The Hussite Revolution Part 3

“To our great shame and sorrow, we must acknowledge how our brethren have been cleverly seduced by Satan, and how they have departed from Holy Scriptures in strange and unheard-of ideas and acts. When Satan first came to them it was not with an open face, as the devil, but in the shining garb of voluntary poverty, [..], and in the zealous work of preaching to and serving the people and in giving them the Body and Holy Blood of God. And [..] a great many people flocked to them.

Then the devil came to them clothed in other garb, in the prophets and the Old Testament, and from these they sought to confect the imminent Day of Judgement, saying that they were angels who had to eliminate the scandals of Christ’s kingdom, and that they were to judge the world. And so they committed many killings and impoverished many people; but they did not judge the world according to their words, for the predicted time has elapsed with which they terrified the people, telling them strange things.” End quote.

Strange things indeed were happening in Bohemia. Peter Chelcicky whose words you just heard reported how the radical Hussites had called the End of Days for February 14^th, 1420. But when that day came, and instead of all the enemies of the faith lying dead with their noses pointing skywards, royalist forces surrounded the radical Hussites in the city of Pilzen. Now the end really seemed nigh, but cometh the time, cometh the man, even if the man is a one-eyed, gruff ex-Highwayman.

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TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 177 – The Day after the End of Days, which is also episode 14 of Season 9 The Reformation before the Reformation.

“To our great shame and sorrow, we must acknowledge how our brethren have been cleverly seduced by Satan, and how they have departed from Holy Scriptures in strange and unheard-of ideas and acts. When Satan first came to them it was not with an open face, as the devil, but in the shining garb of voluntary poverty, [..], and in the zealous work of preaching to and serving the people and in giving them the Body and Holy Blood of God. And [..] a great many people flocked to them.

Then the devil came to them clothed in other garb, in the prophets and the Old Testament, and from these they sought to confect the imminent Day of Judgement, saying that they were angels who had to eliminate the scandals of Christ’s kingdom, and that they were to judge the world. And so they committed many killings and impoverished many people; but they did not judge the world according to their words, for the predicted time has elapsed with which they terrified the people, telling them strange things.” End quote.

Strange things indeed were happening in Bohemia. Peter Chelcicky whose words you just heard reported how the radical Hussites had called the End of Days for February 14^th, 1420. But when that day came, and instead of all the enemies of the faith lying dead with their noses pointing skywards, royalist forces surrounded the radical Hussites in the city of Pilzen. Now the end really seemed nigh, but cometh the time, cometh the man, even if the man is a one-eyed, gruff ex-Highwayman.

Before we get to the delights only a full blown apocalypse can offer, let me offer you nothing, nothing to buy, nothing to sign up for, nothing but the gratitude of your fellow listeners and your humble podcaster. Protecting us against an ever rising wave of advertising is a noble pursuit you can indulge in at historyofthegermans.com/support. Hence we thank all the lords and ladies who have so graciously lent a hand, namely Phil Grass, Hendrik N., Brian K., Chris C., John F., Martin W. and special thanks also to Historygirl Susan E. whose generosity and support all across social media is much appreciated.

And with that, back to the show.

Last week we left the Hussites at a low point. Though they had won the battle of the Lesser Town of Prague, their subsequent truce and kowtow before emperor  Sigismund had wiped out all of this success. A massive Catholic backlash against the religious reformers was under way. Sigismund had ordered the magistrates of Prague to lift the siege of the Royal Castle and to dismantle their fortifications, an order they were too weak to resist. The monks and nuns returned to their ransacked monasteries and the German merchant elite re-occupied their houses in Prague. The mining town of Kutna Hora became a centre of the repression of the Hussites who were thrown down mine shafts, some dead but also some still alive.

Sigismund, rather than entering Prague for a coronation went on to Breslau for an imperial diet. At that diet the Electors and princes signed up for a crusade against the Hussites. That crusade was initially intended to defend Hungary against the Ottomans, but pope Martin V had allowed for it to be diverted to eradicate the heretics of  Bohemia. And to make it abundantly clear that there was no room for reconciliation between even moderate Hussite demands and the imperial will, the diet convicted another Hussite priest, dragged him behind a horse over the cobblestones and when he still refused to die, burned him next to the abattoir.

What made all this even more disconcerting for the people was that most of that calamity had been self-inflicted. On November 5^th, 1419 the Hussites were a cohesive movement. The citizens of Prague, both the more radical artisans and labourers in the New Town and the more affluent patricians of the Old Town, the provincial  communitarians who had come from their mountains to support their brethren and many of the Bohemian barons had all been united in their opposition to the royalists up in the castle. They had fought together, they had died together and they had won together.

But just 8 days later, the moderate factions in Prague had agreed a truce with the Royalists which allowed the Catholics to retaliate. The Radicals were opposed to the truce and the movement splintered into factions.

For these radical Hussites who had come from the provinces, this turn of events was almost impossible to understand. How could they get through the canon fire on the Charles Bridge and put experienced and well-armed mercenaries to flight, only to see the enemies of the faith triumph.

And this was not the first time they had experienced hardship. This is the early 15^th century and the four horsemen of the Apocalypse are riding high.

The rider on the white horse had brought the plague, the plague that had begun in 1348 but had come back again, and again and again taking its grim toll.

The rider of the red horse had come to take peace from the earth and to make men slay other men. He had brought war, incessant war between the kings of France and England, between the princes of the empire over this, that or the other parcel of land, and the war between Wenceslaus, his barons, his cousins and at times his brother that devastated Bohemia the once richest and most august of the principalities of the empire.

The rider of the black horse came with a pair of scales weighing what little bread was allowed in times of famine. And now that the climate was turning colder and colder, even a good harvest in 1410 was no better than a poor harvest 150 years earlier. Those who have stayed on their land and failed to negotiate better wages found themselves re-enslaved following the plague whilst many who had left for the bright lights of the cities found themselves as menial labourers or domestic servants.

And the fourth rider on his pale horse of death was ever present, the catch all for those who had not succumbed to disease, war or famine.

It was a brutally tough time to be alive, very much the opposite of the beautifully illuminated images that the early renaissance masters, the Giottos, Lorenzettis, Martinis and Masaccios produced during that time.

