medieval military tactics

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The Adamites and the Battle of Kutna Hora

The Czech language has been a severe impediment to my storytelling this season and you may have noticed that I often avoid to name places and people, instead I talk about a major baron or a medium sized city. There are however two Czech words I have no difficult pronouncing, Howitzer and Pistol. Which may tell you what we will be talking about today, the battle of Kutna Hora, when a blind general saw an escape route that change the world irrevocably.

But on the way there we will hear about an accelerating spiral of brutality and attempts at reconciliation, about austere dress and debauched dancing in the woods. This is another one of these episodes that has it all, and some.

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TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 180: Nude Dissenters and Blind Inventors, also episode 17 of Season 9: the Reformation before the Reformation.

The Czech language has been a severe impediment to my storytelling this season and you may have noticed that I often avoid to name places and people, instead I talk about a major baron or a medium sized city. There are however two Czech words I have no difficult pronouncing, Howitzer and Pistol. Which may tell you what we will be talking about today, the battle of Kutna Hora, when a blind general saw an escape route that change the world irrevocably.

But on the way there we will hear about an accelerating spiral of brutality and attempts at reconciliation, about austere dress and debauched dancing in the woods. This is another one of these episodes that has it all, and some.

And now is your opportunity to frantically press the 45 second forward button, just be sure you do not get too far. Because I can be brief if need be, like today. So here we go. The History of the Germans, after all these years and for all the years yet to come, appears on your doorstep every Thursday morning, fresh and advertising free thanks to the generosity of our patrons who have signed up on historyofthegermans.com/support. I am talking specifically about Philip T., Waverley, Christopher M., Alexander K., Andrew, Matthew L., and Andreas B.-H.

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And with that, back to the show

Last week we looked at the period 1421 to 1423 from the perspective of imperial politics and Sigismund’s role as the head of this almost collapsing political entity. This week we will look at what happened inside Bohemia and for that we will go back to the aftermath of battle of the Vyšehrad in the summer of 1420.

Sigismund was comprehensively defeated and had returned to Kutna Hora to lick his wounds. He fought one more action when he relieved the city of Tachov in the westernmost part of Bohemia, just across the border from Bavaria. This campaign ended in an even deeper humiliation when he ran away from a Hussite army without firing even a single shot.

With Sigismund and the Bavarians gone, the Hussites could roll up the areas of Bohemia they had not yet brought under their control. They started with the city of Pilsen which surrendered within a few weeks. The one-year truce they agreed to left Pilsen pretty much unscathed, not even having to receive a garrison inside its walls.

But soon after that, the gloves came off. This is a religious war and religious wars have a tendency to descend into levels of brutality that political wars rarely do.

These are conflicts where either side believes itself to be in possession of incontrovertible truth which makes their opponent’s position simply incomprehensible.

If you were a Hussite and you read your Corinthians 11:25 where Paul writes: “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” This is so abundantly clear, there is no conceivable way the chalice could be denied to a Christian. Which means those who refuse to take the chalice must be deluded or at a minimum hoodwinked by the despicable priests of the catholic church. Therefore burning catholic priests was not only permissible, but a good thing, because they were deceivers leading their followers away from the pearly gates.

If you were a Catholic you checked on your Matthew 18:18 where Christ gave St. Peter and his successors the keys of the kingdom of heaven and told him that “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” This is so abundantly clear there is no conceivable way a Christian can refuse to obey the Holy Father. Which means those who refuse to obey the pope must be deluded or at a minimum hoodwinked by the despicable priests of the Hussite church. Therefore burning Hussite priests was not only permissible, but a good thing, because they were deceivers leading their followers away from the pearly gates.

As a consequence for 2 years now the Bohemian hills were alive with the smell of burning clerics. By January 1421 the level of brutality goes up a notch.  

A Hussite garrison of about 700 men were defending a small city called Chotěboř. It was attacked by royalists under Nicholas of Jemniste, the mint master of Kutna Hora and all out Blofeld of this war. The garrison surrendered under terms, but Jemniste did not honour the agreement. These were deluded heretics and promises made to them were therefore non-binding. He had 300 of them burned, not just the priests, but all of them. The remaining 400 were forced into a hunger march to Kutna Hore, during which many died from exhaustion or were clubbed to death. Whoever survived the journey was thrown down the infamous mine shafts where they too perished.

Retribution was swift. A month later a Hussite army killed all male inhabitants of the royalist city of Chomutov, even those offering to convert. The only immunity was granted to jews prepared to be baptised, but many of them preferred to be burned. In their fury they did not spare the women and children. The accounts of the number of victims vary, but it was somewhere between 1,400 and 2,500 out of a city of a few thousand.

News of these atrocities spread not just across Bohemia but we find reports as far away as Nurnberg and Magdeburg.

For all Bohemians, Hussites and Catholics alike survival had become a function of immediate surrender and let’s call it religious flexibility. Almost every city that saw an army appearing before its gates, irrespective of Hussite or Catholic, immediately surrendered and handed over whoever the besiegers intended to have captured, killed or burned. The city of Beroun handed over 34 priests and 3 masters of the university for execution after no more than token resistance. Others did not even pretend to fight.

Even Kutna Hora, the centre of silver mining, the jewel in the crown of Bohemia and bulwark of Catholicism surrendered. In a very evocative and also incredible medieval scene the citizens came out before the walls and knelt in front of the Hussite army. Their leader, the priest Zevilsky, he who had led the mob at the Defenestration 2 year earlier, preached to them and -as they repented- forgave them. Remember, this is Kutna Hora where hundreds, if not thousands of Hussites had been thrown down mine shafts to die of hunger, thirst and sheer panic, the city of Nicholas of Jemniste the mastermind behind the massacre of Chotěboř.

Forgiving the citizens of Kutna Hora was a sign that not everybody wanted an ever accelerating cycle of brutality, that there were many on all sides of the argument who wanted to reconcile, to stop the meaningless, incessant slaughter.

