The consequences of the Hussite Wars 1419-1434

This week we bring the series about the reformation before the reformation to an end. It is time to take stock. What changes did 20 years of opposition to the established church and 15 years of war bring to Bohemia? How did Jan Hus, Jan Želivský, Wenceslas Koranda and Petr Chelčický influence Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Müntzer and von Hutten? How did Zizka’s reform impact the Swiss mercenaries and the German Landsknechte?

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcast

Listen on YouTube

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 183 – The Aftermath of a Revolution, also Episode 20 of the Reformation before the Reformation.

This week we bring the series about the reformation before the reformation to an end. It is time to take stock. What changes did 20 years of opposition to the established church and 15 years of war bring to Bohemia? How did Jan Hus, Jan Želivský, Wenceslas Koranda and Petr Chelčický influence Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Müntzer and von Hutten? How did Zizka’s reform impact the Swiss mercenaries and the German Landsknechte?

But before we go there just a very brief reminder. The History of the Germans is, was and will be advertising free thanks to the generosity of our patrons who have signed up on historyofthegermans.com/support. And this week we want to thank Sven Klauke, Frandookie, Carl J., Shannon S., Dennis, Travis D., Werner G. and Niv Gal Waizer who have already signed up.

And with that mercifully short intro, back to the show.

Last week we came to the end of the Hussite revolution, which is usually set at 1434 the battle of Lipany that broke the power of the radical sects, the Taborites and Orebites, or 1437 the ascend of Sigismund to the throne of Bohemia as the universally accepted ruler of the kingdom.

This may be a sensible place to take a break and survey the outcome of these 20 years of upheaval.

Lets start with the toll in terms of human life.  

As always in the Middle Ages, numbers are very unreliable. Wikipedia has an unsupported but weirdly precise set of numbers indicating a loss of 1.3 to 1.8 million over the entire period all the way to 1526. However, the central academic estimate for the death toll of the Hussite Wars is around 100-200,000. The majority of the losses weren’t battle casualties, but civilian losses due to the devastation of fields and vineyards. In pre-modern times food supply was always precarious so that even temporary disruptions from foraging armes or deliberate destruction of fields could cause disastrous famines.  

That feels like a modest number compared to the millions who perished I the religious wars of the 16^th and 17^th century. But Bohemia is a small country so that modest number still adds up to roughly 10% of its population at the time. To put that in context, the French military deaths in World War One were 1.3-1.5m plus maybe another 0.5 to 0.8m civilian losses from starvation out of a population of 39.6 million, so roughly 5%. If you are looking for a death toll of 10% or more in recent times there is the Soviet Union which lost ~13.5% of its population during World War II, which included famine, genocide, deportation and disease.

As Laurence of Brezova, an eyewitness to these events, said quote: “As I consider the ruin, as varied as it is enormous, of the once famous and fortunate kingdom of Bohemia, [..[which [..] has been everywhere devoured as by a serpent and devastated by [..] internal conflict, my senses are dulled , and my reason, distraught with grief, declines from the vigour of its faculties.” End quote.

The recovery from this devastation took not only years but centuries. One key reason for this prolonged impact was the massive damage the Bohemian economy sustained during the conflict.

The pillar of the Bohemian economy in the High Middle Ages had been mining, specifically silver mining. We have been going on about the Mines of Kutna Hora so often, you must be tired of me taking about them. One of the outcomes of the conflict was that the trained mining engineers, most of whom had been German and catholic, left Kutna Hora in 1422 and the Czechs struggled to bring the production back to the levels they had been before the war. Plus the easier seams were exhausted and the remaining shafts were prone to flooding so that silver production dropped sharply. The other great mine in Joachimstal, the one which gave its name to the Thaler and ultimately the Dollar, opened only in 1512. So for much of the time during and after the Hussite wars, there was only moderate mining activity.

And we should not forget that in the 14^th century Nürnberg devised a technology to separate silver from copper ore, something that yielded enormous profits for the city but left the localsy in Bohemia and Hungary with just the crumbs that fell off the table.

Then, before the Hussite Wars, Bohemia had not only experienced a massive building boom, in particular the construction of the New Town of Prague, the kingdom had also become more deeply integrated into the expanding European trade networks. Emperor Charles IV had tried to establish a new major trade route from Venice via Prague to Leipzig and into the Hanse territory as well as into Poland and Russia. Though this grand plan was only partially successful, mainly German speaking long distance merchants settled in Prague, Pilsen, Kutna Hora and many other cities.

As we have heard during the season about the Hanse, late medieval trade was largely based on trust. A merchant who sent his wares or his money to another city usually placed it with a dependable business partner or a branch of his own firm. These were pretty much the only options. The logistics of recovering  funds or merchandise lost to fraud were simply insurmountable. The duped trader would have had to go to the place where the fraud was committed, bring a case before the local court, in some cases under a legal framework different to what he was used to at home, and then hope the conman wouldn’t skip town. Hence we have trade networks like the Hanse which were based on a shared language, culture and social surveillance or the great Italian and Southern German firms with offices in all major trading centres.

By embracing the Hussite beliefs, even in its most moderate form, the Bohemians had made themselves suspects in the eyes of a still 100% catholic europe. Nobody wanted to trade with someone who had been labelled a heretic, whether justified or not. Once most Catholics had left Prague following the defenestration in 1419, the city was literally cut out of international trade. Staunchly catholic cities like Pilsen might have been able to maintain their relationships with the outside world, but the regular sieges and the incursions by Taborites and Orebites must have made things difficult. And for what that was worth, the Catholic church and the empire had issued a trade embargo on all of Bohemia.

After that embargo was lifted in 1437 and Catholics trickled back into Prague, reconstructing the old links remained a slow and painful process, often interrupted by the wild swings of Bohemian politics in the 15^th and 16^th century.

The second boost to economic activity that Charles IV had bequeathed the crown of Bohemia was the pilgrimage trade. He had placed literally hundreds of venerated relics into the churches of Prague and the great monasteries. The imperial regalia and the crown of St. Wenceslaus,  themselves objects of veneration, were displayed once a year in a grand procession that had brought in visitors from all across Europe.

But at the end of the Hussite wars, many of these relics had been destroyed and the monasteries burned down. The imperial regalia had transferred to Nürnberg. So that trade had also ceased.

Finally, the last great gift Charles IV had granted Prague had been the University. But the expulsion of the German nations in 1409, a withdrawal of the papal charter during the council of Constance, the burning of the books by the archbishop left the institution a mere shadow of its former self. Its role as the pre-eminent academic institution in the empire had initially gone to Heidelberg and Leipzig and many of the foundations of the 15^th and 16^th century still outpaced the oldest university in the empire.

To provide at least a little bit of silver lining, the translation of the bible into the common tongue and the emphasis Hussite beliefs placed on preaching, led to a rapid development of Czech as a literary language. As you may have noticed, I do not speak Czech, but I am sure some friendly Czech listeners may be able to point us to some interesting works from the period.

But overall, Bohemia lost touch with much of the early modern developments in art and philosophy. The emerging humanist ideas and writings took a long way to get there, as did the art of the early renaissance. At a time when Matthias Corvinus was creating his famous library in Hungary and Italian artists were busy embellishing Krakow, Bohemia clung to a late gothic style which I find very appealing, but wasn’t exactly cutting edge at the time.

As we are talking about philosophy and theology and in case you want to go deeper, I have an excellent Philosophy podcast for you! The Partially Examined Life is a philosophical podcast by 4 guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living. For each episode, they pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don’t have to know any philosophy, or even have read the text they’re talking about to follow and enjoy! With a 13-year-plus catalogue of episodes, The Partially Examined Life has probably covered any philosophical topic you’re interested in, from practical ethics to the theoretical foundations of science. They go deep into the history of philosophy while making it personal and funny.

You can join the over 45 million downloads already pondering with The Partially Examined Life. Find new episodes wherever you find your podcasts or at partiallyexaminedlife.com

We have done population, economics and culture, which means we can now move to our more familiar territory of political history.

When a revolution comes to its end, it usually leaves behind winners and losers. And that is the case here too. The winners, by a wide margin were the barons, Hussite and Catholic alike. For one, they seized the vast majority of the former church lands and incorporated them into their personal property. It is quite remarkable that in the four articles of Prague it says explicitly that the church owning property is “to the disadvantage of their spiritual office and also of the temporal lords”. I will be looking out for a similarly blatant statement when we get to the Reformation.

Before the Hussite revolt, the church in Bohemia controlled around 30% to maybe even 35% of the arable land. At the end of the process, that had dropped to about 12%. And most of this land went to the barons and to a few members of the gentry who had become successful military leaders during the conflict. And it was not just the Hussite barons who salivated at the prosect of expelling monks from a rich abbey, the Catholics were at it as well.

Alongside the increase in wealth came another uplift in political influence. Bohemia was, as we know from way back in episode 146, an elective monarchy. That is how Sigismund’s grandfather, the blind king John gained the crown in the first place. Charles IV tried to shift this, but never managed to formally rescind the elective nature of the kingdom and had to confirm it in his Golden Bull. But like in the empire under the Ottonians and Salians, if there was a male heir who was competent, the election was more of a formality.