And for the men and women who had left their homesteads in the autumn of 1419 to come to the aid of Prague, all this felt even more dystopian. Not only had they suffered the agony of disease, war, famine and death, they thought they had found the reason for their suffering. And that reason had been the corruption of the church, the church that turned its back on the example of the apostles, that had them denied the sacrament of bread and wine, without which there was no salvation. And they had not only found the reason for their suffering, they had begun remedying these ills. They had gathered on the mountains and had taken the bread and wine, they had shared their worldly goods as the apostle had done and they had listened to and tried to live by the scripture.

If they had done all that was required, how could it be that they found themselves leaving the city of Prague in fear of persecution and with nowhere to go?

Their priests were as confused as they were themselves and sought the answers in the one place they knew had all the answers, the holy scripture. Here is what our chronicler, Lawrence of Brezova reports they did next quote: “during this time some Taborite priests were preaching to the people Christ’s Second Coming, during which time all evil ones and adversaries of the truth deserved to perish and be annihilated, and all the righteous ones would be saved in five towns. [they were] warning that everyone who wished to escape the wrath of almighty God, which was supposed to be sent into the entire world, should move from their towns, castles and villages like Lot from Sodom to the five cities of refuge. These were the names of the cities: Pilsen, which they called the city of the sun, Zatec, Louny, Klatovy and Slany. This was on account of the fact that almighty God wanted to annihilate the entire world, with only those who fled to the aforementioned towns being spared” end quote.

Medieval history is full of predictions of the end of the world, from the millennial fears that gripped the contemporaries of Otto III and Henry II to the predictions of Joachim of Fiore that called upon Frederick Barbarossa to go to Jerusalem to bring about the 1000 years of bliss that preceded the coming of antichrist.

Seeing the defeat of their side and hearing that Sigismund was about to arrive in Bohemia to strike the final blow, the Taborite priests wrote quote: “The lion has gone forth from his lair and the heathen pillage has arisen..[..] the King of Hungary has gone forth to lay waste your land. Your cities will be wiped out..[..] therefore, knowing these things give diligent heed to the lord God himself and do not be tardy; He is at the gates.” end quote

And they gave a date for when he, Christ, not Sigismund, was to arrive – they said soon, very soon, in fact in just three months, in mid-February 1420.

And with that date being so close, the persecution of heretics in full swing across the country and a crusade against them being called, thousands of ordinary people left their homes, sold their belongings and took their husbands or wives, their children and their livestock to seek safety in one of these five cities. At this stage the biggest concentration was in the city of Pilsen, today more famous for Pilsener beer, the original Lager. Pilsen was turned into a fortress, many of its citizens who did not adhere to the Taborite beliefs left or, according to some accounts, were thrown out or even killed. The monasteries were ransacked as were the churches and the homes of the rich. In line with the tradition they been had established in their gatherings on the mountains before, they pooled their possessions, or as the our rather biased chronicler said, threw their money at the feet of their priests.

Conditions within these five cities must have been very difficult. Pilsen may have been a city of a few thousand people if that and the influx of thousands of pilgrims from the countryside must have led to massive overcrowding. Moreover, these people had no business in these towns, no work or income. And since they were there only to wait out the coming apocalypse, there was no incentive for them to set up shops or create much of a society. Feeding these masses was a challenge even before the cities were put under siege. And then there was the question on how to defend the city with nothing but pilgrims, most of them peasants and artisans and very few soldiers

The answer to that last question had already arrived in November 1419, a grizzled old soldier with only one eye who had fought for decades but had never held command of a major force.

I have promised to talk about Jan Zizka for three episodes now, and finally we are getting there. And at this point a big thank you to Czech listener Jiri D. who kindly summarised some of the recent Czech historical research for us.

There is precious little information about the first fifty years of the great Czech hero, the man who broke the dominance of the armoured knights and whose bronze equestrian statue overlooking Prague is the third largest in the world.  But recently a major works has been published by professor Petr Čornej that sheds more light on his life before the Hussite Revolt. And from that we can conclude that Jan Žižka had already lived and survived more lives than the proverbial stray cat before he came into historical focus.

Jan Žižka was born between 1360-1363 most likely in Trocnov, 16km southeast of Budvar, yes, another town that makes great beer and also gave its name to something called Budweiser. The family background was petty landed gentry which provided him with a coat of arms of a red crayfish on a silver field, but not an awful lot more.
His parents and relatives owned two farms, covering together not more than 40-50 hectares of very poor soil. The place was later deserted and converted into pastures, so  not enough to maintain the standards of even just the lowest level of gentry.

The name Žižka by which he is known, was actually a nickname. It means “one eyed” as Jan lost an eye quite early, probably due to an accident roughhousing with a childhood friend.
His early years, upbringing or education left no trace. He first appears in public records in four documents dated between 1378 – 1384, presenting him as a poor manager and householder, constantly in debt and incapable of taking care of his farm. He gradually sold off all of his land and assets and disappeared from the local land register. In the meantime, Jan had two short-lived marriages. Both wives died very early, probably in childbirth, leaving him with only one surviving child, his daughter Catherine.

Jan Žižka initially served Heinrich von Rosenberg, the all-powerful lord of Southern Bohemia, but must have fallen out with him fairly early on. Jan Žižka and his brothers, once their money had run out, joined a gang of Highwaymen under a certain “Matthew the Leader”, which operated between the years 1404-1409 in the border region between Bohemia, Moravia and Austria. They were a particular menace to the lands of his former master, the Rosenbergs and the citizens of Budvar. Jan Žižka did what a highwayman does, he took a load of herrings from the Rosenbergs, killing one of the lord’s men, shook down two brothers for cash and fleeced the merchants travelling between Vienna and Prague.
On occasion and at the behest of clients his gang would have a go at larger prey too. They tried to capture the royal castle of Hus and another time they planned to seize Nové Hrady, scaling the walls with rope ladders.

That brought the authorities on to the scene who systematically wiped out their local network and cornered, caught and hanged the gang members. Jan Žižka remained in hiding until he was saved by a royal pardon.

That royal pardon is seen as the great mysteries of his earlier life. Why would a king of Bohemia suddenly pardon a robber down in the south of the country who he may have never met before? Wenceslaus IV  wrote to all concerned on  July 27,1409 that “…he has accepted Jan the said Žižka, his beloved faithful, on his mercy, forgiving him graciously all the offences committed against Him and against the Crown of the Kingdom of Bohemia.”
Hmm, a state prosecutor pardons a gang member whose affiliates have all been hanged? Honi soit qui mal y pense as they said in the 14^th century..
 