This time, the summer of 1421 might be the highpoint of the Hussite revolt, not the point of greatest military success, but the moment where the Hussite movement is most unified in its beliefs and has its widest reach. Tabor and Prague are working together, not exactly hand in glove, but they agree on strategic targets and run coordinated campaigns. There is a basic understanding between the main social groups, the barons, the city patricians, the artisans, labourers and peasants. Even the catholic barons, including the eternal turncoat Cenek of Wartenberg and the catholic stalwart, Ulrich of Rosenberg have called off their allegiance to king Sigismund. The authority of the university of Prague is, at least in principle, recognised by all.

And then there is a another, major, completely unexpected move. In all this chaos we still have an archbishop of Prague, a German from Bremen called Konrad of Vechta. He had taken the job way back in 1413 and was a Catholic royalist, something that sort of came with the job. In 1420 he had crowned Sigismund in St. Veits cathedral.

But then something must have happened, well it is quite clear what happened, the Hussites were winning. At which point Konrad saw only two options, join his impecunious king in his exile, or make a deal with the Hussites. Konrad, who liked the good life and the income of his archbishopric, chose to make a deal with the Hussites and signed up to the four articles of Prague. That was a total shocker. The catholic archbishop of Prague reconciled with Europe’s most prominent heretics, people who are subject to a papal crusade. The pope immediately dismissed him from his post, but did not have the power to appoint a new archbishop of Prague – for the next 140 years.

Things were changing, changing faster and further than anyone could have imagined 2 years earlier.

If we were in the 19th century, the next step from here would be to call a national assembly, right. Absolutely right. Then we are not in the 19th century, but we still get a national assembly.

On May 18, 1421 the cities of Prague, the old Town and the New Town together with archbishop Conrad and several of the important barons sent out invitations to all the significant players in the crown of Bohemia to come to a diet in the town of Čáslav.

This diet was a remarkably harmonious and effective affair. It lasted just 5 days and ended with  a manifesto signed by all the participants. And these participants were, in order of pre-eminence:

  • The Burgomaster and councillors of the Old and New Town of Prague
  • Conrad, by the Grace of God Archbishop of the cathedral of Prague and Legate of the Papal See, or so he described himself,
  • The Lords of the Kingdom
  • The regents and people and towns of Tabor
  • The Mint Master of Kutna Hora ( of course no longer Nicolaus of Jemniste)
  • The Knights and Squires of the Kingdom
  • Other Towns and Communities

This is a most unusual ranking. The Bohemian kingdom had been dominated by the barons since time immemorial. Prague was stripped of its freedoms during the reign of the Blind King John. Karl IV and Wenceslaus had spent their time in a perennial struggle with the Rosenbergs and Wartenbergs and Lichtenbergs, rarely thinking about the cities. But now Prague was in the driving seat. Why, because the victory at the Vyšehrad had been first and foremost a victory of the city of Prague. The Taborites, the few of them actually present at the time of the battle, had not really taken part. The victories in western Bohemia too were brought about by the reinforcements Prague made available to Jan Zizka. Add to the university and the sheer size into the mix and Prague becomes the pre-eminent political entity in Bohemia.

The barons meanwhile were divided into Hussites and those who until very recently had fought against the Law of God. Their list was headed by the richest of them, Ulrich of Rosenberg, until recently staunch catholic and fierce supporter of emperor Sigismund and Cenek of Wartenberg, the eternal turncoat. No surprise that the councillors of the cities of Prague were taking the lead over them.  

On the other end of the spectrum we have Jan Zizka as the leader of the Taborite delegation and Jan Želivský the firebrand preacher from Prague.

But they all agreed on certain basic items. First up, they repeated the four articles of Prague, i.e., freedom to preach, the eucharist as bread and wine, the poverty and moral probity of priests and the prohibition of all sins and other unruly things.

And then comes a fifth point that quote “we should not accept the Hungarian king Sigismund as our king or hereditary maser until the end of our or his life, as it was he and his helpers by whom we and the entire Czech kingdom have been deceived most, and by whose injustice and cruelty great damage had been caused. [..] This king is an obvious abuser of the holy truths [..] and a murderer of the honour and persons of the Czech language.”

Point six sets forth that “we have together and unanimously elected 20 wise, stable and faithful men from our number [..] to administer, and to manage the various matters of the crown of Bohemia.” End quote.

The general assembly of Bohemia has hereby deposed the king Sogismund and established a government without royal assent. Whilst this is not a democratically elected government by any stretch of the imagination, but still, it is a government without a king, in the Middle Ages, not in a city state, but in a feudal kingdom. Only 5 of its members were barons, 2 former royalists and 3 established Hussites. Half of the 20 members represented cities, 4 for Prague, 2 for Tabor and 4 for the other towns, of which two had remained catholic so far. And then there were 5 squires, i.e., members of the lower gentry. This was not the usual regency council of the most powerful magnates, this was a government of national unity, aiming to reflect the wide range of views prevailing across Bohemia.

Sigismund had tried to influence this event. He was allowed to send representatives who were asking for peace and reconciliation, even making the claim that Sigismund had not yet made up his mind on the four articles. Well, as we know, given the strains on his government in the empire at the time, he had no option to recognise the four articles, even if he had wanted to. And nobody believed him anyway.

This council then began its work of pacifying the country and preparing for the next wave of invasion that was being prepared across the border at the imperial diet in Nurnberg as we discussed last week.

Part of that pacification was to take out the remaining fortresses of catholic barons, a task that fell to Jan Zizka and his Taborite forces. These castles were small and their fall wasn’t ever really in doubt. But they were still fortresses of war full of soldiers trained in archery and the use of guns. Jan Zizka was a general who led from the front. And that came with risks, including the risk of getting shot in the eye, the one eye that he was left with. It was a miracle in and of itself that he survived at all given the risk of infection, the  total incompetence of medieval doctors and the fact they transported him all the way to Prague on country roads. He made it through though. But he was now blind, completely blind.  Some historians would later try to construct some argument that he retained at least some minor ability to see at least shapes. But all contemporary accounts are adamant, the greatest of the Hussite generals was blind, completely, Germans would say blind as a mole. I think the British expression is blind as a bat, which is weird given bats can see using echolocation. No, Zizka did not have echolocation either. He was thrown into total darkness.

There are two famous blind warriors in European history and both are linked to Bohemia, Jan Zizka and the Blind King John of Bohemia, one the epitome of chivalric valour and the other the military genius who put an end to the dominance of the armoured rider.