But now, after 20 years of war, which at least in part was a war over Wenceslaus IV’ succession, the elective element of the monarchy was put to the forefront. Sigismund had to confirm the right of the Land Diet to choose the monarch, and that diet was dominated by the great barons. The elective element would become even more important as Sigismund’s heir, Albrecht of Austria died after just 2 years on the throne in 1439, leaving behind a son who was born posthumously. And when that son died in 1457 without ever really taking control of Bohemia, the barons saw themselves entirely free to grant the crown to whoever they liked, which turned out to be one of their own, George of Podiebrad.

Beyond the right to elect their king, Sigismund had to make even further concessions. He had to accept the transfer of royal cities and castles to the barons, leaving the kings of Bohemia without resources. He passed a ban on promoting foreigners to any of the high offices of state and an obligation to consult the assembly of the kingdom on appointments, which turned into a de facto approval right. During the 1460s the barons also gained control of the local courts, rendering royal justice effectively defunct.

Since there wasn’t an effective king for almost the entire period between Sigismund’s death in 1437 and Georg of Podiebrad’s election as king in 1458, the running of the kingdom was in the hands of the Bohemian diet where the barons outnumbered the gentry and the cities.

Which then gets me to the cities. As we have seen Prague, Pilsen and Tabor featured as major players during the Hussite wars, fielding armies and signing treaties. Other places like Hradec Kralove, Kutna Hora etc. also mattered. These cities had developed a significant degree of autonomy, held something akin to elections to the city council, and in the case of Tabor and its affiliates, had a very distinct history and culture. Hence one would expect them to remain of importance post the revolution. But that wasn’t the case. The barons teamed up with Sigismund to strip the cities from the right to appoint their military captains. Without control of their military force and subject to the courts owned by the barons, the cities were defenceless and lost more and more influence.

That being said, the biggest losers were the peasants. In a republic of barons, you do not want to toil the land. Whilst in most of europe the Black dDeath had led to an increase in wages for labourers and a reduction in feudal obligations, in Bohemia, serfdom returned with a vengeance. Peasants who had fled into the cities, even into places like Tabor, could be forced to return to their previous home and bondage. In the persistent economic depression and the continued upheaval even free peasants were gradually pushed into submission under a tiny landowning elite.

Bohemia would be a land ruled by a few dozen barons who controlled the state and the royal assembly, up until 1618. When the Habsburg monarchs tried to impose not just religious but also political control on the Bohemians, it came to the second Prague defenestration, which triggered the Thirty Years war, a war even more devastating than the Hussite Wars.

Having done Politics, it is time to move on to the other topic one should never raise at a dinner party – religion. In the broadest of brushes, the situation developed as follows.

The formerly moderate Hussites moderated further and further as time went on. At the beginning of the 16^th century there was really very little that distinguished the Hussite Utraquist church from traditional catholic Christianity, except for the offer of bread and wine during services and the veneration of Jan Hus as a saint. The formally catholic church had never disappeared from Bohemia, as we know several regions, around Pilsen and in southern Bohemia had remained catholic all throughout. But as part of the compacts of Basel catholic priests and monks were allowed to return. They reopened the monasteries and churches, collected endowments from the faithful and slowly and steadily rebuilt their presence. It is also important to remember that the crown of Bohemia comprised not just Bohemia but also Moravia, Silesia and Lusatia. These territories had in the main rejected Hussitism. That meant that as the crown of Bohemia reconsolidated, the overall entity was almost split 50/50 between the now very moderate Hussites and the old school Catholics.

Then what happened with the Taborites and Orebites and some of the even more radical splinter groups? Well, as we heard last week, their military power was broken at the battle of Lipany in 1434. However, they were able to continue their spiritual independence. They had their own bishop and their own liturgy. But that lasted only until 1452 when Tabor got caught between the political powers in the land, was besieged by king Georg of Podiebrad, defeated and turned into a royal city under the Utraquist church.

Those who did still yearn for a different approach formed the Unity of the Brethren. The Brethren were a lot closer to the original ideas of Jan Hus.  Their founding thinker was Peter Chelčický. He is another one of these people I would produce a whole episode on if this show was called the history of europe and not the history of the Germans. But briefly. He took his cues from the sermon of the mount. That led him to reject the institutions of the church and the state, but most importantly led him to reject any form of violence. He preached tolerance and turning the other cheek, not to repay evil with evil. He embraced many early Taborite ideas on communal living and sharing of resources.

The brethren being strict pacifists were tolerated within Bohemia until the counterreformation. After the battle of White Mountain in 1620 any non-catholic beliefs were persecuted so that the brethren were forced underground. Some moved to Moravia, others further afield. Of those who lived in hiding in Moravia, a small group left for Berthelsdorf a noble estate near Gorlitz in Saxony.  Its owner, Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf welcomed them and gave them land where they established a new village they called Herrnhut. The community thrived and triggered a revival of the Unity of Brethren. They became known as the Moravians and thanks to a proactive missionary activity are today a protestant community of over 700,000 with a strong presence Tanzania, the Caribbean and in the US. Their ideas had a major impact on Methodists, Baptists and the evangelical movement more broadly.

Which leaves the most important question for us, how did the Hussite revolt impact religious thought in the German speaking parts of the empire.

The first thing to say, and I believe that it is not at all controversial is that there are an incredibly large number of parallels between the ideas of Jan Hus, Jan Zelivsky, Wenceslaus Koronda, Petr Chelčický, the Taborites, Zizka, the Orebites etc. on the one hand and Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Melanchthon and so forth on the other.

Both demanded freedom to preach based on the bible in the vernacular language. They demanded a return to the church of the apostles, where priests did not yield temporal power or had enormous wealth. They offered the sacrament in the form of bread and the wine, dismissed the saints, the adoration of the Virgin Mary and had an iconoclastic bent.

And even some of the set piece events have an eery similarity. The offer of safe conduct to Constance and to Worms, an emperor present at the disputations. Then there was the expansion of Ottoman power that forced both Sigismund and Charles V away from the centre of religious dissent, giving the reformers enough breathing space to disseminate their ideas.

But as we bankers say, correlation is not causation. The fact that both movements came to similar conclusion could have been down to Luther, Calvin or Zwingli reading the books of Hus or the millennial sermons of the Taborites.  Or it may have been down to the fact that the bible is pretty unambiguous in its description of the primitive church and the gap between that ideal and the lived reality of the church in the 15^th as well as the 16^th century was totally obvious.

As you know we have not yet done the Reformation and my experience after four years of doing this podcast is that I usually regret statements I make looking forward in our timeline. Therefore, with the caveat that I have only read a limited set of sources, it is my understanding that Martin Luther had at best only a sketchy understanding of the Hussite revolt when he drafted his 95 theses. It was only when his opponent, Johann von Eck pointed out to him how close his ideas were to Jan Hus’ writings that he realised the similariies. He first read Hus’ main works, de Ecclesia in 1519 and it took him until 1522 before he publicly stated that Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague had been innocent.

It is therefore difficult to argue that the Hussite revolt directly influenced the Reformation. But it may well have had an indirect influence. Luther himself may not have been aware, but it is unlikely that such audacious ideas and dramatic events as we have discussed these last few weeks left no imprint in the collective memory of the empire. Or did it?

There is something that strikes me as odd. We have been talking about the relationship between empire and papacy for years now. And in this context we have noticed a strong anti-papal, if not anti-clerical undercurrent in the general opinion of the German speaking people of the empire. After all, a half dozen emperors had been excommunicated and could still rely on the support of their people, even their bishops. Ludwig the Bavarian was the most obvious example of an emperor who remained outside the church for most of his reign, was never legally crowned and gathered the Kurverein zu Rhense that rejected papal influence on the empire.

At which point one wonders why the Hussite ideas did not resonate with the German speaking peoples. Instead they mustered crusades against them and their ideas did seemingly not circulate broadly amongst theologians in German universities.

And that gets us to the bit which may become controversial. The idea that springs to mind is that the Hussite revolt had some very strong nationalist overtones. And that not just in 19^th century historiography, but our friend Laurence of Brezova who write his chronicle right in the midst of these events, never misses an opportunity to paint the Germans as evil. And likewise, the towns and cities near the Bohemian border may not have looked fondly on to the Hussite armies that came across burning and plundering.

But I am not sure that Hussitism was really mainly a national movement for the Czechs that the Germans rejected as foreign.

Because the idea all Czechs were Hussites is obviously not true. Cities like Pilsen and barons like Ulrich von Rosenberg were catholic and undeniably Czech. The accusers of Jan Hus in Constance weren’t Germans but Czechs and their judges included more French and Italians than Germans. Meanwhile Prokop the Shaven, the military leader of the Taborites for 10 years was from the German minority in Bohemia and during the time of Jan Hus, sermons were also preached in German at the Bethlehem Chapel.

