In our present day, Czechia is known for being the motherland of Pilsners and the homeland
of star hockey players.
However, back in the early 1400s, it was a place of ungovernable vigilantes, deadly political
intrigue, and simmering religious turmoil.
In this tumultuous century, daring men would be forged in the crucible of battle, living
lives more remarkable than any fiction.
One of these men was Jan Žižka, one of Medieval Europe’s most dynamic generals.
In this video, we will explore the story of a man who led a troop of heretical underdogs
in a stubborn resistance against the seemingly invincible might of the Holy Roman Empire
and the Catholic Church, becoming a national hero of the Czech people in the process.
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Since 1198, the Kingdom of Bohemia, the land of the Slavic Czech people, had existed as
an autonomous member state of Europe’s most eclectic political entity: the Holy Roman
Empire.
During the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, a descendant of ancient Germanic Luxembourg
and Slavic Přemyslid dynasties, Bohemia enjoyed a period of prosperity, while Prague, the
Emperor’s seat of power, became arguably the most important city in Europe.
However, when Emperor Charles died in 1378, he split his many holdings between his sons,
with Wenceslaus IV ascending as King of Bohemia.
Regarded by his nobility as a neglectful, drunken, and hedonistic wastrel, Wenceslaus
never enjoyed his father’s popularity, and would deal with insurrection and rebellion
his entire reign.
To add yet another element of conflict, this proverbial blood in the water would attract
the territorial ambitions of Wenceslaus' half-brother, King Sigismund of Hungary.
It is here, in the Bohemian Kingdom full of political instability, that we will finally
introduce the main character of our story.
Very little is known about the early life of Jan Žižka, partially due to the later
efforts of the Catholic Church to eradicate records of his existence.
It is assumed he was born sometime during the 1360s, in the town of Trocnova, to a family
of the lower nobility.
It seems that even as a boy, Jan was a scrapper, and some of his biographers claim that he
gained his famously cyclopean visage quite early, losing an eye in a brawl with some
of his boyhood friends.
Much like many other families of the Bohemian gentry at the time, Žižka’s was under
a great deal of financial strain.
In 1384, he was forced to sell his family’s ancestral holdings, effectively rendering
him landless and destitute.
Žižka next emerges in the written record in 1392, when the Bohemian royal accounts
mention him serving as a King’s Huntsman.
It must have been a reasonably comfortable life, but among the highest levels of Bohemian
society, a storm was brewing, and soon, Jan Žižka’s first trial by fire would be upon
him.
In 1394, a coalition of Bohemian upper nobles, loosely led by one Henry of Rosenberg, revolted
against their King.
In this, they were implicitly supported by the King Sigismund of Hungary, who took advantage
of the chaos in his half-brother Wenceslaus’ realm to forward his claims to his half-brother's
lands.
Soon, the King and the nobles began raising mercenary bands to confront one another.
Over the next decade, Žižka became a soldier of fortune.
He joined a rowdy marauder band loyal to King Wenceslaus and under the leadership of gang
leader Matěj Vůdce, who primarily terrorized the properties and estates of the rebel magnate,
Henry of Rosenberg.
Our knowledge of Žižka’s exploits during these years is patchy, but generally speaking,
he lived as a borderline outlaw, burning farms, stealing cattle, waylaying traveling merchants,
and conspiring with other gangs to conquer entire towns and castles.
Crafty and deadly, Žižka soon began distinguishing himself as a capable guerilla fighter.
Soon, the political situation at the highest level had changed.
Despite having been captured and basically deposed by Sigismund back in 1402, King Wenceslaus
had since managed to wriggle his way back onto the throne of Bohemia and establish diplomatic
overtures with Henry of Rosenberg, appeasing the league of nobles who had long defied him
and calming the situation in his Kingdom.
In 1409, Žižka’s bandit-leader, Matěj Vůdce, was captured and tortured to death
by the pro-Rosenberg forces of the city of Budějovice.
However, before Žižka could suffer the same fate, he was delivered a royal decree by the
King, giving Žižka amnesty for all his crimes.
Žižka is next seen a year later, having been hired to fight as a foreign mercenary
on behalf of King Wladyslaw of Poland against the mighty Teutonic Order.
According to the Polish chronicler Jan Długosz, Žižka was present at the 1410 Battle of
Grunwald, arguably the largest battle ever fought in Medieval Europe.
Žižka’s participation in this battle has since been heavily romanticized by pan-Slavicists
who wish to portray him as Czech hero helping his Polish brothers against the tyrannical
German Teutons.
However, it is likely that Žižka didn’t actually see direct action at Grunwald.
That said, he did participate in the successful defense of Radzyń Chełmiński Castle against
a force of Teutons shortly after.
No longer a semo-legal bandit, but a battle-hardened war hero, Žižka returned to Bohemia in 1411,
just in time for him to get swept up in one of the bloodiest religious conflicts in Medieval
European history.
The 14th and 15th centuries were an odious time for the Catholic Church.