There is also a completely different story going round. Records of the court of Burgundy mentions a certain Jehan Susque de Behaigne which sound like Jan Zizka from Bohemia who acted as a go-between for King Wenceslaus and duke John the Fearless. This Jehan passed messages between the two princes, brought expensive horses to Dijon and accompanied the Burgundian chancellor on various diplomatic missions to eastern europe. The problem is  that the timing of these two stories overlaps, and whilst one can move from convicted felon to ambassador, nobody can be a diplomat and a highwayman at the same time. So either Zizka was a highwayman and this Jehan person was someone else, or Zizka was indeed a diplomat and the pardon was granted to him for a crime committed on occasion of one of his missions.

By 1410 we are on firmer ground. We find him fighting as a mercenary for Jogaila of Poland and Lithuania in the war against the Teutonic Knights. He may or may not have participated in the battle of Tannenberg/Grunwald in 1410 but he was definitely involved in the campaign and the defence of the castle of Rheden/Radzyn. This must have given him a good idea of how detachments of knights operated on the battlefield and how royal armies conducted large scale sieges. And he also could see the use of fire weapons at scale, weapons that had only recently become deployed more broadly.

Sometimes between 1411-1414 Jan Žižka joined the household of King Wenceslaus as a “palace gatekeeper”, someone close to the king, acting as a bodyguard. Wenceslaus was famously unstable and erratic. As a member of his immediate entourage Zizka must have been good at gaging his master’s moods, information that was exceedingly valuable to anyone with business at court. That may explain why his financial situation finally improved. In 1414 Žižka bought a representative house close to Wenceslaus favourite palace, though he did not keep it for long. He sold it to fund his daughter’s dowry two years later. As a member of the royal court Žižka made friends with prominent political, religious and military figures. It also brought him in contact with the Bohemian reformers who had many powerful supporters at court. There is a story that Zizka regularly accompanied queen Sophia when she attended Jan Hus’ Sermons at the Bethlehem chapel.

In 1419 when the Hussite revolt kicks off, Jan Zizka is already in his mid to late Fifties. Very little makes him out to become one of the greatest military figures in European history. Not only is he a relatively old man, he is visually impaired, had never held command of significant military forces before and his backstory is, as we have seen, a little too checkered to lead a religious movement. But then he did all that. Cometh the day, cometh the man!

And that day when Jan Zizka first steps into the limelight of history was the 30^th of July 1419, the day of the first Defenestration of Prague. Our chronicler Lawrence of Brezova tells us that the royal councillors were quote “outrageously slaughtered by the common people and Jan Zizka, courtier of the Czech king” end quote. Many biographers ascribe Zizka a significant role in this event, though there is no further evidence of him even being there. I personally think that it is unlikely that he was one of the ringleaders at this event, simply because if he had been, the chroniclers would have made a big song and dance about it. But they didn’t. Hence my guess is that at this point he was still only another man in the crowd.

More interesting is the question why he was there. He was after all a royal servant, a “familiaris” of the king who had risen to wealth and prestige at court. Taking part in the insurrection, even in a minor role, was an act of treason. So why did he do it.

In a chronicle written about his life in 1436 it says simply, that he “took the field to fight against who did not take the Body and Blood of Christ in both kinds. Those he took for his enemies” end quote.

It was likely as simple as that. Jan Zizka, like almost everyone in Bohemia at that time had to make a decision, to stand either with the Hussites or with the Catholics. There was no middle ground. Zizka was close to the reformers at court who had just been dismissed. And he may simply have agreed with their view of scripture and decided to stand with the Hussites. And that was that.

From here on we find Zizka at the forefront of events. He led the attack on the monasteries following the death of Wenceslaus and then, as captain of the forces of the New Town, led the attack on Vysherad castle that kicked off the actual revolution.

During the battle for the Lesser Town some chroniclers ascribe Zizka a major role alongside the overall commander Nicolaus of Hus. And he seemed to have displayed a lot of personal courage during the fighting on the Charles Bridge.

Which is likely why he took the signing of the truce between the city of Prague and the Royal Castle so hard, in particular the decision to return the Vysherad to the Royalists. He had taken that castle, he understood its strategic importance and he knew what a foolish decision the truce had been. And like so many other disaffected radical Hussites, he left the city.

Passing through the gates of Prague he had once defended and where he once had a handsome house and position at court, he headed to one of the five cities the radical Hussites had declared the safe haven in times of the apocalypse. He went to Pilsen, the city of the sun where he arrived in the middle of November.

He had been invited to Pilsen by Wenceslas Koranda, a Hussite preacher who had already established himself as one of the leaders of the more extreme branch of the Hussites. Koranda was one of the most vocal Adventists who had predicted the second coming of Christ for mid-February 1420 and had urged the faithful to take refuge in one of the five cities.

After Koranda and Zizka had arrived, Pilsen began to fill up with those seeking safety from the Day of Wrath and/or protection from the brutal persecution by the Catholics that was kicking off.

As these people arrived, the demographics of Pilsen changed. Initially a city dominated by Hussite moderates, the radicals took up more and more space. That gave Wenceslaus Koranda the room to imprint more and more of his ideas on to the cityscape. He started with stripping the churches of their idolatry images before moving on to the destruction of the monasteries. The monks and the inhabitants unwilling to fall in line were expelled. And from there he whipped up the crowd with fear of the imminent Second Coming, which got ever more aggressive as news of the massacres at Kutna Hora spread.

I have by the way found another source for these events we discussed last week. A letter written by the magistrates of Prague to the city of Venice in July 1420 highlights both the incredible cruelty and the involvement of the largely German population. The leader of the atrocities was a certain Nicholas of Jemniste. Jemniste had initially been sympathetic and had warned Jan Hus against going to Constance, but he ended up a fanatic anti-Hussite. He is supposed to have devised the murder by mineshaft we discussed last week, earning him the nickname “the fierce”.