The question is, how could Zizka operate on the battlefield without being able to see anything. We can only guess. He had his trusted lieutenants who knew their leader well and understood which bits of information he needed and which they could leave out when describing a situation. Moreover, Zizka had been travelling and fighting across Bohemia for decades and most potential battlefields were familiar to him. And finally, medieval armies, even the much more organised Hussite forces, left a lot of initiative to the commanders on the ground. They did need some guidance and coordination from headquarters, but nowhere near as much as a modern army would.

Then there is the question what it did to him psychologically. Again not much can be asserted, but he appeared more gruff, more set in his ways and less prepared to accept different religious views.

And that is very much in line with what is going on more broadly. The Hussite revolt had been going for 2 years, so if we take the timeline of the French Revolution we are in the summer of 1792, the time Robespierre introduced the Revolutionary tribunals to deal with “traitors” and “enemies of the people”. In other words, the time when new ideas could be brought up and freely discussed was over. It is time to establish and define exactly what is inside the permitted set of beliefs and what is not.

In Bohemia this task was given to a synod of the Hussite church that met shortly after the great assembly. The synod established 23 articles of religious faith and appointed a commission of four eminent masters of the university, to adjudicate on Hussite doctrine. But not everybody endorsed these wholeheartedly.

One of those who took a fundamentally different view were called the Pikharts. They were called that as their ideas had emerged from a group of immigrants from Picardie who have settled in Bohemia during the reign of Wenceslaus IV. Who they were exactly and what their beliefs were specifically is a bit vague. One thing where they definitely deviated from basic Hussite beliefs was the significance of the Eucharist. The Pikharts, or more specifically one of the Bohemian priests usually associated withthem, a certain Martin Houska, believed that the celebration of bread and wine was just commemorative. Christ was present in all and everything anyway and did not need some hokus pokus by a priest to materialise in the host and wine.

Given the huge importance the Bohemian reform movement ascribed to the eucharist since the very beginning, this was horrific for all Hussites from moderates to radicals. Houska had already been apprehended back in February, but had abandoned his belief seeing his comrades being burned for their reluctance to see the error of their ways. In summer 1421, Martin Houska lived in Tabor as a free man but out of fear the synod would condemn him, fled towards Moravia. He was caught and interrogated. He was then handed around between different authorities and priests for weeks. Despite weeks of torture making Houska did not retract. That create a bit of a dilemma. He still had many friends amongst the masters of the university and was no fanatic, more of a thoughtful theologian, a bit like Jan Hus. So, nobody wanted to go the whole hog and burn him.

It was Zizka himself who took charge of proceedings. Zizka was no priest or theologian, but was motivated by his beliefs and in particular the importance of the chalice. Houska’s ideas somehow got under his skin. Despite having no business to do so, he demanded Houska to be burned on Prague’s Old Town square. The authorities refused because they feared an uprising of the Pikhardts hiding amongst the population. So Houska was eventually burned in smaller town controlled by the archbishop. Still a huge crowd gathered for the event. And Houska’s last words, “not we are in error, but you who kneel before a piece of bread”  would continue to resonate amongst the more radical groups in Tabor.

That was however not the only piece of religious cleansing the blind general went after. There was another group of religious dissenters that were associated with the Pikharts and Martin Houska, though the link seems a bit tenuous.

These became known to history as Adamites. These were probably only a few hundred people who believed that they had regained the state of innocence, i.e., before Adam bit the Apple. Basically they were already living in paradise. There was no authority to obey, no captains or leaders. Nobody owned anything in person, but everything was communal. So far, so old skool Hussite, but what made them completely unpalatable for Zizka and the puritanical Taborites was their attitude towards clothing. For them it was not only optional but frowned upon. As was marriage or any kind of monogamy. Refusing someone’s sexual advances was considered not just rude but against holy scripture.

A very indignant Lawrence of Brezova wrote quote: “their law is based on pimping, as it says in Matthew 21:31: pimps and prostitutes will precede you on the way to the heavenly kingdom. Therefore they did not want to accept anyone who was not a pimp or a whore. [..] They implemented their law like this: All of them, men and women, undressed and danced naked around a bonfire and sang the ten commandments as an accompaniment to the dance. They, [..] looked at each other, and if any of the men was covered, the women pulled his clothes off and said: relieve the prisoner, give me your spirit and receive my spirit. [..] they performed the devil’s act, and then they bathed in the river.” End quote.

I did check Matthew 21:31, it did not say pimps and prostitutes but “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.” Apart from that everything else is almost certainly true, or probably an exaggeration.

Zizka, on one of his patrols came across them and quote “motivated by the zeal for the law of god, attacked them immediately without stopping to rest, catching them by surprise; and though all of them defended themselves, both women and men, [..] they captured 40 of them of both genders and killed the rest, sparing only one man so he could tell the world of what had been done” end quote. The other 39 captives were burned to death.

Frederick Heymann who wrote the seminal biography of Jan Zizka summed it up best when he wrote quote: “The number of people who during those years of war and persecution, had to die for their faith cannot be counted, nor can their suffering be measured. Most of them were little people whose names were never remembered, people who did not ask for it but were caught and crushed between the millstones of history.” End quote

All this now takes us to the late autumn of 1421. As we heard last week a crusade had set off from Eger towards Prague but turned tail as soon as a Hussite army appeared. By now news of the effectiveness and relentless brutality of Hussite armies had spread far and wide and often crusaders ran for cover when they saw the war wagons arrive.

Unperturbed, Sigismund made another attempt to regain Bohemia for the catholic faith as we have also heard last week. And last week I promised to talk more about this battle, which turns out to be a crucial moment not just in Bohemian or German history, but in the history of europe, if not the world.

Sigismund had gathered a sizeable army, mainly Hungarians, eastern Slavs and Romanians. under the command of his field marshal, a highly respected Italian condottiere, veteran of dozens of campaigns against the Ottomans and the Venetians. His name was Philip de Scolari, count of Ozora, usually called Pipo Spano. He was famous enough to be painted by Andrea del Castagno as one of his “illustrious men” alongside Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio and two other great Florentine commanders.