In 1378, the Church had split in two, with Popes in Avignon contesting the legitimacy
of the Popes in Rome, and in 1409, an additional Pope in Pisa making it a total of three separate
Bishops simultaneously claiming to be the true head of the Catholic world.
In Bohemia, discontent with the mother Church had risen to a bubbling simmer.
General corruption and greed within the ecclesiastics had become the norm, with practices like indulgences
having become commonplace, wherein the clergy squeezed the wealth out of their flock by
convincing people to buy their way into heaven.
Eventually, anti-Catholic sentiment among the Czechs manifested in one man, a Rector
at Prague University, Jan Hus.
Hus was a firebrand preacher, railing against the nepotism and debauchery of the church.
His words stirred the hearts of many throughout Bohemia, including Wenceslaus’ royal wife,
Queen Sofia of Bavaria, who took Hus as her personal confessor.
Meanwhile, a certain Jan Žižka had landed a prestigious position as bodyguard to the
royal family since returning from Poland.
Developing deep respect for Hus, Žižka became an ardent disciple of the disruptive theologian.
Soon, however, Hus’ teachings got him excommunicated by the Pontificate.
Fearing yet more internal turmoil brewing in his kingdom, Wenceslaus convinced Hus to
go into voluntary exile in 1412.
However, at this point, the hapless Wenceslaus was not the true power in Bohemia, that distinction
belonged to none other than his scheming half brother, King Sigismund of Hungary.
In 1415, Sigismund invited Hus to the Ecumenical Council of Constance, offering the Czech preacher
a royal guarantee of safety in return for a chance to settle his doctrinal differences
with the Church.
This went about as well as one might expect.
As it turns out, Sigismunds’ promise of protection meant nothing, as Catholic enforcers
promptly arrested Hus at Constance, and burned him at the stake on the 6th of July, 1415.
Of course, all this accomplished was to make Hus into a martyr, and throughout Bohemia,
thousands rose up in religious revolution, declaring themselves Hussites in honour of
their fallen shepherd.
On July 30th, 1419, a Hussite Priest, Jan Zelivsky, led an angry mob through the streets
of Prague, stormed town hall, demanded the release of Hussite prisoners captured under
the orders of King Wenceslaus, and, when that failed, defenestrated the King’s representatives
in the city council.
Funnily enough, this would not be the last time in history that throwing some guys out
of a window in Prague would cause a brutal religious conflict.
Meanwhile, the conclusion of the Council of Constance in 1418 had mended the Papal Schism,
allowing the newly reunified Catholic Church to focus fully on crushing the Slavic heresy
in Bohemia.
In this, they had a champion, Sigismund, King of Bohemia.
Indeed, King Wenceslaus, beset by turmoil and rebellion all his life, had finally had
too much, and after the defenestration of Prague, had died of a stroke.
Thus, Sigismund inherited the Kingdom he had long been conspiring to seize.
Of course, Sigismund had little actual control over Bohemia, for most of the country’s
native Czech population had embraced the Hussite cause, and despised him as the betrayer of
their beloved spiritual father.
Moreover, the Hussites had a champion of their own.
It is here we reach the zenith of Jan Žižka’s life, as a general of the Hussites, who he
led for five years, about half of which he spent entirely blind, never losing a single
battle.
This is a particularly remarkable feat when you consider what exactly Žižka was up against.
On March 17th, 1420, Pope Martin V declared a crusade “for the destruction of the Hussites
and all other heretics of Bohemia.”
This meant that King Sigismund’s already considerable royalist forces were bolstered
with cavalry from across Europe, with one of Žižka’s biographers claiming that Knights
from over 33 nations, including Englishmen, Frenchmen, Hollanders, Spaniards, Poles, Ruthenians,
and all manner of Germans, all took up the cross against the Hussites, attracted to Bohemia
either by the prospect of plunder, or by genuine religious zeal against the heretics.
The Hussites were completely outmatched, for they were predominantly made up of Czech peasants
and townsfolk with little combat experience, a rabble which any column of properly trained
heavy cavalry should easily be able to steamroll.
And yet, they weren’t.
Kindled by Žižka’s masterful leadership, the Hussites shocked the world when, with
a force of 400 farmers, wodmen, and children, they decisively repulsed the combined might
of the Knights Hospitaller and royalist cavalry at the Battles and Nekmíř and Sudoměř.
These initial blows to Catholic pride were followed up by a full-force gut punch when
Žižka marched to relieve the generally pro-Hussite people of Prague, whose city was being besieged
by King Sigismund himself.
At the battle of Vítkov Hill just east of the city, the cream of European Knighthood
was dashed to bits against Žižka’s well-entrenched flail-and-handgun wielding dissidents.
Largely because of this defeat, Sigismund’s army began disintegrating, leaving almost
all of Bohemia in Hussite hands.
Although covering every single battle Žižka fought in full detail goes beyond the scope
of our video, let us briefly examine the strategy he employed, which made his Hussite rebels
so effective against an enemy that was consistently better armed, better trained, and more numerous
than them.
Žižka’s time as an outlaw had made him into an expert in asymmetrical warfare, and
time fighting the Teutons had given him valuable experience against the type of war waged by
mounted knights.