Naturally, Pilsen refused to sign up to the truce with the royalists. The government in Prague sent troops to bring Pilsen to heel. Initially this was a small army recruited mainly from the local nobility. They were unable to surround the city completely. Instead, they ran a campaign of destruction of neighbouring fields and villages, thereby reducing the availability of foodstuff in the overcrowded city.

Up until now the Taborites had been a peaceful lot, except for the destruction of churches and monasteries. Their whole ethos was to replicate the lives of the apostles who had spent their time preaching and living a communal life. But now that the armies of the enemy had gathered, the question is whether they were allowed to defend themselves. Zizka and his fellow commanders had already used military force in Prague, but the question was whether the faithful and even the priests could join them in this fight. After all the apostles had accepted martyrdom without resisting and does that not mean they should too? Zizka and his fellow commanders put this question to the masters of the university in Prague. And the masters concluded that it was appropriate for the laity to use violence in defence of their faith but reiterated the prohibition for priests to carry swords. That is often seen as the moment when Koronda and Zizka began to fall out, something that will be relevant later.

For now, the defence of the city was priority number 1. The small contingents of royalists roaming the countryside were clearly just the advance guard of a much larger army that would be sent against Pilsen. Zizka as captain of the city was in charge of defence. We know little of the early skirmishes in that period except for one significant event.

Sometime in December Zizka had made a sortie to take a small royalist fort at Nekmer, a few miles from the city. What he did not know was that this had been a trap, set up by the royalist commander. As Zizka arrived, he suddenly faced up against the entirety of the enemy.  forces, made up of dozens maybe a hundreds of knights, all in shining armour confident in the knowledge that nothing could resist their charge.

Zizka, it is said, had just a small force of men, not all of them trained soldiers, a few guns and seven wagons. As far as we know this was the moment when he first deployed the technique that would later make him the greatest military tactician of his day.

He ordered the wagons to form a circle on top of a hill and placed the canons in the middle. As the knights attacked they were met with canon fire that could penetrate their armour. And even if they were willing to dodge the shrapnel, they found their progress barred by the heavy wagons. The defenders meanwhile stayed behind in the safety of their mobile castle, taking shots at the enemy out in the open, or hitting them with their flails. This kind of warfare did not require years of training the knights went through. All you had to do was to be mad enough to handle one of these early guns that were almost as likely to explode in your hands than to send a projectile and to hold still whilst the stampede of armoured riders was coming at you. And if you believe that the End of Days was coming anyway, that was not quite as difficult as it sounds.

This tactic prove extremely effective against medieval knights in this and many later encounters. The royalists fled the field of battle and a new form of warfare was born.

But before this new model could be deployed successfully and at scale, Zizka and his men had to deal with a much, much larger royalist army that now invested the city of Pilsen. If that was pretty bad, what had made their position inside the city even more untenable was that February 14^th had passed as just another uneventful Saturday. Instead of finding quote “all the others dead, with their noses sticking up in the air”. Instead the royalists were putting up their noses at those who quote “had been deceived in such an ugly way”.

The garrison of Pilsen was quickly running out of food, the population grew hostile and the royalist army outside the gates was growing by the day. It was time to go.

There was one silver lining. The commander of the royalist army was Wenceslaus of Duba, the Bohemian nobleman who had accompanied Jan Hus to Constance and had stood by his side until the end. Duba may not have been a full blow Hussite, but he was definitely no catholic fanatic. He offered Zizka and his fellow commanders an honourable surrender. If they gave up, they could leave the city with their camp followers and their weapons. Utraquist communion would be allowed for those citizens of Pilsen who desired it without punishment or molestation.

Jan Zizka took the deal and on March 22^nd , 1420 a small troop of probably 400 armed men accompanied by women and children and now 12 wagons left the city of Pilsen. Though they had been promised safe passage, they soon found themselves under attack from a much larger force of 2,000, most of them armoured riders, commanded by some of the grandest barons of the realm. One had been in charge at the previous encounter and another was Nicholas of Jemniste, the cruel master of Kutna Hora. And again the wagons proved to be their salvation. This time the terrain was much less advantageous. The enemy attacked when his group was crossing a river. There was no chance for them to set up a defensible position on a hill. But Zizka spotted a number of fishponds nearby. That is where he guided the wagons, forming a circle which incorporated the ponds. This time the royalists were not so easily surprised by Zizka’s tactics. Instead of mounting rolling charges one after the other, the knights dismounted and fought their way hand to hand towards the Wagenburg. At one time they nearly succeeded in breaching the line of wagons, destroying two or three of them. But by then the battle had lasted for several hours and night fell. The royalists lines became muddled and ultimately so confounded that they could no longer distinguish friend from foe. Having beaten each other over the head a couple of time, they realised that this was not going to work out and retreated. Jan Zizka and his ragtag band of a few professional soldiers but mostly badly armed peasants had again defeated a much superior and much better equipped force.

On March 25^th, 1420 they reached their destination, a place that was once called Hradiste and where their religious brethren were building a whole new city, a city they called Mt. Tabor and that would become the epicentre of radical Hussitism, giving it its name, the Taborites.

I would love to go on now and talk for another 45 minutes about Mount Tabor, the people who congregated there, what they believed and how they became the most powerful political and military machine of Bohemia, but we have already been going for more than 35 minutes. And that is enough for all of us. So Mount Tabor will have to wait until Next week. I hope you will join us again.

And in the meantime, just a quick hint, if you want to support the show go to historyofthegermans.com/support and become an imperial knight, a peer of the realm or even a Prince Elector for the equivalent of one, two or four cappuccinos a month. Who else can offer such elevated status?

The Hussite Revolution Part 2

Revolutions are exceedingly rare in world history. And they are so rare because they require a whole host of things going wrong and going wrong all at the same time. In 1419/1420 a whole host of things are going wrong in the kingdom of Bohemia. We did already hear about the defenestration, the first in Czech history. As dramatic an event that was, there was no reason to believe that death and destruction was inevitable at that point. After all there had been dozens, if not hundreds of bloody revolts that did not end up with a revolution.

Amongst Mike Duncan’s very many achievements, the concept of the great idiot theory of history is my absolute favorite. A great idiot of history is someone who out of incompetence, stubbornness, narcissism or other impediments created a situation where historical time accelerates and change occurs. It is the counterpart to the great man theory of history that is presumably a bit better known.