The initial goal was to take back the city of Kutna Hora, the centre of silver mining in Bohemia and hence source of much of the ready cash of the kingdom. Kutna Hora as we mentioned earlier had submitted to the Hussite forces after a long period as a bulwark of Catholicism. Its inhabitants still contained a large group of German mining specialists who operated the complex system of shafts and elevators as well as the smelters and minting machinery. Though these Germans were in the main catholic and supportive of Sigismund, they had not been expelled by the Hussites. That may be in part because the Hussites believed they had changed their mind on the chalice and/or because they needed them to keep the mines going. In any event, they were still in the town, the town that was officially a Hussite city.

Zizka who had taken charge of the combined Hussite forces and had made the defence of Kutna Hora the cornerstone of his strategic plan.

So both armies converged upon that city. Zizka arrived first. He decided not to bring his army inside the city, in part because he wanted to avoid frictions between the citizens and his radical Taborites. His army came with the now famous war wagons. These have by now come close to the final design with reinforcements that protected the defenders and the car itself, the shields to protect the gaps between the wagons and crucially a large number of artillery pieces. These include long-barrelled gins on the wagons as well as Howitzers, short barrelled pieces mounted on wheels. Howitzer is by the way a Czech word, as is pistol, another weapon they had plenty of.

Zizka set up camp outside the walls, waiting for the enemy to arrive.

On December 21st Zizka received news that Sigismund was approaching with his sizeable forces from the west. I spare you the numbers, which I believe are all nonsense, but it is likely that Sigismund’s army was materially larger and comprised a large cavalry force.

When the royalists appeared, the Hussite militia of Kutna Hora and all regular soldiers safe for a small garrison came outside the walls to join Zizka and his men.

Zizka needed to block access to the city and therefore established his forces on an elevation that stretched from the road in the west that Sigismund was coming down on in a crescent shape all the way over to the second major access road in the east that led to the Kolin Gate of Kutna Hora.

The royalists set up a position opposite Zizka, mirroring the crescent shape of Zizka’s position. Given Sigismiund’s army was larger and had more cavalry, its crescent was longer, stretching beyond Zizka’s flanks. As far as the blind general was concerned, this wasn’t a major issue, since the city in his back was well fortified and the royalists would be mad getting into the gap between himself and the city where they would be squashed from both sides.

The battle began with a series of cavalry attack on the Hussite positions that were repelled with the various field guns and volleys of arrows. The royalist lines were now stretched so far that they had to fill the gaps with cattle to give the impression of more riders than they actually had. At that point it looked like a rerun of many of the previous battles. The royalists had superior numbers but no way to overrun the wagon fortresses of the Hussites. As the sun was about to set the revolutionaries saw themselves if not as victors, but very much en route to another success.

This was December21st, the shortest day of the year. Dusk set in around 3:30 in the afternoon and that is when the plan of Sigismund’s cunning field marshal, Pipo Spano kicked in for real. These frontal cavalry attacks that had been running for the last few hours had not been for real. They were a diversion meant to keep the militia of Kutna Hora out in the field.

Do you remember the Germans inside Kutna Hora? Well, they had never really given up their catholic and royalist affiliations. And they were many, they were determined and they had been in touch with Pipo Spano. All they were waiting for was the sign to strike against the Hussite garrison. And that sign was a large detachment of cavalry that went around Zizka’s position on the eastern flank, making for the city gate.

The militia guarding the gate had been made up entirely of Germans. As the riders came closer, they opened the gate. The knights rode in and a fierce slaughter of the Hussite garrison and all armed men not knowing the password ensued. Within less than an hour that the city of Kutna Hora was in the hands of the royalists.

Whilst this was going on, Pipo Spanio sent another cavalry regiment around Zizka’s western flank, closing the last remaining exit route for the Hussite army. Zizka and his men were now trapped between the city of Kutna Hora in the back, the gros of Sigismund’s army in front and the two flanking regiments in the east and the west, like the Romans at Cannae.

Zizka rearranged the wagon fortress to cover all four angles. This fortress was still almost unassailable and he and his men could get some much needed comfort from that following this sudden and dramatic turn in their fortunes.

But this was only a temporary reprieve. They had counted on the support from Kutna Hora and had therefore brought only limited provisions and ammunition out to the battlefield. If they stayed where they were, at some point the next day or the day after at that, they would run out and would have to surrender. This army was the largest, the best equipped and the most experiences force the Hussites had. The commander of the only other Hussite army was a young, eager but not very experienced general who would not stand a chance in hell against Pipo Spano. Unless Zizka and his forces make it out of here before sunrise, the road to Prague would be open and the war would be over. It is now all about getting out of this trap.

How did he do it? At this point I would have liked to quote Lawrence of Brezova, but all his wonderfully vivid and somewhat ridiculously biased chronicle gives us is: quote “And then [..] they approached the place that the king had occupied with his army and having squashed the king’s cannon, they drove the king together with his army from their position. And then morning came…” end quote. And that is literally the last sentence of the book.

Not useful. So let’s go with Frederick Heyman the biographer of Jan Zizka: quote “Of course, so we might think, having artillery, Zizka would use it to open the way through the enemy ranks. But this was far from a matter of course. On the contrary, we have, in these few words, the first clear proof of a tactical use of field artillery; the use of fire weapons for a tactically offensive operation. [..] Otherwise artillery had, up to this time, always been used in a purely static way.; in besieging towns, in defending them and in defending entrenchments in the field as in Grunwald (Tannenberg) in 1410. Even the use of artillery in wagon fortress was still stationary in a tactical sense [..].

Here, however, the guns shooting from Zizka’s wagons, which stopped rolling only to fire,  as well as the howitzers, [..] were given the specific task and had the specific effect which field artillery was to have in battles for centuries to come: not just to block or discourage an enemy approach, but to destroy the enemy’s chance or will to stay where he was; to dislodge him, to drive him back, to open the way for one’s own troops. The Field artillery of our motorised present, including tanks and self-propelled guns, can have no other basic task. [..]

The history of this second phase of the battle of Kutna Hora is, in this sense, the history of another revolution in the art of war brought about by Zizka, a tactical discovery or invention more permanent than the introduction of the battle wagon.” End quote.