The reason the Germans in Bohemia sided in the main with the Catholics had probably more economic than spiritual reasons. Their networks as long distance traders or mining specialists stretched beyond the borders of the kingdom and if they wanted to maintain these links, they had to at least formally stay with the catholic church. That does not justify the massacres in Kutna Hora, but it does explain why this community in the main refused to join the Hussite movement.

So my thesis is a fairly simple one. The reason that Jan Hus and the other Hussite thinkers were unknown in German speaking lands lay in the fact that they discussed and published much of their ideas in Czech. Sure many foundational texts were initially written and published in Latin. But the scholarship that developed around it was conducted in Czech.

And if you realised one thing over the last few episodes, it is that Germans really cannot pronounce Czech words. And that may be the main reason Jan Hus revolutionary and I find profoundly convincing ideas did not make it to Germany. Luther had to find it out all by himself, like Peter Valdes, the Cathars, St. Francis, St. Peter Damian, Michael of Cesena, William of Ockham, Marsilius of Padua and dozens and dozens and dozens of others.

There was however one thing the Hussites developed, that was unique and that the Germans embraced enthusiastically. And that were the military innovations of Jan Zizka. The transfer was not direct but went through the Swiss mercenaries who were the first to take on Zizka’s military doctrine of discipline, meritocracy and equal sharing of the loot. They replaced the Wagenburgs with pike and shot squares which are based on a similar idea of defending against cavalry attacks through interlocking units, low cost cut and thrust arms and the use of artillery.

Their version of Zizka’s ideas was then absorbed by the Landsknechte in Maximilian’s military reforms. I am sure we will discuss this change in military tactics and the subsequent change in the social hierarchy in more detail in an upcoming episodes, so I will not elaborate too much at this point.

Which brings us to the end of this episode and the end of this season. I hope you enjoyed our somewhat elongated excursion into Bohemia. We will almost certainly return when we discuss the rise of the Habsburgs and it is unlikely to be the last time our story will take us to foreign shores. It is one of the weird things about German history that a lot of the action consists of the key protagonists heading out to neighbouring places. For a long time the empire was simply too big for anyone to invade. But once they did, they did not stop for 200 years, and boy will we be busy talking about that.

But before we do any of this, we will do our little tour of the empire, taking it all in in its late medieval, half-timbered glory. I am still in the process of planning it so that I cannot guarantee we will start immediately next week. I might slot in a short episode on Barbara of Cilli or simply take a week off. Let’s see. I hope you will join us again…

And in the meantime, if you want to induce me to work harder and faster, there is always the historyofthegermans.com/support page where you can make a contribution.

Reconciliation Between Hussites and the Catholic Church

We have a tendency to overlook the history of the smaller European nations even though they do quite often provide the laboratory where one could have seen the sign of things to come or calamities that could be avoided. One of these nations is Czechia, where events took place that could, should or did impact the History of the Germans, in 1989, in 1968, in 1938, in 1618 and in 1419-1437. Today we will talk about the very last one on this list, the moment when a complete confessional split was prevented, something Martin Luther, emperor Charles V and pope Leo X so disastrously failed to manage a hundred years later.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcast

Listen on YouTube

Video version

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 182 – The Return of the King, also episode 19 of Season 9 The Reformation before the Reformation

We have a tendency to overlook the history of the smaller European nations even though they do quite often provide the laboratory where one could have seen the sign of things to come or calamities that could be avoided. One of these nations is Czechia, where events took place that could, should or did impact the History of the Germans, in 1989, in 1968, in 1938, in 1618 and in 1419-1437. Today we will talk about the very last one on this list, the moment when a complete confessional split was prevented, something Martin Luther, emperor Charles V and pope Leo X so disastrously failed to manage a hundred years later.

I will also provide links in the show notes to books or podcasts relating to the other events in case you want to read ahead.

But before we start just another important warning. If you want to sign up on Patreon rather than on my recently revamped historyofthegermans.com/support website, be very, very careful not to do it on the Patreon app on your iPhone. If you sign up using your iPhone, Apple will add a shocking 30% surcharge to your contribution, which also attracts tax. That comes on top of an 8% Patreon charge, a 10+1% PayPal charge plus tax. What that means is that if you sign on at the highest, the Kurfürst level, as one listeners so kindly did yesterday, you may be charged $15, of which I will receive just $9.58 and that is before they rip me off on the exchange rate. If you were making the same contribution on the historyofthegermans.com/support page, my total expense would ~4%, meaning I would receive $14.4 from this exceedingly generous patron.

Note that the 30% surcharge only applies to new patrons and only if you use the patreon app on your iPhone. And it only kicked in this week. That is why I have not yet pushed you guys to move across to the new platform. However, it is be something you may consider.  One of the perks on the new platform is the History of the Germans Forum where you can discuss all matters relating to the podcast and German history with your fellow listeners and with me.

As for the website, it is being gradually translated into German as we speak. This may take a few months to get through, but it is in progress. I hope you enjoy this and you may want to send the link to some of your friends who prefer reading the history in German.  

Which gets me to my before last point. Many of you have responded to the question about what we want to do next. And whilst this is definitely not a democracy, if the overwhelming majority of you want to do a tour of the empire, we will do a tour of the empire. I am actually quite excited about it and have already done some initial research.

And all that, the website translation, the forum and the next season is only possible because so many of you have signed up on historyofthegermans.com/support. And in particular I want to thank  Harold W., The exceedingly generous Robert MacMillan, Lars S., Hunter T., Mari V., Peter K., Felix and Matthias T. who have already signed up.

And with that, back to the show

Last week we ended on the death of Jan Zizka, the man who turned the Bohemians into a near invincible military force. Though the story of his skin being used as a drum that led his followers to victory is almost certainly fake, the Hussites remained undefeated for another 10 years.

The neighbors of the kingdom, in particular the empire mustered a total of five crusades to put an end to the heresy they found so difficult to accept.

The first crusade was led by Sigismund in 1420 and ended with the battles on Vitkov Hill and Vhysehrad. An alleged 150,000 crusaders returned without anything to show for, except some ransacked villages and burnt Hussite priests.

The second crusade in 1421 ended with the imperial forces running away when they heard a Hussite army approaching. Sigismund’s not quite simultaneous attempt ended with the battles of Kutna Hora and Nemecky Brod where his heavy cavalry drowned in the ice cold Sazava river.

The third crusade in 1423 was such a comprehensive failure that the only one to muster an army at all was king Eric VII of Denmark, who turned around before even getting to the Bohemian border.

The fourth crusade in 1426 ended with the battle of Aussig. Frederick the Belligerent of Saxony had invaded Bohemia in 1425 but got stuck in the town of Usti, or Aussig. His wife, the electress Katherine sent reinforcements, allegedly 30,000 men. This time the crusaders were a little more enthusiastic. They believed that the success of the Hussites had been down to the genius of Jan Zizka and that after his death things would be easier. And they had come up with ideas to break through the Wagenburgs. The knights had brought axes and hammers to break the retaining chains between the wagons. And they did indeed break into the circle of wagons, but found the Hussite cavalry had left around the back and was now attacking their flanks and their rear. This battle left a large number of Saxon, Lusatian and Thuringian nobles dead on the battlefield.  

Frederick I of Saxony the Belligerent died in 1428 and was succeeded by Frederick II of Saxony, the gentle, which must have calmed things down a lot on that border.

The fifth and final crusade got under way on August 1, 1431. Though Sigismund had initially promised to lead the effort in person, he ceded command to Frederick of Hohenzollern, the Elector of Brandenburg. On August 14 the army which had begun a siege of the city of Domažlice (Domaschlitze), heard the sound of Hussite warriors singing “Ye Who are Warriors of God” and ran, all 150,000 of them.

These were the major actions. But alongside those ran dozens of smaller ones. The main actors here were on the catholic side duke Albrecht of Austria who had received Moravia from Sigismund as dowry of his daughter Elisabeth, the Brandenburg and Saxon electors. Albrecht wanted to protect his dowry and the other two were trying to add to their property portfolio with a side dish of a free ticket to paradise.

But more significant than these incursions into Bohemia were the “glorious rides” the Hussite armies led into Franconia, Austria, Silesia and even Prussia. These took place mainly in the late 1420s and early 1430s. They could best be described as funding rounds. The armies or brotherhoods of Tabor and of Horeb were not only an extremely effective weapon, they were also a standing army that was extremely expensive to maintain. One way of funding them would have been to collect taxes in the territories the two radical factions controlled, but who would want to do that. The next best option was to rent them out as mercenaries in times Bohemia was comparatively quiet, and finally one could  fund them out of the plunder they made during their campaigns.

The problem with the latter option was that many of these initial campaigns had taken place inside Bohemia and after a decade of war, the economy was on its knees, the rich had lost everything or had fled and the country was utterly destroyed. Hence sparing their fellow Czechs and looting Austrians, Franconians, Saxons and Silesians was the patriotic thing to do.

