that will be relevant later.
For now, the defence of the city was priority number 1. The small contingents of royalists roaming the countryside were clearly just the advance guard of a much larger army that would be sent against Pilsen. Zizka as captain of the city was in charge of defence. We know little of the early skirmishes in that period except for one significant event.
Sometime in December Zizka had made a sortie to take a small royalist fort at Nekmer, a few miles from the city. What he did not know was that this had been a trap, set up by the royalist commander. As Zizka arrived, he suddenly faced up against the entirety of the enemy. forces, made up of dozens maybe a hundreds of knights, all in shining armour confident in the knowledge that nothing could resist their charge.
Zizka, it is said, had just a small force of men, not all of them trained soldiers, a few guns and seven wagons. As far as we know this was the moment when he first deployed the technique that would later make him the greatest military tactician of his day.
He ordered the wagons to form a circle on top of a hill and placed the canons in the middle. As the knights attacked they were met with canon fire that could penetrate their armour. And even if they were willing to dodge the shrapnel, they found their progress barred by the heavy wagons. The defenders meanwhile stayed behind in the safety of their mobile castle, taking shots at the enemy out in the open, or hitting them with their flails. This kind of warfare did not require years of training the knights went through. All you had to do was to be mad enough to handle one of these early guns that were almost as likely to explode in your hands than to send a projectile and to hold still whilst the stampede of armoured riders was coming at you. And if you believe that the End of Days was coming anyway, that was not quite as difficult as it sounds.
This tactic prove extremely effective against medieval knights in this and many later encounters. The royalists fled the field of battle and a new form of warfare was born.
But before this new model could be deployed successfully and at scale, Zizka and his men had to deal with a much, much larger royalist army that now invested the city of Pilsen. If that was pretty bad, what had made their position inside the city even more untenable was that February 14th had passed as just another uneventful Saturday. Instead of finding quote “all the others dead, with their noses sticking up in the air”. Instead the royalists were putting up their noses at those who quote “had been deceived in such an ugly way”.
The garrison of Pilsen was quickly running out of food, the population grew hostile and the royalist army outside the gates was growing by the day. It was time to go.
There was one silver lining. The commander of the royalist army was Wenceslaus of Duba, the Bohemian nobleman who had accompanied Jan Hus to Constance and had stood by his side until the end. Duba may not have been a full blow Hussite, but he was definitely no catholic fanatic. He offered Zizka and his fellow commanders an honourable surrender. If they gave up, they could leave the city with their camp followers and their weapons. Utraquist communion would be allowed for those citizens of Pilsen who desired it without punishment or molestation.
Jan Zizka took the deal and on March 22nd , 1420 a small troop of probably 400 armed men accompanied by women and children and now 12 wagons left the city of Pilsen. Though they had been promised safe passage, they soon found themselves under attack from a much larger force of 2,000, most of them armoured riders, commanded by some of the grandest barons of the realm. One had been in charge at the previous encounter and another was Nicholas of Jemniste, the cruel master of Kutna Hora. And again the wagons proved to be their salvation. This time the terrain was much less advantageous. The enemy attacked when his group was crossing a river. There was no chance for them to set up a defensible position on a hill. But Zizka spotted a number of fishponds nearby. That is where he guided the wagons, forming a circle which incorporated the ponds. This time the royalists were not so easily surprised by Zizka’s tactics. Instead of mounting rolling charges one after the other, the knights dismounted and fought their way hand to hand towards the Wagenburg. At one time they nearly succeeded in breaching the line of wagons, destroying two or three of them. But by then the battle had lasted for several hours and night fell. The royalists lines became muddled and ultimately so confounded that they could no longer distinguish friend from foe. Having beaten each other over the head a couple of time, they realised that this was not going to work out and retreated. Jan Zizka and his ragtag band of a few professional soldiers but mostly badly armed peasants had again defeated a much superior and much better equipped force.
On March 25th, 1420 they reached their destination, a place that was once called Hradiste and where their religious brethren were building a whole new city, a city they called Mt. Tabor and that would become the epicentre of radical Hussitism, giving it its name, the Taborites.
I would love to go on now and talk for another 45 minutes about Mount Tabor, the people who congregated there, what they believed and how they became the most powerful political and military machine of Bohemia, but we have already been going for more than 35 minutes. And that is enough for all of us. So Mount Tabor will have to wait until Next week. I hope you will join us again.
And in the meantime, just a quick hint, if you want to support the show go to historyofthegermans.com/support and become an imperial knight, a peer of the realm or even a Prince Elector for the equivalent of one, two or four cappuccinos a month. Who else can offer such elevated status?