And that is where we will leave it for today, the invention of the mobile field artillery, the tank and all that came with it, the conquest of almost the entire planet by European armies able to use firepower to smash through masses of armed men two, three, even tenfold their number. You know that I am no military man, but once in a while you stand before moments of human ingenuity that force respect, like when a blind man sees a way out of a desperate situation nobody else could.

Next week we will talk more about human ingenuity, dreams of a world without kings and rulers being destroyed by the circumstances and a revolution gradually running out of steam. I hope you will join us again.

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The Hussite Revolution Part 4

“It is we the followers of master Jan Hus, who are obeying the law of God, we who are the true followers of Christ. Thus therefore, who oppose us, oppress us, kill us, are themselves heretics, trying to thwart the will of God. Out of this deep, passionate conviction was born the determination not to yield, not to surrender, but to challenge if need be, all the forces of the religious and political order which had dominated medieval europe for nearly a thousand years, to fight it out against odds the like of which have seldom been seen in history”

So it is written in the “Very Pretty Chronicle of the life of John Zizka” which tells the not so very pretty story of the war against the Hussites that is now heating up. Sigismund musters his crusading army in Silesia whilst the radical Hussites take to the hills and then take a hill.

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TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 178: No Hill to Die On– From Tabor to Vitkov

Quote: “It is we the followers of master Jan Hus, who are obeying the law of God, we who are the true followers of Christ. Thus therefore, who oppose us, oppress us, kill us, are themselves heretics, trying to thwart the will of God. Out of this deep, passionate conviction was born the determination not to yield, not to surrender, but to challenge if need be, all the forces of the religious and political order which had dominated medieval europe for nearly a thousand years, to fight it out against odds the like of which have seldom been seen in history”

So it is written in the “Very Pretty Chronicle of the life of John Zizka” which tells the not so very pretty story of the war against the Hussites that is now heating up. Sigismund musters his crusading army in Silesia whilst the radical Hussites take to the hills and then take a hill.

And now an announcement forced upon us due to recent events. I have always kept the show out of current politics. This is a history show and everybody is welcome. I am actually taking a lot of pride in the fact that there are many listeners to this show who fundamentally disagree with my political views and still enjoy it. We may come to different conclusions from the same facts, but we share a passion for historical accuracy and willingness to listen to different perspectives.

However, there are moments when limits are breached, and things need to be said. My limit is $86, £86a of the German Penal code which bans the distribution and use of national socialist propaganda. That does include the Hitlergruss, the Hitler Salute. Elon Musk did perform the Hitler Salute on January 20th, 2025. That needs to be said. That is why the History of the Germans Podcast had comment on social media. Further the History of the Germans  will no longer post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

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And with that, back to the show.

Last week we left the Hussite radicals under the military leadership of Jan Zizka at the gates of Tabor. They had left the city of Pilsen that had been put under siege by a royalist army in late March 1420. Though they had been promised free passage to join their brethren in southern Bohemia, the small army of about 400 found itself under attack from a much larger and much better equipped force of catholic royalists.

Thanks to Zizka’s quick thinking and the sun setting, the Hussites did win that encounter. And a few days later they arrived at the place that would become the centre of radical Hussitism for the remainder of the conflict.

But at this very moment there was not a lot there. It was just an open space on top of a hill. The ancient settlement that had once occupied it had perished in the 13th century. When Zizka and his small warband arrived, they found friends and fellow Hussites from Southern Bohemia who like him had left Prague in November 1419.

This group had gone to the town of Pisek. When Pisek was besieged by a royal army in February 1420 they left and headed for the city of Usti. They hid in the woods until Ash Wednesday, when they knew the predominantly catholic inhabitants would be nursing an almighty post-carnival hangover. They captured the city with ease. But Usti prove difficult to defend, so they put the whole city to the torch and chose this abandoned hillfort as their new base.

They renamed it Tabor after the mountain in Galilee where the miracle of Jesus transfiguration is believed to have taken place, That was the moment when he appeared radiant and in the company of Moses and Isaiah revealing himself to be the bridge between the divine and the temporal.

This was not the first hill the radical Hussites had named after Mount Tabor. At least one of the mountains where they had gathered before to pray, to take communion as bread and wine and to experience their communal meals had also been named Mount Tabor. Mount Tabor was not meant to be a physical location as more of a spiritual place.

But this Mount Tabor would be a very physical a permanent space, no longer a sort of religious Woodstock. This was to be where the elect, the true members of the church can be together. It is here that they would build their own society, uncontaminated by any outsiders. And a very different society it was to be. Here is how one Taborite writer described it; quote “at Tabor there is nothing mine and nothing yours., but everything in the community is possessed equally, so everything should be in common for all and no one may have anything privately. And if he does, he sins mortally” end quote. All social hierarchy was dissolved, the baron and the labourer were equals who called each other brother and sister. The priests were their spiritual leaders but they would wear the same peasant shifts as their congregation nor would they stay in better tents or houses. The host was not passed in its round form, but as a torn piece of unleavened bread, the wine served not from a golden chalice but from any cup or tin or any common receptacle available. The writings of the great doctors of the church were not to be accepted, university education was seen as vain and heathen, the rites were abolished as traditions of antichrist. No chrism, no holy water, no canonical hours, chasubles or church chant. Just the prayer and the eucharist.

There was however one problem. Like Wenceslaus Koranda who had led the radicals in Pilsen, the Taborite priests had called the end of days for February 14th, and like in Pilsen, not much happened on that day. Babylon did not fall.

There are two well-trodden ways for any prophet of the apocalypse to deal with this, so far inevitable occurence. One part of the Taborites just pretended they had never made any such claim and simply soldered on, building their community of the faithful on the hill. Nothing to see here.

The remainder went the other way and dialled it up to eleven. I never thought I would find myself reading the book of revelation, but now that we are deep in the weeds of the debate of what happens at the end of the world, I had to. And to say it with the inimitable words of George Walker Bush: That’s some weird shit. Open to literally any kind of interpretation. There is this whole debate about the millennium before or after antichrist or Jesus arrival, which may be bliss or horror, or does not happen at all, take your pick.