These Hussite reizen were anything but glorious for their reluctant hosts. As we have heard, even battle hardened soldiers were terrified of the religious warriors from Bohemia. So they encountered barely any resistance to their ransacking and pillaging. Cities closed their gates and paid them off, whilst villages and open towns had to let them do what they wanted to do.

In July 1432 such a Hussite army lay before Naumburg, home to a bishopric and deep inside the empire. The citizens ware terrified and pleaded with Prokop the Shaven, the new priest leader and military commander of the Taborites. In their despair they sent out their children to the Hussite camp, the boys and girls wearing white shirts as a sign of submission and penance. They were singing and begging for mercy.

And here is their song – don’t panic, I will not sing it, I leave that to Rock on Stage from Naumburg

SONG

Just in case you were surprised about the upbeat tone of the song, here is the translation:

The Hussites marched before Naumburg

over Jena and Camburg;

all over the Vogelwies

you saw nothing but sword and spear,

about a hundred thousand.

Now when they lay before Naumburg

there came a great lamentation;

Hunger tormented, thirst hurt,

and a single lot of coffee

came to sixteen pfennigs.

It then goes on for a while and ends with Prokop the Shaven choosing not to massacre the little ones. Instead he gave them cherries and

“then drew his long sword,

commanded: ‘Turn right!

Leave Naumburg behind’

And ever since the city of Naumburg celebrates a Hussite Cherry festival at the end of June with medieval processions, a market and music.

Unfortunately the idea of the generous, cherry distributing Hussite general is as much made up as the idea you get a cup of coffee for 16 pfennig. The Hussites did not go to Naumburg in 1432, but Bohemian Mercenaries did show up in a war between the heirs to the duchy of Saxony 25 years later and the whole thing with the cherries came up in the 16^th century as a festival. Still Augst von Kotzebue wrote a patriotic play that for very good reasons is no longer performed and Salieri wrote an entire opera, which is still performed and which you hear in the background. Ah, and Naumburg is not the only one celebrating these Hussite invasions. The city of Bernau, near Berlin has one too, as does Neunburg vorm Wald.

What is nice is that this whole rather blood-soaked story has turned not just into a number of jolly festivals, but has also brought several Czech, German and Austrian towns together to form the Hussitische Kulturroute where you can follow either Jan Hus’ journey from Prague to Konstance or do a tour of the major battle fields of the war, all in the spirit of reconciliation.

But the reality was still pretty horrific. These clashes between Hussites and their neighbors were terrifying the inhabitants of the border regions and inside Bohemia warfare never completely stopped..

It must have been clear to all observers that this conflict had no military solution. If it had not been obvious after Sigismund’s defeat at Nememtzky Brod, then Aussig should have made that abundantly clear. But some people still need another reminder, which came in the fifth crusade. After that pretty much everybody knew that this was it.

The only question that remained was the following|: Would Europe simply isolate the Hussites and leave them to live their lives under a different religion, or could there be a reconciliation that reopened the borders?

It was time for diplomacy. Some key players, like king Jogaila of Poland and margrave Friedrich of Hohenzollern had kicked things off before the fifth crusade had even started. The whole process took almost 6 years, but before we get into the who did or said what when, let’s just take a look at how incredibly convoluted the situation had become in the 1430s.

At the heart of all this stood the religious differences between the catholic church and the Hussites. The Hussites had been kind enough to narrow down their key demands into the four articles of Prague, which were:

1. That the Word of God shall be freely and without hindrance proclaimed and preached by Christian priests in the kingdom of Bohemia
2. That the Holy Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ under the two kinds of bread and wine shall be freely administered to all true Christians who are not excluded from communion by mortal sin.
3. That since many priests and monks hold many earthly possessions against Christ’s command and to the disadvantage of their spiritual office and also of the temporal lords, such priests shall be deprived of this illegal power and shall live exemplary lives according to the Holy Scripture, in following the way of Christ and the apostles.
4. That all mortal sins, and especially those that are public, as also other disorders contrary to the divine law, shall be prohibited and punished by those whose office it is so that the evil and false repute of this country may be removed and the well-being of the kingdom and of the Bohemian nation may be promoted.

These ideas, maybe with the exception of #4 had a sound basis in the way the original church of Christ and the apostles had been set up. There was not an awful lot in the bible the catholic church could use to refute these demands. However, these ideas would have been the end of the church organization as it had developed over the previous 400 years, basically since emperor Henry III had placed Leo IX on the papal throne and Gregory VII had laid down his Dictatus papae.

Basically the Hussites demanded the Catholic Church in its current form dissolves and the Catholic Church wanted the Hussites to give up on the demands of God.

This was an ideological rift as deep as that between communism and capitalism.

If history teaches us one thing, it is that political expediency can bridge even the deepest ideological divides, just look at the expansion of the Chinese economy, a country still at least nominally communist.

This is however a far as the China/America comparison goes, since the key negotiators, Sigismund and Procop the Shaven were no Richard Nixon or Deng Xiao Ping.

Let us start with Sigismund. The word that is most commonly associated with him is “ueberfordert” which is something like “overstretched” or “out of his depth” or “unable to cope”. I know, this is German efficiency, we need just one word to say all this.

What it relates to is the almost impossible situation he found himself in. Let me try to summarize his main problems in bullet points:

1. The Ottomans were at the gates of Belgrade, had a much superior military and a huge appetite for land and treasure.
2. The Venetians had left the seclusion of their lagoon and were taking control of territories along the Dalmatian coast, aka Croatia, and in the Northern Italian mainland. The former was part of Sigismund’s Hungarian kingdom and the latter was part of the empire he was also in charge of.
3. The Teutonic Knights and Poland had entered their own 100 years’ war that only concluded with the dissolution of the order in Prussia in 1525. Sigismund was dragged into the conflict in his role as king of the Romans and hence protector of the order whilst Poland Lithuania was of huge importance for his Bohemian and Hungarian kingdoms.
4. Then there was the expansion of the duchy in Burgundy. In 1428 duke Philip the Good took over the counties of Holland, Hainault and Zeeland, and added them to the Franche Comte, Brabant, Geldern and Luxemburg that had been picked up already. The dukes of Burgundy were nominally vassals of France, but vey much on the way to creating their own state. What they were not, was faithful vassals of the empire. Something that applied equally to the dukes of Lorraine, the counts of Provence and anyone else in the Rhone Valey. Basically the whole western side of the empire was sailing off into the sunset.
5. Talking about the empire, Sigismund’s attempts to establish functioning institutions and a funding system for an army to defend it got stuck. Being busy with items 1-4 meant, the empire was left pretty much to its own devices resulting in the chaos we discussed in episode 179.
6. Then we have the minor issue that Sigismund had not yet been crowned emperor despite having been elected 20+ years earlier.
7. And then, finally, but most importantly, Sigismund was seen as responsible for the Bohemian mess, and not only by the Hussites, but by the Pope, the princes and cities as well.

These were only the major issues he had to deal with. There were a lot of other, minor issues, like a difficult marriage to one of the more interesting female figures of the age, Barbara of Cili, who may warrant her own episode.

What made his situation completely untenable was his utter lack of resources. The Hungarian kingdom would only grant funds for the defense of the kingdom, but would not pay for his efforts in any of the other theatres he was involved in. Of his father’s bountiful possessions, Bohemia, Moravia, Luxemburg, Brandenburg, Silesia all he still had was Silesia, the rest was in revolt, sold, pawned, enfeoffed or handed over as dowry of his daughter. He was almost constantly begging for cash, at one point he pawned his crown and he started a cash for honours trade where he – amongst others –  granted the Gonzagas in Mantua the title of margrave in exchange for 12,000 gold coins.

All he had going for him was his charm, intelligence and the prestige as ruler of the empire. In a world were might was right, that did not account for much, which makes what happened next so impressive.

Sigismund never had a very clear political direction. All these various challenges left him swaying this way and that, desperately trying to find a path through these complex scenarios.

But one thing was clear to him. If he ever wanted to regain the position his father had occupied in European politics, and that was very much what he wanted, he needed to have control of a rich and militarily powerful territory. And after trying all sorts of other routes to riches and military might, he settled on Bohemia as the rich and militarily powerful territory he needed to regain if he ever wanted to be an effective emperor.

But that came with an irresolvable conundrum.

He could become king of Bohemia on the back of the support of moderate Hussites and catholic barons if only he signed up to some version of the four articles of Prague. But if he did that, he would at a minimum be deposed by the Prince Electors of the empire and may even lose Hungary as well.

On the other hand, he had tried to take Bohemia by force which failed and after the debacle of the fifth crusade, there was an exactly zero chance of success down that route.

Which means the only viable way to become king of Bohemia and with it an effective emperor, was to forge a reconciliation between Hussites and Catholics which means getting the church to accept some version of the four articles of Prague as canon, whilst at the same time preventing any actual change in church institutions from happening.

And, assuming such language could be agreed upon, he then had to convince the Hussites, who hated him as the man who had burned Jan Hus, and the catholic church, who suspected him as a closet heretic to make him king.