Which gets us to what we will discuss in this episode. Looking at my gradually swelling library of books about the Hussite revolt, it appears as if Sigismund, the king of the Romans and heir to the Bohemian crown was one of these great idiots of history. Many an author, not only Czechs, has blamed him for turning a simple revolt into a revolution out of bigotry, incompetence or even malice. But is that fair? That is what we will investigate in this episode, along a spot of street fighting on Europe’s top 3 backpacker destination.

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TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 176 – A Great Idiot of History?  also Episode 13 of season 8 The Reformation before the Reformation.

Revolutions are exceedingly rare in world history. And they are so rare because they require a whole host of things going wrong and going wrong all at the same time. In 1419/1420 a whole host of things are going wrong in the kingdom of Bohemia. We did already hear about the defenestration, the first in Czech history. As dramatic an event that was, there was no reason to believe that death and destruction was inevitable at that point. After all there had been dozens, if not hundreds of bloody revolts that did not end up with a revolution.

Amongst Mike Duncan’s very many achievements, the concept of the great idiot theory of history is my absolute favorite. A great idiot of history is someone who out of incompetence, stubbornness, narcissism or other impediments created a situation where historical time accelerates and change occurs. It is the counterpart to the great man theory of history that is presumably a bit better known.

Which gets us to what we will discuss in this episode. Looking at my gradually swelling library of books about the Hussite revolt, it appears as if Sigismund, the king of the Romans and heir to the Bohemian crown was one of these great idiots of history. Many an author, not only Czechs, has blamed him for turning a simple revolt into a revolution out of bigotry, incompetence or even malice. But is that fair? That is what we will investigate in this episode, along a spot of street fighting on Europe’s top 3 backpacker destination.

Before we get down to the soon blood soaked streets of Prague just another irritating but inevitable reminder that the History of the Germans is advertising free thanks to the support from so many of you. If you want to join the ranks of these most generous patrons, you can do so on my recently redesigned membership page at historyofthegermans.com/support. There you can become a member or make a one-time contribution very much as you could on patreon.com  before. If you are already on Patreon, there is no particular need to change, though you are obviously most welcome to do so. On the new membership site you find the bonus episodes as before and a chat room where members can exchange views and ideas about the show. Unfortunately I have not yet found a way to invite Patreon members to this chatroom, but I am working on something. In any event we should thank Dave E., Margus S., Jesper Glargaard – which I hope I got right!, Lidija F., Nick S. and Cat C. who have already joined this illustrious set.

And with that back to the show

Last week we ended on the first defenestration of Prague in 1419, the one that was much deadlier than the more famous second one in 1618. A protest march of Hussites demanding the release of prisoners had gathered outside the Town Hall of Prague’s New Town. Things got out of hand or went according to plan – depending on who you listen to.  In the end 13 royal councilors lay dead on the pavement  having taken involuntarily flying lessons. The Hussite revolt had its own storm of the Bastille.

Louis XVI diary entry for the 14^th of July 1789 was famously “rien” = nothing. The king of Bohemia Wenceslaus IV did not display the same sang-froid. Our chronicler Lawrence of Brezova reports that King Wenceslaus was “angered, vexed, and aggrieved [..] and decided to eradicate all Wycliffites and Hussites, especially their priests”.  This decision, like all his other great pronouncements came to nought. Instead, a month later having vexed, angered and aggrieved a bit more, he suffered a long overdue stroke and died with “a great shouting and roaring like a lion”.  

The city of Prague was in such a state of unrest that the king could not even be given a proper burial. His body was moved under cover of darkness from the Royal castle on the hill to the castle of Vysherad on the opposite bank of the river and from there again in the  night to the monastery of Aula Regia where he was finally put to rest. Only a few monks, fishermen and bakers were in attendance at the funeral of a man who had once been king of the Romans, king of Bohemia, duke of Luxemburg and Margrave of Brandenburg. His father, the great emperor Karl IV was lucky not to have seen what had become of the boy he had placed so much hope in, whose election had cost him the humungous sum of 500,000 mark of silver and the support of the once loyal imperial cities.

When news of the king’s demise spread, Prague erupted in an even greater frenzy of destruction. The mob broke into the remaining catholic churches and tore down the images and decorations, the priests and monks fled or hid. By the evening the crowd looted the Carthusian monastery and took away everything that wasn’t nailed down, got drunk from the liquor the monks produced and spilled what they could not pour down their throats. They seized the friars and dragged them through the streets of Prague in a riotous procession, because, as the chronicler said “they had consented to the death of master Jan Hus and resisted utraquist communion”. The next day the monastery was consumed by fire. Over the coming days even more churches and monasteries were ransacked and put to the torch.

The mob controlled almost the entire city with the exception of the Royal Castle. The nobles and rich merchants either left town or hunkered down in their fortified houses. Meanwhile out in the countryside the faithful of Mount Tabor were replicating the events of Prague in dozens of towns and cities.

The death of the king not only triggered street violence, it also caused a massive political problem for the more moderate Hussites, the barons, patricians and university doctors. Until now their strategy, assuming there was one, had been to put pressure on the weak king Wenceslaus to recognize the Hussite program. The masters of the university and the barons knew their king extremely well. They knew that his wife and maybe he too had Hussite sympathies and that the only reason Wenceslaus had sanctioned the conservative backlash of 1419 had been external pressure from his brother Sigismund and from the pope. Hence a carefully administered spot of mob violence was needed to tilt the balance in the favor of reform.

But now Wenceslaus was dead and the waving of flags and shouting had turned into full blown riots – not what the moderate Hussites had been aiming for.

Moreover, Wenceslaus’ heir was none other than Sigismund, the man many of the Hussites held responsible for the burning of Jan Hus. The man who had urged Wenceslaus to clamp down on the spread of utraquist communion across the country, in short the man who was at least one of the forces behind the catholic retaliation.

That left the moderate Hussite, basically the intellectual and political elite of Bohemia between a rock and a hard stone. On the one hand they really, really did not like Sigismund, but on the other hand the university professors and barons could not imagine a world without a legitimate feudal ruler, this is the 15th century after all. And for the barons in particular, their legitimacy was also tied closely to that self-same feudal system and hence the king.