The interpretation the Taborite millenarians went as follows. The day of wrath had actually come. But instead of wiping out all the bad people, it brought on the thousand years of righteous rule. So from now on, those who had left for the five cities and had now all come together on Mount Tabor would be ruling the world. That they would no longer have to pay rent to their lords, take over all the villages, fish ponds, meadows and forests, in fact they would be drowning in an abundance of silver and gold. The only bit that was required to get there was the extermination of the sinners, which god had now assigned to them. As one chronicler said, quote “the seducers, wanting to bring the people to that freedom and somehow to substantiate their lies, began to preach enormous cruelty, unheard-of violence and injustice to men” end quote.

This is a revolution and like every revolution it has to stay in motion. At every junction a new chapter is opened and the rhetoric is ratcheted up. Once the movement stalls, the forces of the counterrevolution brings the process to a halt. And the Hussite Revolution still had a lot of motion.

Back in the physical world we should note that this new Jerusalem found itself in a geographically advantageous position, on a rock, surrounded on two sides by rivers. But that was it. The defensive walls of the previous settlement if they had ever been material, were gone, as were the houses. With Sigismund’s crusade being called and royalist armies swarming the land, for this community to survive it needed walls and towers and most importantly soldiers.

And to deliver those, even an egalitarian community requires someone who organises things. Which is why on April 6, days after the faithful from Pilsen had arrived, they elected four leaders, captains as they called them. One of them was Jan Zizka who would soon take charge of all military matters.

And they got going on building defences. Day and night the Taborites, the older men, the boys and the women carried stones and mortar, creating a hexagonal fortress surrounded by a double wall, a moat and strengthened by six bastions, one at each projecting corner. Originally there was but one gate into the city leading to the bridge over one of the rivers. This was a remarkably modern, impregnable fortress that would mightily impress Silvio Aeneas Piccolomini, the future pope Pius II.

And here is the truly astonishing thing, it was built in less than 2 months, between March 27th and May 18th. The people who built it lived in tents inside the walls. There was no time to build houses or churches yet.

Even the mightiest walls and towers are of no use if there aren’t soldiers able to defend them. And that is where Jan Zizka’s true genius played out. At the same speed as the walls rose up around Tabor did he create an army such like had never be seen before.

Medieval military doctrine stated that no infantry force could withstand a charge by  armoured riders. This doctrine had already been challenged hard at Muhldorf, Morgarten, Poitiers, Agincourt and Nicopol where the flowers of chivalry had been decimated by people they regarded as beneath them.

There is a difference though. The Janissaries at Nicopol and the English Longbowmen at Poitiers and Agincourt had trained for years before they got deployed in battle. The Swiss and Bavarian infantry too had training and benefitted from knowledge of their very specific geography.

What Zizka did was to turn a ragtag bunch of peasants, a few artisans and even fewer experienced soldiers within less than two months into an army that would never be defeated by an army of knights, never. How he did it, well even though there are many accounts, in the end, it is hard to explain and even more difficult  to replicate.

On March 27th he had brought 400 men from Pilsen who may have had received some military training during the fighting there, but Zizka will leave Tabor at the head of an army of allegedly 9,000 on May 18th.

The early 15th century was a time of such brutality, that everyone had a weapon and knew how to use it. That means townsfolk, even artisans would likely have a swords or a crossbow and some experience in handling these. But the majority of Zizka’s new army were peasants who had their agricultural tools, their pitchforks and flails as their means of defence.

Just in case like me you do not know exactly what a flail is, here is what I found out. It is a tool that consists of a striking head that is attached to a handle by a metal chain or rope. It is what was used for threshing, i.e., for separating grains from their husks. The flail has some advantages. An agricultural flail has a fairly long handle and because the striking head is on a chain, it is hard to parry. It can go around a shield or hit over a wall. By adding spikes or studs to the striking head, it can be become deadly. These agricultural flails are not to be confused with the military flails you see for instance in many depictions of Jan Hus. These have shorter handles and small metal spiked balls at the end. Germans call them Morning stars. These were expensive weapons yielded by the nobility. What we are talking about here are peasant tools, repurposed for warfare.

And that means they were available, and other weapons weren’t. One of the most famous contemporaneous depictions of a Hussite army shows the men carrying very long flails, maybe two metres tall.

The men carrying flails were one of three major infantry formations. An other one were the pikemen or lancers. They carried long lances meant to unseat riders. And the third formation were archers and crossbowmen who provided long distance firepower.

Mustering the men and optimising their weapons was one thing, but the most crucial component of infantry going up against a cavalry charge was discipline. I think I said that many times before, but there are very few things more terrifying than a thousand riders on heavy hoses bearing down on men on foot. They may know that they will almost certainly die if they run, but for centuries after the fall of the Roman empire, running was what infantry in europe did.

Discipline did not just come from the imposition of authority, though that surely existed given the religious fervour and respect for the scarce military experience, but from the structure of warfare Zizka had invented.

That is where his first major innovation came in, the war wagon. The wagons Zizka had used at the previous two encounters had been just ordinary carts of the kind used to transport foodstuff to market or on campaign.

The war wagons that Zizka used later and presumably developed further as he went along, were of a different kind. These were designed as moveable fortresses. They were heavy and robust carriages. The sides could be reinforced with movable boards for his soldiers to take shelter behind. Other boards could be deployed to protect the wheels and to stabilise the wagon. The gap between two wagons was protected by a heavy mobile shield. That meant the Hussite army could create a mobile fort simply by pulling their war wagons into a circular formation and deploying the shields into the gaps. If they had enough time to set it up on top of a hill and dig a moat around it, these fortifications were almost impregnable. And as we will see, he also found a way to turn the war wagon from defensive tools to offensive weapons.

But beyond the mechanical change this brought, it also forced a complete rethinking of European military tactics. A medieval battle was effectively a giant melee where the great lords decided more of less freely when to attack, where and who. They were all doing more or less the same thing and since the only honourable formation was to go straight at them, no flanking or other cowardly moves, there was less need to coordinate across different divisions.

That lack of discipline and coordination is what led to the catastrophic French defeats in Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt, the loss of the battle of Nicopol and scores of other, less famous encounters. None of the field commanders were able to bring in the kind of discipline that allowed generals to deploy their forces according to some battle plan.