Piece of cake!

There was one thing however that made it at all possible. There was a new church council under way. The old Pope, Martin V, the one that had been elected at the council of Constance had – after much hemming and hawing – finally allowed a gathering of the bishops of all of Christendom to take place. And at this council the delegates were to debate church reform. If you remember, the council of Constance singularly failed to make any material progress on that matter. (Episode 173).

This council, the council of Basel wasn’t off to a great start. When the papal legate opened the event in September 1431, there was hardly anyone there. Things only got under way properly when the new pope, Eugene IV tried to dissolve it. The council responded by reiterating that its authority was superior to papal powers  and by opening proceedings to depose pope Eugene IV. At that point a lot of bishops experienced a severe case of FOMO and made their way to Basel.

The situation was now quite precarious. This could easily end up in another schism,  dissolution of the council or, best case, a transfer of the council to somewhere in the papal states where the pope would have a lot more control.

If any of these things had happened, the reconciliation between Hussites and the Catholics would be off the table. Martin V and his successors had been working hard to turn the wheel of time back to the days before the schism. In their heart of hearts, they wanted to do away with church councils, church reform and if at all possible, the Hussites.

Which is what brings Sigismund on to the stage. If there is one thing he is good at, it is getting popes to recognize church councils. In 1432/33 he travels down to Rome. The journey was anything but easy given he was in an on and off war with Venice, had no money and his allies, the duchy of Milan and the Republic of Florence were weary of the fighting. But he made it down to the eternal city and on May 31^st, 1433 he was finally crowned emperor, aged 65 and suffering horribly from gout.

This coronation, though sparsely attended and badly received by everyone, the Hussites, the church and even the imperial princes, did however guarantee the survival of the council. Pope Eugene IV’s main worry was that the council would depose him. That is why he wanted to dissolve it. Sigismund explained that he could control the council, in part through the strength of his personality, but mainly because he had troops stationed inside and around Basel. So, you, master pope, would be well advised to tie Sigismund to your side. Now, if you crown Sigismund as emperor, he would not only be in your debt, he would also be incentivized to keep you on the throne of St. Peter. After all, the last thing Sigismund wants is to come back to the Empire and find that the pope who had crowned him was illegitimate and with it the whole coronation as well. At which point he would have to go down to Rome again, and he really, really did not want to do that.

So they made a deal, the pope crowned Sigismund, Sigismund promised to keep him in place and Eugene called off the dissolution of the council, at least until that Hussite question was resolved.

And with that the first hurdle was taken. The Hussites had a negotiation partner that wasn’t the irreconcilable pope, but a council of theologians and the council’s decision would be binding on any future pope.

But this was only level one.

The theological problems remained.

A first round of negotiations had taken place in 1432 in the city of Cheb  which is called Eger in German. There both sides agreed that a resolution would be sought quote “by the Law of God and the practices of Christ, the apostles and the early church, along with the teachings of the Councils and the doctors confirming truly thereto” end quote. That was something both moderate and even the Taborites and Orphans could agree to. In fact the military and spiritual leader of the Taborites, Prokop the Shaven was at that meeting and signed on the dotted line. As did the four delegates of the council of Basel.

The Hussites were looking at this “the judgement of Cheb” as a great success. If this was the basis of the upcoming conversation at the council. Surely the whole of mother church would come round to their way of thinking.

In 1433 a delegation of four Hussite leaders came to Basel to hammer out the deal. This time Prokop the Shaven was not amongst them, his place was taken by an Englishman, Peter Payne, who had come to Bohemia way back in 1413 to live by the teachings of John Wycliffe and Jan Hus.

What followed was a slow and scholastic grinding down of the Hussite positions. It was the bishop of Barcelona, Juan Palomar, who described the Czechs as “wild horses who need to be have a halter put on their heads so that they could be captured, tamed and fastened to the manger”.

A statement not exactly dripping with respect for the theological  persuasiveness of the Hussite delegation.

So the negotiators played around with draft after draft, wearing the other side down until each of the articles was adorned with one of Palomar’s halters.

Yes, there will be communion in both kinds, but only to those who have already received it and only if the priest makes clear that the bread alone would be enough.

 Yes, sins shall be punished, but not by the individuals, only by the institutions of the state.

Yes, preaching is free, but only as long as it does not undermine the authority of the church.

And finally, the money question, i.e., should the church remain poor. Well, yes and no. There was no explicit restitution of the lands and properties of the church, but from now on the Catholics could receive endowments from the faithful again.

Even if you are neither a lawyer nor a theologian, it is pretty obvious what has happened here. Somebody had been – as the Germans would say – been pulled across the table. And the horse whisperer Juan Palomar was the one doing the pulling.

News of this compact as it would later be called were not received with enthusiasm back in Bohemia. The Taborites and Orebites saw right through this. That would be the end of their religious beliefs. And remember, for them the four articles were the bare minimum. Their creed went a lot further than that. A gelded version of the four articles were unacceptable to them.

At which point the civil war inside Bohemia resumed in full force. For the last years the foreign raids had provided an outlet for the more belligerent Hussites so that they left their homeland largely in peace. But with the compact, it had again become a question of defending the faith.

The Taborites and Orebites besieged Pilsen but found resistance stronger than anticipated. They also struggled to provision their troops as support amongst the local population had waned. A detachment sent out to procure food and material from across the border was defeated, the first such defeat since Zelivsky was mauled in 1422.

Things got even more precarious when the two cities of Prague went up against each other. After Zelivsky’s fall The Old Town had fully reverted back to its conservativism and its alliance with the Barons, whilst the New Town had shifted left again and allied closely with the Orebites. On May 5, 1434 the Barons brought their troops into the Old Town, pooled together with the councilors and attacked the New Town. The New Town could not hold out and was sacked by the soldiers whilst prominent radicals were arrested.

That was the call to arms. On May 30^th, the Orebites and Taborites under Prokop the Shaven and Prokop the lesser lined up against the barons, catholic and Hussite, and the city of Prague to fight it out, once and for all. The commanders on both sides had fought together before, they had been pupils of Zizka and they knew how to handle this sophisticated, disciplined, deadly military machine.

The commander of the conservatives, Divis Borek of Miletinek had been the governor of Hradec Kralove Jan Zizka had expelled which had led to the previous battle between Prague and the radicals. This time he would not yield to the brotherhoods.

Both sides set up their wagon burgs near the village of Lipany. Divis was the first to attack. His infantry ran up the hill on to the Taborite and Orebite defenses and was repulsed. In apparent panic they retreated and fled down the hill. The two Prokops knew that this was the moment to strike. The two great brotherhoods came out of their wagon fortress and pursued the infantry of Prague.

But halfway down the hill they realized what a catastrophic blunder they had committed. Nobody had asked where the baronial cavalry had been. Well, it was hidden in the woods. And now that the brothers were out there in the open field they came out and pushed into their flanks. The fighting was over when the Taborite cavalry fled, leaving their infantry to die in the field. Those who put down their weapons were herded into several barns and pitilessly burned to death. Prokop the Shaven and Prokop the Lessert he talented commanders of the brotherhoods, undefeated until that day, both died in the midst of the battle. Divis Borek of Miletinek had his revenge.

One would expect that immediately after this defeat, the city of Prague would open its gates to Sigismund. But it would take another 3 years before that would actually take place. Sigismund had to yield many of the executive, fiscal and religious royal prerogative to the barons who had gotten used to life without a king.

The compacts, that rewriting of the four articles of Prague, were finally approved by the council and the Bohemian diet giving the kingdom a separate religious status but within the Catholic Church.

For the emperor, now 69 and suffering from regular brutal attacks of the gout, this was the long awaited moment when he took possession of the country of his birth, the kingdom and city his father had made into the envy of Europe but which now lay in ruins.

On November 10^th, 1437 he put on his great vestments as emperor, wore his laurel crown and in his litter proceeded out of the city accompanied by his wife Barbara, Hungarian magnates, Bohemian barons, papal legates and imperial princes, followed by 1,000 knights, divisions of infantry and the whores who had been expelled from Prague due to the fourth article and headed home towards Hungary to die. He made it as far as Znojmo near the Austrian Border.

There he prepared his imminent death, instructed his daughter and son in law to take the Bohemian crown as quickly as they could, made his last will and testament, heard mass one last time in his imperial regalia and on December 9^th, 1347 he died, sitting on his throne, Emperor, king of Hungary and Bohemia, margrave of Moravia and duke of Silesia.

He was buried in Oradea, modern day Romania, along the remains of St. Ladislas. But his grave was destroyed during the Turkish invasions, so that nothing remains of him except for a funerary crown now preserved in the Hungarian National Museum.

This is not going to be the last we hear of emperor Sigismund. When we will do our tour of the empire, he will almost certainly make an appearance. Next week we will look at the aftermath of the Hussite revolt, its implications beyond Bohemia and into the following two centuries when there was another, more famous, defenestration, the implications of which were even more catastrophic for the Germans. I hope to see you next week.