As we have heard in the episodes about Karl IV and Wenceslaus, Bohemia had a rather unusual constitution. Unlike the other prince Electors, the king of Bohemia ruled with the consent of his barons. The barons were able to and had in the past deposed kings and invited new contenders to take the throne. This is how the Luxembourgs had become kings of Bohemia in the first place. And new kings could be made to sign settlements with the barons laying out their respective rights. Karl IV had done that and so did Wenceslaus.

For many moderate Hussite barons such a capitualation seemed to be the most sensible solution. Therefore, at the same time as monasteries were going up in flames all across the country and the radical reformers were dancing on the tables, the Hussite Barons and the university masters opened up negotiations with the royal party holed up in the Hradčany above the city. They put together a list of demands that if granted would allow them to recognize Sigismund as their overlord. These demands contained four main points, that priests could preach freely, only subject to the jurisdiction of the Prague archbishop, that the eucharist could be offered in both forms, as bread and wine, that the church was to give up all its property and that no Bohemian could be forced to stand trial outside Bohemia, in particular not in Rome. To soften the blow they promised to leave the Catholics unmolested and would return some of their churches.

That was the offer, the crown of Bohemia in exchange for the recognition of some key Hussite demands.

Before Sigismund could even respond to the offer, events moved on.

On September 28^th there was a large gathering of the rural Hussites in a place called the Crosses. After their usual extended sermons and religious rites followed by communal dinners, they decided to march on Prague. The citizens of Prague welcomed them, led them through town in a torch-lit procession, fed them and housed them in one of the monasteries that were still standing. What further happened during this stay is shrouded in mystery. But most likely the two radical factions, those from the new Town of Prague and the rural activists who we will call the Taborites after the name they gave the hill they had gathered on, agreed to a joint position, a position that is unlikely to involve the kingship of Sigismund or toleration of Catholics.

Seeing the thousands of militant peasants all over Prague who were talking about sharing the wealth and forcing babies to take wine at communion was the final straw for the moderates. They joined the beleaguered royalist party up in the Royal Castle, conditions agreed upon or not.

This newly formed royalist party made up of Wenceslaus’ widow Sophia, the catholic barons and the moderate Hussites mustered their forces and recruited German mercenaries. Meanwhile the radicals down in the city were forming militias. We are moving to the stage in the revolt where a military confrontation becomes inevitable.

Which begs the question, where was Sigismund, the heir to the Bohemian crown, whilst his kingdom was tumbling towards civil war? In one of these twists of fate, the one man who could have deescalated the situation was unable to come to Bohemia.

After his long stay in Constance the situation in his kingdom of Hungary had become even more challenging than normal. The Ottomans had recovered from the catastrophic defeat at the battle of Ankara in 1402. Sultans Mehmed I (1413 to 1421) and Murad II consolidated the divided empire and resumed their expansion policy across the Balkans. Hungary was now Europe’s forward defence against the Turks, not counting the Byzantine empire that had shrunk to not much more than the city of Costantinople.

Moreover, Venice had begun its territorial expansion first along the Dalmatian coast and then into the Terra Ferma, its northern Italian hinterland. This impacted two of Sigismund’s realms, the kingdom of Hungary that used to comprise Croatia and Bosnia and the Empire which included the patriarchy of Aquilea and the Friaul. Venice not only dominated the Adriatic but was also completely ruthless. In 1418 the Great Council had passed a formal decision to have Sigismund assassinated – nothing personal, just business – it was cheaper than raising an army. Spoiler alert, they did not succeed and still had to raise the armies

That I think were good enough reasons for Sigismund to stay away from Bohemia, but they weren’t good enough reasons to mess things up in Bohemia. He played for time. In his letters he said things like, do not worry, I will confirm all the rights and privileges of the estates and we will surely find a solution for the religious differences once I come down. Just for the time being could you please all refrain from any more violence against the Catholics, restore the monasteries to the monks and nuns and allow the expelled German citizens to return to Prague. Being the future king and emperor he did not say please, please. Instead he ended his statement with “if you do not do what I command…we will make you do it”.

After decades of drunken Wenceslaus’ rule his new subjects were not accustomed to imperial commands. They did not refrain from violence against Catholics, did not return the monasteries to the monks and nuns and did not allow the expelled German citizens to return to Prague. At which point Queen Sophia who is now Sigismund’s regent put the second part of his statement into action. The mercenaries and baronial troops took over several of the monasteries and garrisoned key strategic points in the city. They rounded up some of the radical preachers and then they waited.

Jan Želivský , the leader of the New Town radicals called on the Taborites in the provinces to come to Prague and defend their religion as they had promised in the meeting a few weeks earlier.

The civil war began on October 25^th 1419 with the radicals capturing Vyšehrad castle.

It may be useful at this point for you get an idea of the topography of the city of Prague. The city spans two sides of the Vltava river, which the Germans call the Moldau. The left bank is dominated by the Royal castle, the Hradčany with its huge cathedral and enormous palace. Below the castle is the so-called Lesser Town. The Lesser Town is connected to the Old Town on the right bank of the river via the Charles Bridge. The Charles Bridge itself is protected by two towers, one at each end. The Old Town is, as the name suggests, the oldest and still richest community of the city. That is where you find the famous Teyn square and the Jewish ghetto. The Old Town is surrounded on three sides by the New Town, the massive extension emperor Karl IV began. That is where the artisans and the labourers lived. It is also where the enormous squares, St. Wenceslaus Square and Charles Square are found, as well as the Bethlehem chapel. At the southern end of the New Town also on the right bank is Vyšehrad castle, the original residence of the Bohemian kings.

In October 1419 the Royal castle and the lesser town were held by the royalists. The new Town was held by the radicals. The old Town was caught between both sides, trying to steer a course between them. When the Vyšehrad fell to the radicals on October 25^th, the royalists were limited to their bank of the river, the Hradčany and the lesser Town, unable to relieve the Old Town against attacks by the radicals. So the radicals moved into the Old Town.

The two sides were now heading for a showdown. The radicals in the new Town were waiting for more of the rural radicals to join them whilst the moderates and royalists tried to prevent these supporters from getting to the city. Several groups were intercepted and forced to return. The largest contingent, the one that had gathered on Mount Tabor, was held up by a contingent of royalist soldiers. This was the very first battle of the Hussite war and one where the Taborites sustained severe losses and were forced to return.