An army that fights out of a formation of wagons was forced into coordination for the simple reason that the movable fortress only worked as well as its weakest link. Every wagon team had to get to the right place at the right time. Otherwise there would be a giant opening in the wall. Operating war wagons required specialisations, some soldiers were manning the wooden walls, other the shields between the wagons, there were the wagon drivers and those who handled the artillery. Every member of the team needed to know what to do and their comrades had to rely on him, or in fact her, doing their job.

The last component that made the Hussite armies so special was the use of field artillery. Artillery had been around for at least fifty years by then. The oldest surviving European firearm, the Tannenberg handgunne dates back to 1399 but they had been mentioned far earlier. These guns were predominantly used in static warfare, i.e, as a way to break walls during sieges. There were guns deployed at the battle of Tannenberg in 1410, but it is in the Hussite wars that they start to make a material difference. Shooting balls from behind the walls of their mobile fortress not only terrified riders and their horses, but as aim and speed increased it became a way to overcome the advantages of steel armour.

We do not know when Zizka exactly developed this form of warfare. It might have already gone around in his head when he fought in the wars against the Teutonic Knights. We have heard that he first deployed some of his tactics during the siege of Pilsen and then on the trip over to Tabor. But it is during this time in April 1420 that he was able to scale it up.

It was almost certainly an iterative, learning by doing process. During these two months he kept his new army in the field, running a number of attacks across the neighbourhood of Tabor. They raided the castles of the lords who had broken the promise of safe conduct. They attacked the small army of Nicholas of Jemniste, the man in charge of the massacres in Kutna Hora. They inflicted damage on his forces and forced him to release his prisoners. Once the truce between the royalists and Hussites ended on April 23rd, he felt free to attack any of the local lords who had sided with the king. In the process he took a lot of booty which included arms as well as horses, which allowed him to add a small troop of cavalry to his force.

As the Hussites became more powerful they also became more cruel. At one point they told six prisoners that they would release whoever was prepared to decapitate all his five comrades. Zizka himself ordered seven monks to be burned at the stake.

But the next great battle was however not fought over Tabor as the leaders of the community had feared, but in Prague.

Prague as we know had signed a truce with the royalists in November 1419 and had cowed before Sigismund in December. The leaders of the city and the moderate Hussite barons had believed that there was space for reconciliation, in particular that Sigismund could be made to tolerate the chalice, the communion of bread and wine as well as three more demands. But as we explained last week, Sigismund as emperor elect and king of Hungary could not compromise, even if he had wanted to.

The pointlessness of their attempt at compromise became abundantly clear when Sigismund sanctioned the burning of a Prague merchant who was reluctant to give up his Hussite beliefs. Then he issued an order that anyone who was found practicing Hussite beliefs by the time he arrived in Bohemia would be punished by death and loss of all possessions.

At that point the leader of the moderate Hussite barons, Cenek of Wartenberg, who had been appointed Sigismund’s regent in Bohemia and who held the Royal castle above the city, turned publicly against the king. In a symbolic act he sent back his precious insignia as a knight of the dragon. And then convinced his fellow magnates to side against the enemies of their faith. And even the most conservative Hussites amongst the city councillors and nobles concluded that they had to fight.

On April 3rd, 1420, the city of Prague formulated what would become known as the four articles, a summary of the key demands of the Bohemians to their king. It was a manifesto all the now various factions of Hussites could agree upon.

And this is what they said, quote:

  1. We stand for the ministering of the body and blood of the Lord to the laity in both kinds, for … this was Christ’s institution and …that of the first apostles.
  2. We stand for the proper and free preaching of the word of God and of his every truth
  3. All priests, from the pope down, should give up their pomp, avarice, and improper lordship [..] over temporal goods and they should live as models for us.
  4. We stand for the purge and cessation from all public mortal sins, by each in his own person; and for the cleansing of the Bohemian realm and nation from false and evil slander; and in this connection, for the common good of our land.” End quote

From now on, whenever Bohemia is threatened from outside, the various Hussite forces will coalesce around these four demands, and every time they are left alone, they will fall out over what exactly they mean.  

For now they were under attack and hence they were united. The city of Prague was readying its defences. They expelled the remaining Catholics, most of them German speaking. The Vhysherad they had so foolishly  handed over to the royalists in 1419, was put under siege.

Meanwhile Sigismund’s army marched from Silesia towards Prague. The numbers for the size of Sigismund’s army are all over the place. Our chronicler Lawrence of Brezova talks about 150,000 men, including bishops, archbishops, dukes and secular princes, approximately 40 in all, not counting margraves, counts, barons and nobles. These were Bohemians, Moravians, Hungarians, Croats, Dalmatians, Bulgarians, Wallachians, Huns, Tassyans, Ruthenians, Russians, Slavonians, Prussians, Serbs, Thuringians, Styrians, Misnians, Bavarians, Saxons, Austrians, Franconians, Frenchmen, Engishmen, and so forth and so forth. Sigismund’s chronicler talks about 80,000. Neither of these numbers are believable. The French and English side at Agincourt in 1415 counted each about 15,000, at Tannenberg/Grunwald, high estimates talk about 30,000 men. And these were battles involving some of the richest and most powerful monarchies of the middle ages, not an impecunious claimant for the crown of a medium-sized kingdom.

But it was still a huge army, quite likely one of the largest forces assembled in that century to date. Seeing all this, some moderate Hussites were either getting cold feet or became disconcerted about the increasing brutality of the Taborites, or both.  Amongst them was the grand magnate and leader of the moderate Hussite barons, Cenek of Wartenberg. He opened discussions with Sigismund and in exchange for the promise that he and his family could continue receiving the chalice, handed over Prague castle.

That was a massive blow for the defenders. The city of Prague was now wedged in between Prague Castle and the Vysherad. They tried to take either of them and failed. With the main forces of the enemy approaching at pace, despair spread through the city. Again they were considering a truce and sent delegates to discuss with Sigismund in Kutna Hora.

And again Sigismund turned them down. He demanded unconditional surrender, no ifs no buts. Return to old school Catholicism, no chalice, the return of the monks and the Germans, and restitution of church property. And there was no way the Hussites could accept it, certainly not the radicals, but neither could the moderates. The delegation returned to Prague and the city prepared to fight to the end. One of the astonishing things about this conflict is how often the moderates try to reconcile with the king and how they do not understand that he would not and could not budge.