And until then, if you feel compelled to support what we do here, sign up at the historyofthegermans.com./support, and make sure you do not go anywhere near the Patreon app.  

The Revolution Devours it’s children

“And anyone who would not want to keep and truly fulfil the above written pieces and articles, and would not want to help protect and defend them; such a one, without regard to person, we will not suffer amongst us and in this army fighting with God’s help, nor on the castles and in the fortresses, nor in the cities and in the towns, walled or open, nor in the villages and hamlets, no place excepted or exempted. But all persons we will everywhere admonish, advise, push, and urge toward this goodness with the help of our Lord God”.

That is how the Statutes and Military Ordinance of Jan Zizka’s New Brotherhood sum up their mission. And by Jove, you do not want to be one of those who are admonished, advised, pushed and urged by this new model army. Which leaves the question, who are those who do not “keep the written articles”, and – spoiler alert -they are not just the Catholics.

From now on the “raging torrent of the revolution disgorges its quantum of corpses”

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcast

Listen on YouTube

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the history of the Germans: Episode 181 – Zizka’s Drum, which is also episode 18 of Season 9 “The Reformation before the Reformation”

“And anyone who would not want to keep and truly fulfil the above written pieces and articles, and would not want to help protect and defend them; such a one, without regard to person, we will not suffer amongst us and in this army fighting with God’s help, nor on the castles and in the fortresses, nor in the cities and in the towns, walled or open, nor in the villages and hamlets, no place excepted or exempted. But all persons we will everywhere admonish, advise, push, and urge toward this goodness with the help of our Lord God”.

That is how the Statutes and Military Ordinance of Jan Zizka’s New Brotherhood sum up their mission. And by Jove, you do not want to be one of those who are admonished, advised, pushed and urged by this new model army. Which leaves the question, who are those who do not “keep the written articles”, and – spoiler alert -they are not just the Catholics.

From now on the “raging torrent of the revolution disgorges its quantum of corpses”

But before we get to the point where Ark is set against Ark, there is my usual plea for your munificence. You know the drill, so I do not have to repeat that this show is advertising free because some of you make generous contributions on historyofthegermans.com/support and have been elevated to the dizzying heights of an imperial knight or dame, a prince or princess, or even a prince elector. What is less well known is that if you are signed up on the new membership version on my website, you can put questions and ideas in the membership forum to discuss with your HotGPod friends and occasionally with me as well. In any event, we should all thank Jim L., Martin N., David McK, Max F., Chris B., Jim S. and Kevin M. who have already signed up

Last week I have to admit to an error. I did stupidly say that the second year of the French revolution was 1792, when it obviously was July 1791. That was not yet the time when revolutionary tribunals were introduced, but it was the time of the massacre of the Champ de Mars when the revolutionaries split between those calling for the head of Louis XVI and those who wanted a constitutional monarchy. A turning point as well, but our Bohemians were clearly faster than the French when it came to revolutionary dynamics.

And with that, back to the show.

Last week we ended with the Batte of Kutna Hora when Jan Zizka extracted himself and the Hussite army from the trap laid by Sigismund’s great general Pippo Spano. As important as it had been to save the forces from destruction, that in itself was not a victory.

The victory came 12 days later. Sigismund believed Jan Zizka had fled and would not return. It was Christmas after all. With that I mind he allowed his army to retreat into winter quarters in the countryside.

Zizka on the other hand was not buying into the Christmas spirit. Instead of decorating trees and singing songs, he recruited men to fill in the gaps that had appeared following the battle and trained them to fight in his new formations. On January 6 he was ready and good to go. His scouts directed him to the place where a particularly large detachment of Sigismund’s army was resting with Stollen and biscuits. He attacked them and though the royalists tried to form a battle line, it took less than an hour before they were on a headlong flight to Kutna Hora.

Zizka then ordered his army to rout the various other locations where Sigismund had billeted his forces.

The soldiers who weren’t captured fled into Kutna Hora, Sigismund did not have the stores of food and ammunition to hold the city over an extended siege. So, he decided to retreat to Moravia. For the mostly German Catholic civilians who had overwhelmed the Hussite garrison at the battle of Kutna Hora, this decision was catastrophic. If they stayed, they would almost certainly be killed by the Hussites, if they left, they would lose all their worldly possessions. Many of them, including many women and children followed Sigismund and his men out of the town. As they left, they set their houses and the mint on fire. The fires were extinguished by Zizka’s troops who had reached Kutna Hora shortly after the last of the royalist forces had left.

Sigismund’s sudden retreat meant his army was in complete disarray. It took 2 days for soldiers to find their units again and sort out their equipment. Zizka and his men followed the retreating forces, harassing and taunting them to stand and fight.

With his forces back in reasonable order Sigismund felt he was in a position to make a stand. His generals disagreed, but having dodged battle last time Sigismund could not afford to run away again.

Here is what the chroniclers wrote happened next: quote:

“The King’s army puts up its troops in battle line. They plant their standards. Then there sounds a tremendous blast of trumpets, and manfully the Czechs run to attack them. The Hungarians turn their backs. [..] what profit could the King’s power achieve when God Himself sent [  ] terror into their souls? They desert their standards, they press their spurs into the flanks of their horses, and they flee like people to whom no other salvation is left but flight. Those however who cannot flee fast enough yield their bodies to Death.”

There may, indeed, not have been much more to it: a frontal attack which, in the first onrush, broke the enemy’s lines and completely shattered morale. The Royalist’s retreat turned into a wild, disorderly rout in which they left most of their heavy weapons as well as all of their supply train on the road and continuously suffered heavy losses in men. The Hussites kept on their heels all the time.

By nightfall, the King and his retinue reached the neighbourhood of the city of Némecky Brod (knejmetzki Brot), which translates as German Ford. He ordered this town to be defended so as to cover his own retreat in which he continued throughout the night. Thus, some of the Royalist troops that were still able to put up a fight tried for a last time to offer resistance outside the walls, and many were killed in this attempt. Under the cover of these brave men and of the descending night a considerable part of the army escaped into the town and thence over the bridge which crossed the Sazava River into safety. -But as crowds of soldiers jammed up in front of the narrow bridge orders were given for the cavalry to pass the river at other points by simply riding across the ice. For a while this worked, but when their ranks widened and began to include large numbers of heavy cavalry the ice gave under the heavy load. Soon a long stretch of the river was alive with hundreds of men and horses desperately trying to work their way out of the freezing water, being crushed by the ice floes or pulled down by the weight of their armour. In the dark of the night it was difficult to give any help. In the following days 548 heavily armoured bodies were dragged from the river.

Zizka then proceeded to besiege the city of Némecky Brod (knejmetzki Brot) which was, as its name suggests, largely inhabited by Germans. It was also the last significant city in eastern Bohemia not yet in the hands of the Hussites. As usual, he succeeded. Still this action would haunt him for a long time afterwards, as he lost control of his soldiers. After breaching the walls his men began one of the worst massacres of this war on the inhabitants of the city as well as on the refugees of Kutna Hora who had not been able to get away.

After this complete and utter defeat Sigismund would never again lead a major military action into Bohemia in person. This does not mean that there would not be any more attempts to force the Hussites back into the bosom of mother church at the point of a sword, but the lead for these actions would go to princes like the elector of Saxony, Frederick the Belligerent or Federick of Hohenzollern, now margrave of Brandenburg. Even the initiative for these crusades would go from Sigismund to the imperial diet and the papal legates, often times simply ignoring the king of the Romans in their planning. Sigismund’s efforts to gain the crown of his father were from now on mainly diplomatic. It would take the other participants a further 10 years to realise that they had no chance against the armies that Jan Zizka had created.

Still there was a way back for Sigismund into Bohemia and for Bohemia back into the Holy Catholic church.

The seed for this, you may call it a reconciliation or a failure of the revolution was laid at the same time this most decisive battle of the war was fought, and it happened way back in Prague.

The city of Prague as we mentioned before was socially divided between the patricians who dominated the Old Town and the artisans and labourers who mainly lived in the New Town. The New Town was more radical in their Hussite beliefs than the Old Town.

The leader of the more radical wing of the Hussites in Prague was none other than Jan Zelivsky, the priest who had led the mob that threw the royal councillors out of their windows 2 years earlier, the event that had kicked off the whole revolution.

Zelivsky was a great orator, one of those men who can really stir up a crowd, leading them to do his bidding, for good or ill. In the intervening years Zelivsky had deepened his control of the two cities, the Old and the new Town largely through these kinds of events. He had forced the councillors of the Old Town to resign and then called upon his followers to elect new ones by acclamation. In that way he had risen from influential cleric and theologian to the actual master of Prague. Around 1422 his populist rule slid into outright dictatorship. He used the threat of the second crusade that just got under way as a pretext to place one of his followers as military commander of the city with executive powers.