On November 4^th, 1419, the war got under way properly. Led by Nikolas of Hus militiamen from the New Town, the Old Town and rural insurgents crossed the Charles Bridge under canon fire and broke into the Lesser Town. The drawn-out street fighting lasted until nightfall and ended with a victory for the radicals. Before they could be wiped out completely, the royalists rushed back up the hill into the safety of the Royal castle.

It is hard to understand why, but that same night the radical militia returned across the bridge to the old Town. So, the next morning the royalists reoccupied the Lesser Town. The same process repeated itself, the militia crossed the bridge followed by street fighting, only that this time several of the main buildings on the left bank, including the archiepiscopal palace, the monastery of St. Thomas and the house of the dukes of Saxony caught fire and burned down to the ground.

Looking down on her burning capital, queen Sophia and her ally and largest landowner in Bohemia, the Baron Rosenberg, fled. The remaining garrison in the Royal Castle was put under siege. Out in the countryside a royalist army was defeated by the rural radicals and their mercenaries were turning tail.

Hurrah, the Revolution had won. The Queen and her mercenaries were gone from Prague, the barons were defeated. Surely now a Hussite paradise of free worship, primacy of scripture and utraquist communion was at hand.

Not so fast. There is also another way of looking at this. The city that was burning was not just the city of the queen and the barons. It was a city where people lived. People who had followed Jan Hus’ sermons whose most famous quote was “Love the truth. Let others have their truth, and the truth will prevail.” The Hussite movement had not been about overthrowing the catholic church and the existing political order, it had sought to bring the catholic church back to its roots in the church of the apostles, a church built on faith, the teachings of Christ, forgiveness and community.

And now, instead of sharing food and listening to the word of God together, dead bodies were strewn across Charles Bridge, not just foreign soldiers, but Bohemian men and women too. The night sky was illuminated by the embers of the burning houses and monasteries.

Did anyone really want that?

Once the frenzy of the fighting was over and calmer minds surveyed the wreckage, there were two options laid out before the Hussite leadership.

One route was to push on, to cleanse the country of the catholic clergy, establish utraquist communion everywhere, set up a new political system with another king or even no king and brace for the inevitable backlash from the catholic forces of Europe. The alternative was again to seek reconciliation with king Sigismund, with pope Martin V and the catholic forces of Europe. A reconciliation that would seek toleration of the Hussite beliefs, freedoms and practices but would allow Bohemia to remain within the catholic church.

It was the same question that had been posed right after the defenestration and that would be the question that will run through the entirety of the coming decades of Bohemian history. The pendulum will swing back and forth between these two extremes.

And just now the pendulum had swung far out towards the radical side which could only mean it would swing back to the moderate position. What is astonishing is the speed with which this happened.

The battle over the Lesser City of Prague had taken place on November 4^th and 5^th. On November 13^th the magistrates of Prague signed a truce with the royalists in the castle. This truce was scheduled to run until April 1420. Under the agreement the royalist could not only keep the royal castle but also got the Vyserad back and with it some control over the Old Town. In return the queen promised to not just tolerate but to defend the utraquist communion and what the chronicler calls “the law of god”, i.e., the freedom to preach from scripture.

At the end of December Sigismund called for a diet of the Bohemian crown in Brno in Moravia. All the barons, Catholics and Hussites, the magistrates of Prague and the major cities and church leaders gathered there. This was the big moment, the great reveal. Sigismund will now finally disclose where he stood on the deal the Moderates had been proposing for a while – toleration of the Hussite beliefs and rites in exchange for the Bohemian crown. This was the opportunity to reinvigorate the royalist coalition of Catholics and moderate Hussites, suppress the more extreme elements in the New town and on Mount Tabor and bring an end to the unrest.

If that is what the delegates from Prague were hoping for, they were in for a very cold shower. Sigismund was in no mood for reconciliation. He let the delegation from Prague wait for three days before receiving them. Once admitted to his presence they knelt before Sigismund and recognised him as their hereditary king and master. Then he quote spoke to them quite harshly, and sent them to Prague with the order to remove all chains and posts from the streets of the town and to pull down all fortified buildings in front of the castle [..]. This was to be indicative of their submission to his power and reign. [..] at the same time he deposed all of the officials of king Wenceslaus as well as the burgraves of castles who were supporters of Utraquist communion [..], and installed in their posts adversaries of the truth and blasphemers.” End quote. In other words, Sigismund ordered the power structure of the Hussites to be dismantled.

That was a very hardline position. The conditions posed by the Moderates weren’t really that demanding. Allowing Utraquist communion wasn’t that much of a theological issue, after all that is what had been practice in the catholic church until the 12^th century. Freedom from courts outside Bohemia was at least on temporal matters something that had been part of the various special privileges of Bohemia for centuries. Whilst on the other hand forcing the Bohemians to accept him as king unconditionally will prove extremely expensive if at all possible.

So why did he not take the offer?

Some see him simply as evil and debauched. After all he sported a forked beard and w sin the habit of dancing wildly and dropping his pants at the end of dinner parties. From there it is only a small step to being the devil’s apprentice.

Most writers point to his catholic faith as the reason why Sigismund turned this option down. But that is confusing to me. At no point so far had Sigismund displayed any of the deep personal piety of his father. Sure, he was a believer like everybody else in the Middle Ages. But a malicious bigot who was hell bent on destroying heresy, that simply does not gel.

Others claim he wasn’t a great politician and diplomat. But that does hold even less water. This was a man who had acquired the kingdom of Hungary despite not having a valid claim to the throne and against the opposition of the dowager queen, the heiress of the kingdom herself and two-thirds of the magnates. And then he had engineered the end of the schism, something that had eluded the brightest political minds of Europe for 40 years.

If Sigismund did take a hardline position and it wasn’t for bigotry or stupidity, then it must be based on a sober political calculation. And that calculation might have gone as follows. Sigismund was not just the hereditary king of Bohemia. He was also king of Hungary and king of the Romans. Hungary, as we have just heard was in a fragile state, under pressure from both Venice and the Ottomans. And Sigismund’s position as king of Hungary was still subject to potential challenges from his nobles and the Angevins in Naples. Just relisten to episode 169 to remind yourself of the cut and thrust and occasional decapitation of Hungarian politics.