 So, rather than dissolving their militia and removing their barricades as they had been ordered, wherever there had been one chain to barricade the street, they put two, and locked themselves up against the king.”

And the city now called for help. Hussites from all across the country mustered their forces and journeyed to Prague. On May 18th, an army, 9,000 strong, armed with flails, swords, crossbows, lances and pikes, accompanied by war wagons and led by Jan Zizka set off from Tabor on the 50 mile journey to Prague. Medieval armies tended to be slow and it would have usually taken a week to cover this distance. Zizka made it in three days, which included a successful skirmish with Royalist troops halfway through.

Whilst the city was filling up with determined fighters, the strategic position remained extremely challenging. The Hussite positions were the Old Town and the New Town which are lying on a plain on the right bank of the Vltava. The Lesser Town on the opposite side of the river was a smouldering ruin. The royalists held Prague Castle, one of the largest medieval castles in the world that sits 150 meters above the town. And they hold the Vhsherad, a somewhat less imposing hill, but still a mighty fortress to the  the south.

Both sides assumed that once Sigismund arrived, he would try to put the city under siege, cutting off food supply and slowly starve them out. To do that he needed to close down all access roads into the city.

There are four main routes into Prague, along or on yhe river, either from the north or the south, and by road from either the South-east or the North-east. Three of those routes were blocked by Prague Castle and the Vysherad. There is always a reason why the castles are built where they have been built.

The only road the royalists did not control was the North-eastern access route. That road came in on the right bank of the Vltava, i.e., the side where the Old and New Towns are and crossed a fairly wide plain called Hospital Field. Hospital field was  bordered on one side by the river and on the other by a 70m high, long ridge called the Vitkov Hill.

The destiny of Prague and now that all Hussite forces were gathered inside its walls, the movement itself was to be decided on Hospital Field and on Vitkov Hill.

Sigismund and his army arrived in early summer and made camp by Prague Castle. And that is where they stayed for the next couple of weeks, growing in number as more and more crusaders arrived. Prague was after all one of the largest cities in the empire. Surrounding it from all sides will take a huge army. Hence they were waiting for the moment that their forces would be sufficient to fully invest the city.

Meanwhile the defenders dug moats and strengthened walls. And they prepared the key strategic point, Vitkov Hill. On one end of the ridge stood an old watchtower, once built to protect the royal vineyard on the southern slope of the hill. Zizka then had two more wooden bulwarks built at the other end. These were fairly small, each holding maybe 30 defenders. Around these bulwarks all trees had been felled and houses that could impede access or visibility had been taken down. And then they waited.

The action began on July 14th, 1420. Sigismund planned an all-out assault. One contingent of a few thousand cavalry, mostly troops from Meissen and Thuringia were to take Vitkov Hill. Once that was accomplished a force of 16,000 was to come down from the royal castle and fight their way across the bridge, whilst another large army was to attack the new Town from the Vysherad. Overall a sound plan. Either the defenders would give up as soon as Vitkov Hill had fallen, or if they continued to resist, they could be starved to death.

Here I leave the storytelling to Lawrence of Brezova: quote “Those from Meissen climbed the mountain with their own troops and the 7,000 to 8,000 cavalry allied to them, in force and with trumpets blowing, and launched an assault on the aforementioned wooden battlements., successfully crossing the moat and taking the watchtower in the vineyard.  When they wanted to scale the walls made from mud and stone, two women, with one girl and 26 men who had remained temporarily in the bulwark offered brave resistance with stones and spears and were repulsing the attackers, having neither shells nor gunpowder. One of these women, even though she was unarmed , surpassed even the courage of the men, refusing to yield a single step, saying it was wrong for a faithful Christian to yield to an Antichrist. Fighting with great zeal, she was killed and breathed her last. Then Zizka came to their defence and he himself would have been killed had his own men not come with flails and rescued him from the hands of his enemies. Just as practically the whole city was terrified at the prospect of its doom, and the citizens were pouring out tears and prayers with their small children, counting on heaven alone to aid them, a priest approached with the sacrament of the body of Christ. Behind him were about 50 archers and a number of peasants unarmed except for flails. When the enemy saw the sacrament and heard the little bell, together with the loud cries of the people, laid low by powerful fear, they turned their backs, fleeing in haste, everyone trying to get in front of those before them. Many were unable to keep their balance against the onslaught and fell from the high rocks and broke their necks, and many more were killed by their pursuers. Within an hour more than 300 of them were slain while others were mortally wounded or captured” end quote.

I understand that this story as told here is one of the foundation stories of Czech national identity, so I will not dig too deep into the embellishments our chronicler might have added to the story. Let’s just say that Jan Zizka would not be much of a military genius if he had left the garrison at this crucial point without weapons and in particular without guns. It is also somewhat doubtful that a thousand battle hardened mercenaries would be turned into panicked wrecks by the sight of a priest with the Holy sacrament and 50 archers.

Despite this spot of myth making, the fact remains that Sigismund’s army was unable to take Vitkov Hill on that day and the following days the citizens of Prague dug deeper moats and build larger forts on Vitkov Hill so that the supply lines into Prague remained open.

And as it had happened twice before, the victory of the rebels was followed by negotiations. Again the Leaders of the city of Prague and the moderates sought reconciliation with their king and with the catholic church.

Sigismund, realising he could no longer take the city by force began to lend his ear to the catholic barons who promised him Prague without bloodshed. At which point the German princes who had been promised the land of the Hussite barons as well as booty from the sack of Prague turned first on the Bohemian barons and ultimately on their own king. One by one the imperial princes left the camp and went home, burning and plundering as they went. Sigismund was crowned king of Bohemia in St. Vitus cathedral but immediately afterwards retreated to Kutna Hora the centre of catholic power in Bohemia to await the peaceful resolution of the conflict.

We will see next week whether Jan Zizka and emperor Sigismund will hold hands and ride off into the sunset. But even more importantly, we will find out what repercussions these events have in the German lands, how they change the institutions of the empire and the position of its ruler. I hope you will join us again.

And in the meantime, if you feel inclined to support the show, you can do so at historyofthegermans.com/support.