And that is also when things went wrong for him. As we have seen, the Hussites are very, very rarely defeated, but Zelivsky manages to botch an engagement. The enemy, in this case an army from Saxony, had already offered to surrender but Zelivsky did not want to let them get away with their lives. These German mercenaries, staring death in the face either way, struck out in a last desperate attempt and overwhelmed the Hussite forces, killed many and got away. Zelivsky was quite rightly blamed for this.

And one should not forget that the 4 articles of Prague, the fundamental tenets of Hussite beliefs set forth that priests should refrain from temporal power and wealth. That meant for many of the faithful, the spectacle of a preacher as actual lord of the city of Prague was an abomination.

Then a new player mounted the already somewhat overcrowded political stage. As you may remember at the diet in June of 1421 almost the whole of Bohemia had got together and had deposed king Sigismund. They had also decided to offer the crown of Bohemia to Jogaila, the king of Poland-Lithuania. Jogaila had passed the honour on to his brother, Witold, the grand duke of Lithuania. For the house of Jogaila, this offer was very much a double-edged sword. On the one hand, becoming Kings of Bohemia had been a dream of Polish rulers since the days of Boleslav the Great (see episode 18). On the other hand, both Jogaila and Witold had only very recently become Christians. And them becoming Christian had been their argument that the Teutonic Order no longer had any purpose in Prussia. The risk was that accepting the crown of Bohemia from a bunch of heretics would prove the grand master in Marienburg ‘s argument that they were fake Christians and that the armed crusades against Lithuania should continue.

That was a tricky one. The solution for Jogaila and Witold presented itself in the form of their nephew, Zygmunt Korybut. He was close enough to the family to be loyal, but distant enough to provide plausible deniability for anything he may do amongst these fanatic dissenters. He was sent down to Bohemia with a small army as Witold’s representative.

Korybut was not only ambitious, but also smart and engaging. Rather than going straight to Prague, he expelled Sigismund’s garrison from one of the Hussite cities in Moravia. He immediately signed up to the four articles of Prague. And then he spent the next few months meeting people and getting the lay of the land. Being an engaging and energetic man, willing to commit to the cause, Korybut convinced many of the Hussite leaders that he and his family could provide the unifying glue that stitched the kingdom back together. One of those who signed up to this idea was Jan Zizka, whist Jan Zelivsky, the master of the city of Prague did not.

Zelivsky was not only a religious radical, he was also motivated by social issues. He thoroughly disliked the Bohemian barons. He saw many as turncoats who had defected to Sigismund every time he had shown up and had one very notable baron executed for treason. He also believed the nobles had gorged themselves on church property that had been expropriated under the third article of Prague rather than give the land to the poor. A return of the monarchy under Witold or Korybut would strengthen the legitimacy of the barons, which is why he opposed Korybut as regent.

And quite frankly he wasn’t wrong on any of these points. But still Korybut had gained a lot of support. After years of a complete embargo on Bohemian trade, Korybut’s promise of more normal relationships with the neighbours and an economic recovery appealed not just to the merchants but also to Zelivsky’s constituency amongst the artisans of Prague.

His final problem was that he had not been tough enough on the Pikharts, these ultra radicals who thought the eucharist was only a commemorative ritual rather than the manifestation of the body and blood of Christ. Rumours were going round that he was sympathetic to their view, might even support it.

It is not clear whether Zelivsky realised that his situation was getting under ever more pressure and that is why he tried to expand his level of control, or whether he did not realise that and just got ever more power hungry. 

 Still, what he did was trying to gain sole control of the Hussite church on top of control of Prague. If you remember from last week, the Hussite church had called a synod in the summer of 1421 and established a committee of four directors who were to decide on all matters of dogma. Zelivsky had been elected as one of these directors.

Another was Jakoubek of Stibro. If the name means something to you, it is because he had appeared before, in episode 175. He was the theologian who had raise the issue of the chalice, of receiving the eucharist in both forms, way back in 1415. This had made him the godfather of the revolution and a highly respected doctor of the university.

After that he had been preaching in Prague and writing treatises, but he had not taken a major political role in the revolution, until now. Zelivsky’s takeover of Prague and sympathy for the Pikharts dragged him back into the limelight. He accused Zelivsky of being overbearing, of replacing conservative preachers without due process, of sympathy to Pikharts. Jakoubek too organised mass gatherings on squares to preach against his opponent.

Things were put to a decision when the army came back to Prague from its great victories at Kutna Hora and Némecky Brod (knejmetzki Brot). 19 military leaders were tasked to investigate and decide what should happen in the administration of Prague and in the committee of directors of the Hussite church. There were several sworn enemies of Zelivsky amongst these commanders, namely the Hussite barons who had fought against Sigismund. But Zelivsky expected that the Taborites, in particular Zizka would be on his side. The vote of the victor of Kutna Hora would sway everyone else.

But Zizka did not side with Zelivsky. Despite both of them being part of the more radical wing of the new faith, there were many things the blind old general did not like about the aggressive preacher. He did not like that a priest had seized political power, a priest who did have a soft spot for the Martin Houska, the man Zizka had insisted should be burned for his Pikhart beliefs. And Zizka thought Korybut would help stabilise Bohemia.

Bottom line was that the military commanders almost unanimously decided to end the military dictatorship Zelivsky had established, removed the councillors who had been Zelivsky’s followers and elected a new city council. And with that the preacher’s political power collapsed.

The new councillors were in the main conservatives. Two barons were made captains of the city. Within just days the resources and power of Prague that had been aligned with the radicals in Tabor had swapped sides. A baron called Hasek of Waldstein and a knight William Koska emerged as the new leaders of Prague and the conservative wing of Hussites. They quickly occupied all the leavers of power. Zelivsky’s supporters were stripped of their posts and sometimes of their property as well. The counterrevolution is under way.

John Zelivsky may have been stripped of temporal power, but he still had his chancel in his church Maria of the Snow, and he was still one of the four directors of the Hussite church. He used both of these positions to push his political and religious ideas. Crowds were again gathering to listen to him speak.

Hasek of Waldstein was now determined to get rid of that troublesome priest. The opportunity arose when Jakoubek of Stibro, the old preacher and opponent of Zelivsky repeated his accusations, and this time asked for formal legal proceedings.

Zelivsky was invited to come to the city hall of the Old Town, not to stand trial, but to give advice on military matters. He arrived with several of his followers. Waldstein began a discussion about where to deploy Prague’s forces next. Zelivsky felt that he was back in the midst of things and asked more of his former colleagues to join the conference. Everything was going swimmingly, until the mood suddenly changed. Soldiers appeared from all corners and shackled Zelivsky’s friends. They were given the opportunity to confess and then Zelivsky and 9 of his friends were beheaded without even the pretence of a legal proceeding.

Prague was now firmly in the hands of Waldstein and his conservative colleagues. A wide gap has again opened up between Prague and Tabor.

But that was not the only falling out. There was another gap that opened up, between Tabor and its greatest defender, Jan Zizka himself. What exactly had brought this about is unclear. It may have been a disagreement on matters of faith. Tabor was by now a genuine theocracy, run by its bishop and its priests. Though the military commanders, most prominent amongst them Jan Zizka, were of course important. But most of the time they were out on campaign, either defending Bohemia against Sigismund or breaking castles and cities of either the catholic baron Ulrich of Rosenberg or the Pilsener Landfrieden.

Whilst Zizka had been away, the Taborites too had developed Pikhart sympathies, something as we know Zizka had absolutely no time for. There may have also been some personal animosity between Zizka and Wenceslaus Koronda, the firebrand from Pilsen or disagreements over military strategy. We do not know what exactly it was.

When Zizka left Tabor, he joined another community of radical Hussites we have not mentioned before, mainly because they had played only a minor role in proceedings to date. These were the Orebites. Like the Taborites, they had named themselves after a mountain in the bible, in their case the Mount Horeb where Moses had received the 10 commandments.

They had not created an entirely new city as the Taborites had done, but had occupied several towns in eastern Bohemia, namely Hradec Kralove. Their leader, a priest named Ambrose was more to Zizka’s liking. He was an old skool Hussite, not a conservative, but also not as radical as the Taborites after recent shifts toward Pikhartism. 

Once he joined them, he got to work on what he was best at, creating a powerful military force. And to do that he produced his military doctrine. This document, and his implementation of it is the last great military reform he devised. This Statutes and Military Ordinance of a New Brotherhood is not about weapons or tools, this is about discipline.

Discipline is nothing new in European warfare, but by 1423 had gone out of fashion in a major way. Knightly armies tended to attack and fight more or less at will, seeking individual glory in line with chivalric ideals. Only the orders of knights operated as coherent entities which is what accounted for their success in places like Prussia.   