His position as king of the Romans was even more wobbly. In 1420 this king of the Romans had no landholdings in the empire – nada, zilch. He had granted his margraviate of Brandenburg to Friedrich von Hohenzollern. He had lost the ancient family lands in Luxemburg to his niece when he was unable to repay a loan. And as for the most valuable part of the Luxemburg inheritance, the crown of Bohemia, well, see above.

That meant his position as king of the romans and his eventual imperial coronation in Rome was down to nothing but his personal standing, his imperial prestige. And he had been working very hard on that. His involvement in the council of Constance had less to do with his personal spiritual unease about the schism but had been an amazing platform to establish himself as the first lord in all of Christendom. But all this was a walk on a tightrope. One false move and it would become apparent that this emperor could not afford even his clothes.

Embracing Hussite positions, even just tolerating them would have been such a misstep that tarnished his reputation. The Bohemian reform ideas had percolated into Saxony and Poland but not much beyond. For the Prince electors, the senior imperial princes and the magnates of Hungary, the Hussites were heretics whose leaders had been convicted by a legitimate church council and had been burned at the stake. Leaving them be was not only negligence on the part of the ruler of Bohemia, it jeopardised the unity of the holy mother church and thereby endangered everyone’s smooth transition to the afterlife.

As far as Sigismund was concerned the offer from the Hussite moderates amounted to no more than to resume the position of his brother Wenceslaus in Bohemia whilst losing the crowns of both Hungary and the empire. And sitting on the Hradčany and get bullied by barons, university masters, archbishops and radical preachers wasn’t really such an appealing prospect.

From Sigismund’s perspective the only viable political position to take was to turn back time, if necessary, by brute force. That does not make it a good decision, but a rational one. So he was not one of the great idiots of history, but certainly not one of its great men either. Just a man standing before a kingdom and asking it to kneel before him.

Next thing is now sent the magistrates back to Prague, where they did as they had been ordered, they removed the fortifications and readmitted the catholic clergy and rich merchants who had fled the city during the uprising. The garrison of the castle, seeing the enemy ramparts being torn down laughed and called down quote “Now the Heretics and Wyclifites will perish and will be finished” end quote.

Why did the moderate Hussites comply with Sigismund’s orders? Simple. Once their deal was rejected by Sigismund they had neither the backing of the committed royalists nor could they call on the radical forces to support them. Their power has simply been stripped from them. For now, all they could do was obey the king. 

The most eminent American scholar of the period, Howard Kaminsky, believed that had Sigismund gone directly to Prague after the knee fall of the magistrates at Brno, he could have successfully suppressed the Hussites for good.

This I very much doubt. By 1420 Hussitism had taken deep roots in the country, both in Prague and the provinces, amongst peasants and labourers as well as barons and patricians, it would have required and did require a massive military and political presence to keep them down.

And this is what was now deployed, both from within Bohemia and from without.

The backlash against the Hussites moderates and radicals alike inside Bohemia had already begun in November. The chronicler Lawrence of Březová reports that quote “enemies of the truth inflicted on the [Hussite] Czechs the theft of property, cruel manners of captivity, hunger, thirst, and bodily slaughter. [..] They turned them over to the miners of Kutna Hora, and some were indeed sold to them. These people of Kutna Hora, being Germans, cruel persecutors of the Czechs, [..] inflicted various blasphemies and different manners of torture on them, inhumanely threw them down into very deep pits, or mine shafts, primarily at night. Some were still alive when they were thrown down, others were beheaded first. This was done primarily at a place the mountain men called Tabor.” End quote. The chronicler goes on to say that a total of 1,600 Hussites were killed in that way “in a short period of time”.

I will leave this standing here as the chronicler reported it. I have tried to find corroborating evidence about the scale of these atrocities and the role of the German citizens of Kutna Hora but have not been able to find anything in English or German. If any of you Czech listeners have more information, I would be very interested.

What is fact though is that the miners of Kutna Hora were largely German speaking. Germans had developed mining expertise when the first European silver mines opened in Goslar in the 10^th century and German miners were active from the enormous copper pit of Falun in Sweden to the great mines of Hungary. As we discussed in episode 153 Nürnberg had become the European centre for mining and in particular smelting technology. Hence it is very likely, if not certain that the miners of Kutna Hora had been German speaking.  

And it is also true that Sigismund had issued orders to all his recently installed chamberlains, burggraves, burgomasters and city councillors that they should by any means possible arrest, persecute and to the extent possible wipe out the Wyclifites and Hussites, and those practicing communion with the lay chalice. This order was however issued after the date the chronicler gives for the massacres at Kutna Hora.

As for the exertion of military might from abroad this came to fruition three months later. Sigismund had called an imperial diet in Breslau, Wroclaw in Silesia for early January. Two items had originally been proposed for this diet, the first was the resolution of the conflict between the Teutonic Knights and the kingdom of Poland and the second one the organisation of another crusade against the Ottomans.

We will leave the Teutonic Knights to one side, if you want to refresh your memory on this less successful intervention, check out episode 135.

As for the crusade against the Ottomans, Sigismund convinced pope Marti V to give him a sort of carte blanche to repurpose it as a crusade against the Hussite heresy if needed.

The crusade was first to go to Bohemia and should the Bohemians give up their Utraquism and exceptionalism the crusaders would then march on the Ottoman. But if the Bohemians persisted in their beliefs, then the forces of the lord would be unleashed against them.

These three events, the sudden collapse of the Hussite front after the victory in Prague, the brutal catholic repression and the call for a crusade against them left the Bohemians not just distressed but also wondering what could have brought all of these calamities about. And many looked for answers in the New Testament and in particular the Book of Revelation.  Quote: “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it?”

And what do you do when antichrist is about to take the throne? Where do you go? Shall you arm yourself and defend the faithful or shall you “hide in the dens and rocks of the mountains” as the “kings of the earth and the great men, the rich men, the wise men and every free man” will do when the seventh seal of the Apocalypse is opened.

That is what we will talk about next time…and I hope you will join us again. And in the meantime, as we are talking about a revolution you may want to look again at our first revolution. The one that kicked off with a letter sent to pope Gregory VII calling him Hildebrand, not pope but false monk” Episodes 32 to 42. And do not forget that if you want to support the show, you can do so at historyofthegermans.com/support