At the onset of the Hussite wars, this experience came together to form his game-breaking stratagem:
wagenberg tactics.
When the townsfolk and peasantry of Czechia first began filtering out of the countryside
to join Žižka’s revolutionary army, they, understandably, had little in the way of professional
arms and armour, bringing with them converted farm tools like flails, scythes, and most
importantly, wagons.
These wagons, which Žižka would modify into combat vehicles, became perhaps the single
most iconic symbol of the Hussite wars.
Generally, Žižka’s tactics involved choosing a well-fortified position, usually on high
ground, and drawing up his wagons in a defensive square position upon it, erecting large wooden
pavise shields to seal up the spaces between them.
If time permitted, he also would have a defensive ditch dug along the outside of his wagon encirclement.
Within each wagon would be around 15 to 20 men, armed with flails, hooks, polearms, and
crossbows.
Notably, the use of early firearms, such as rudimentary handguns and cannons, also supplemented
the Hussite arsenal to deadly effect.
In essence, Žižka created what was basically a fully-fortified artillery fort on wheels,
which he could park wherever he wanted.
This turned the traditionally heavy cavalry-dominated warfare of Medieval Europe on its head.
Mounted Knights are great at cutting down rank-and-file infantry on an open field, but
not so effective in siege warfare, and indeed, whenever plate mail-clad Chevaliers charged
head-on against Žižka’s Hussite peasantry, they found themselves shredded by crossbow
and gunfire, then dashed against the wooden walls of what was basically an impenetrable
mobile castle.
Although the first Hussite Crusade had been a resounding victory for the crusaded, there
were still pro-Catholic holdouts to clear out, and in July of 1421, Žižka went to
conquer the pro-Sigismund castle of Rábí.
There, according to legend, a crossbowman on the castle ramparts fired a bolt at Žižka,
which flew wide, instead hitting a nearby pear tree, causing a splinter of bark to take
out Žižka’s remaining good eye.
Rábí castle would fall to the Hussites, and Žižka, now entirely blind, would continue
to lead the rebel forces for many victories to come.
In late 1421, Sigismund launched another foray to subdue Bohemia, known as the Second Hussite
Crusade.
This one would go about as well for him as the first did, ending with a pair of decisive
defeats at Žižka’s hands at the Battles of Deutschbrod and Kutná Hora.
Sigismund retreated once more with his tail between his legs.
However, with the Hussites now deprived of a common enemy, Žižka would now have internal
problems to deal with.
The Hussites were never a monolithic movement, instead being composed of many factions.
The more conservative Hussites, composed mainly of the wealthy citizens of Prague, only wanted
moderate reforms in the Church.
The poorer peasants of Bohemia, however, were far more radical, wanting to annihilate things
such as social class, private wealth, and taxation, seeking to destroy the root causes
of Catholic greed and return to what they saw as the pure, ascetic Christian society
described in the bible.
Žižka’s faction, the Taborites, was among these radicals, and in late 1423, went to
war with the more moderate faction, known as the Utraquists.
Naturally, by the summer of 1424, Žižka had emerged victorious, uniting the Hussite
factions under him.
In October 1424, the blind war wolf Jan Žižka would embark on his last campaign.
Having resolved to chase Sigismund’s loyalists out of the region of Moravia, he laid siege
to the castle of Pribyslav.
There, the old eyeless general would contract some sort of plague, and ultimately pass away.
An anticlimactic end, to be certain, but the silver lining is that Žižka went out with
a perfect record.
Despite always being outnumbered and outgunned, he had never lost a single battle in his entire
life.
The impact of Žižka’s death was felt by both his friends and foes.
Catholics claimed that “the one whom no mortal hand could destroy was extinguished
by the finger of God,” while many of those who had fought under them began calling themselves
“the Orphans”, for Žižka had been like a father to them.
After his death, Žižka’s armies fell under the command of one Prokop Veliký, a capable
general in his own right.
Ultimately, the Hussite wars ended in something of a compromise.
In the end, the moderate and radical Hussites could not coexist with one another, with the
Utraquists annihilating Prokop, the Taborites, and the Orphans at the battle of Lipany on
the 30th of May, 1434.
Thereafter, the moderate Hussites reconciled with the Catholic Church, accepting Sigismund,
who had since been elected Holy Roman Emperor, as the King of Bohemia.
In return, the Utraquist Hussites became the official Church of Bohemia, albeit as an autonomous
ecclesial body under the Catholic See.
Had Žižka been alive, he would have been deeply displeased to see his followers annihilated
and only a watered-down version of the revolution he desired achieved.
However, at the end of the day, the Hussite movement was still an extremely successful
one overall, having made a stand against the most powerful institutions in Europe, and
against all the odds, securing freedom of religion and representation for themselves
in the long term, and influencing the protestant movement.
None of this would have been possible if not for the one-eyed maverick who carried the
rebellion in its earliest days, making it understandable why Jan Žižka, the war wolf
of Bohemia, is considered a national hero of the Czech people to this day.
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