Zizka extended this kind of discipline to the whole army. He insisted that every soldier marched in good order with his platoon and behind his standard, that they followed the orders to the letter, that they did not plunder uncontrollably, but shared booty on an equitable basis and that anyone leaving the fight without permission is punished most harshly. Talking about harsh discipline, quote “Brother Zizka and the other lords, captains, knights, squires, townsmen, craftsmen, and peasants named above, and all their communities, with the help of God and of the Commonwealth,  will punish all such crimes by flogging, banishment, clubbing, decapitation, hanging, drowning, burning, and by all other retributions which fit the crime according to God’s Law, excepting no one from whichever rank and sex, be he a prince, a lord, a knight, a squire, a townsman, a craftsman, or a peasant, or a man whatsoever” end quote.

It is on this basis that Zizka builds his Orebite army, one of the first standing armies in europe since Roman times. They have all the kit he had developed over the years, the war wagons, the flails, the howitzers and pistols and the discipline to follow their blind commander wherever he asks them to go, always in good order and full of confidence.

Tabor will adopt much of the ideas about military discipline and they too create a standing army, a brotherhood.

Looking at Bohemia in 1423, there are now quite a few political centres vying for supremacy. On the Hussite side we have the city of Prague, now run by the conservatives, the barons and patricians who also have an ever-tighter grip on the university. Then we have the theocratic state of Tabor which controls a large chunk of southern Bohemia. Also in Southern Bohemia is Ulrich baron Rosenberg, the largest of the barons and a staunch catholic. In the west we have the Pilsener Landfrieden a league of catholic cities and barons. Then there is Zygmunt Korybut, technically regent of Bohemia on behalf of grand duke Witold. Korybut sits in conservative Prague but wants to be the unifying force. Then we have more barons, Catholic and Hussite who run their own little shows, sometimes aligned with one or more of the other parties. Sigismund is crowned king of Bohemia but has given up. The neighbours, in particular Albrecht, duke of Austria is and wants to remain margrave of Moravia, whilst the elector of saxony wants to pick up some juicy towns and villages on the border whilst getting absolution for his sins as a crusader. And last, but not least, the Orebites with Jan Zizka were operating in eastern Bohemia.

So far, i.e., until 1423 these different shades of Hussitism were fighting the various shades of Catholicism.

But the Orebites were upsetting this precarious balance. Until Zizka had shown up and pumped them full of military vigour, the Orebites had been vassals/allies of the city of Prague. Now they did no longer want to be subordinated to the great city, in particular not after Prague had turned conservative. Things went from tense to tactile when Zizka used the time the Prague forces were fighting duke Albrecht in Moravia to remove a conservative governor from a town that belonged to the Orebites.

The army of Prague immediately abandoned the defence of the realm and headed back to fight Zizka. For the first time two armies, both flying the Ark, the banner of the Hussite chalice fight each other. The only thing that is familiar about this battle is that Zizka won. The encounter is followed by some more skirmishes, until both sides signed a kind of armistice that lasted 12 months.

In the meantime, the Polish uncles, Witold and Jogaila end their dithering and at a meeting with Sigismund decide to end their little adventure. Korybut and his Polish forces are called back home.

Korybut and his Poles gone, the conservative Hussites in Prague look for new allies. And they do materialise in the form of – drumroll – the catholic barons. Despite 4 years of war between the supporters and the enemies of the chalice, these men have a lot in common. For one, they are in the majority barons, often members of the same extended families. They also have similar economic objectives, namely to acquire the church lands made available during the revolution and the suppression of peasants. The patricians of Prague too want an end to the war with the empire and a return of trade with Nurnberg, Leipzig and Vienna and they are prepared to compromise on matters of religion.

It is a match made in heaven. They come together calling a diet for the whole of the kingdom, and, though none of the radicals attended, created a new regency council, made up mostly of barons and led by Waldstein, the captain of Prague.

Hearing about the consolidation on the right, the forces on the left, the Orebites and Taborites too join forces.

A confrontation between the two sides became inevitable. It took a few months, but in June 1424 it was time. The two Hussite armies met at Malešov, a small town not far from Kutna Hora. As always, Zizka had taken care that his army occupied the high ground. Sitting on a plateau they could watch as the army of Prague was crossing the little stream below. And again, Zizka had a new idea for his battle plan. He had a number of wagons filled with stones and placed between the cavalry regiments that made up the first line. The Praguers approached this battleline, going up the hill, but just before the two sides clashed, Zizka’s cavalry retreated, and the soldiers pushed the carts full of stones down the hill, breaking the enemy’s formation. Then the guns fired into the melee followed by a cavalry attack that broke whatever was left to the enemy’s morale. The baron’s army fled, leaving behind their guns and wagons and 1,400 dead.

This was potentially the largest and bloodiest battle of the Hussite war, and it was a war between mainly Hussite forces. It was also a decisive encounter that shaped the course of events for the next decade. Most of eastern Bohemia fell to the Taborites and Orebites, including Kutna Hora, the cash machine of the Bohemian kingdom. Their armies had proven to be for all intents and purposes undefeatable and would remain so until 1434.

As for Prague, the city was still the largest settlement in Bohemia and one of the largest in the empire. It remained conservative, as did the barons. Despite the guns and the military discipline, the radical brotherhoods were still not strong enough to break either Prague or completely wipe out the baronial castles.

For 10 years everybody will be at everybody’s throat. Orebites versus Prague, Tabor against Rosenberg and other Barons, the Pilsener Landfrieden against the radicals. Korybut returned, not as regent for his uncle but to become king in his own right, but he did not manage to unify the country.

3 more crusades were called, the last one allegedly sending 150,000 men into Bohemia, but every single one of these 150,000 great warriors ran away in panic when they saw the dreaded Hussites appear. To maintain the standing armies of the brotherhoods, their new military leaders, Prokop the Bald and Prokop the Short led them in raids into Austria, Hungary, Silesia, Bavaria and beyond. They attacked Naumburg and even get as far as the shores of the Baltic. Only one trade thrived, Bohemians were much in demand as mercenaries.

We will get a bit deeper into this and how the conflict was eventually resolved next week, but we should end this episode with the end of the hero of the Hussite revolution, Jan Zizka.

After the victory at Malešov, the Orebites and Taborites sign an armistice with Prague and baron Waldstein. The parties agree that instead of killing each other, they should finally go and free Moravia, the other half of the kingdom and a place where the Hussite faith is still suppressed by catholic lords, duke Albrecht and the cruel and unnatural king Sigismund.

The largest Hussite force ever assembled sets off under the overall command of the undefeated, blind old general. When they got to the castle of Pribislav, halfway between Prague and Brno, a small royalist garrison, seemingly intent on suicide offered resistance. The army halted the march, put the guns in position and began the slow and boring work of cracking the masonry of a medieval castle. The whole process should not take more than a few days.

Here is our chronicler, quote:

“There [before the castle of Piibyslav] Brother John Zizka fell sick with a mortal sickness from the plague. And in making his bequest he told his dear, faithful brethren and Czechs, the Lord Victorin, Lord John Bzdinka (Hvézda) and Kune, that they should go on fighting for the love of God and should steadfastly and faithfully defend the Truth of God for eternal reward. And then already Brother Zizka recommended his soul to the dear God, and thus he died and ended his life on that Wednesday before St. Gall (October 11, 1424). And there his people took for themselves the name Orphans, as if they had lost their father. And they conquered the castle of Pribyslav, and they burned the people who fought back at them in the castle, about sixty men in arms, and the castle they also burned and demolished.” End quote

Now what happened to his body? The by far most famous account is that by Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini, the future pope Pius II. He was a great admirer of Zizka’s genius, but he could not end his admiring account on the brilliant career of the great general without a final turn: quote: “Struck by the plague he expired, the detestable, cruel, horrible and savage monster. Whom no mortal hand could destroy, the finger of God extinguished him. When asked in his illness where, after his death, he wanted to be buried, he commanded that his body be flayed, the flesh thrown to the birds and beasts, and a drum be made from his skin. With this drum in the lead, they should go to war. The enemies would turn to flight as soon as they heard its voice.” End quote

As much as I would love this story to be true and as much as it has become part of Czech lore, this story, the best of them all, is made up. Piccolomini wrote this decades after Zizka’s death. And we have earlier records that stated that the priest Prokupek (Prokop the Lesser) and the priest Ambrose conducted him, when he was already dead, to Hradec Kralové, and there they buried him in the Church of the Holy Ghost by the main altar. But later he was conveyed to Caslay and there buried in the Church [of SS. Peter and Paul].” End quote. And there his grave stood for nearly 200 years until it was destroyed by the Catholics following the battle on White Mountain, wanting to eradicate any memory of the military leader of the first successful reformation. But instead of wiping out his memory, the destruction of his grave gave credence to the legend of Zizka’s drum und his invincible armies that is being passed down amongst the Czech people to this day.

With Zizka dead and the Hussite revolution limping to its conclusion the question is what we want to do next. We could go straight to the rise of the House of Habsburg, or we could take a tour around the Empire, dedicating an episode to each of the seven electors and to the territories we have not yet spent much time on, namely Baden, Hesse and Württemberg. Let me know what you think and if you want to discuss it, join the HotGPod community by signing up at historyofthegermans.com/support where you find the forum to discuss these issues with your fellow listeners.