Jan Žižka leading his troops
(illumination from the late 15th century)
Leader of Hussite Forces during the Early Catholic Crusades
To most of his
contemporaries he was, it seems, not so much an individual character as a great
and frightful natural phenomenon: a terrific power, sent by God to save the Law
of God and to punish the sinners; or, to his enemies, a great scourge of humanity,
but even so: sent by God. That it was God indeed, who made him do what he did,
was the firm conviction of Žižka himself.
—Frederick Heymann, John Žižka and the Hussite Revolution
The young life of Jan Žižka is a matter of much speculation,
without even heroic legend to attempt to fill the gaps. Born in the Bohemian
town of Trocnow, he seems to have been from a family in the minor nobility. He
thus had some social standing, although sources disagree as to his family’s
financial condition. Perhaps the most significant experience of his youth was
the loss of sight in an eye, although how it came to be lost is also a matter
of conjecture; it may have been from a childhood accident or from a teenaged
fight. Some sources say Žižka was a nickname meaning one-eyed; his real name
was John Trocnowski.
In 1306 the royal line in Bohemia died out, and the crown
was offered to the Germanic House of Luxemburg. In 1347, King Charles IV began
something of a nationalist movement by establishing the University of Prague, a
center of learning not controlled by the church and thus a rare forum for free
thinking. Charles died in 1378 and was succeeded by Vaclav IV as a dual
monarch, both king of Bohemia and king of the Romans (i.e., Germans). In 1380 a
Žižka is listed as entering King Vaclav’s service as a hunter. Vaclav loved to
hunt, far more than ruling his domain, and as he was well known for not
standing on formality, it is probable that he became quite friendly with young
Jan. Jan’s rapid advancement at court supports this supposition, as do the
politico-military events surrounding Vaclav’s reign.
The key players in the trouble brewing in Vaclav’s kingdom
were of the House of Luxemburg. Vaclav’s younger brother Sigismund was king of
Hungary. Vaclav also faced trouble with the Bohemian nobility, who chafed under
any sort of rule; many of these nobles rallied around Henry of Rosenberg in
1395, creating the League of Lords, which allied with Sigismund and his cousin
Margrave Jost of Brandenburg. King Vaclav had the assistance, however, of the
youngest Luxemburg brother, Duke John of Görlitz, as well as Jost’s brother
Prokop, margrave of Moravia. Large-scale fighting broke out in 1399 with the
nobles on both sides backing bands of retainers and supporters that engaged in
widespread pillage and guerrilla warfare. Sigismund convinced the Bohemian
nobles to remove Vaclav as king of the Germans and replaced him with Rupert III
(Sigismund later got himself elected to that position in 1411). The fighting
continued into the early years of the fifteenth century, taking place
throughout Bohemia and neighboring Moravia. The conflict was “fought out on
three levels: the personal and political struggles between the two kings and
the two margraves of the House of Luxemburg; the feuds of the barons, who
supported one or the other side; and finally the guerilla warfare of the
mercenary bands employed by the barons,” according to Žižka’s main biographer,
Friederich Heymann.
Žižka’s name features regularly as an enemy in the records
kept by the Rosenbergs, so it is certain he was fighting for one of these
irregular bands in Vaclav’s service. His unit was commanded by Matěj Vůdce and
was under the control of the lords of Lichtenburg, another of the noble
families. Žižka apparently did not hold a command position; indeed, he
apparently drew little attention from his own leaders other than as, perhaps, a
useful junior officer. The fighting waned about 1406, when Vaclav’s ally Prokop
died; Vaclav also made peace with Henry of Rosenberg and Margrave Jost, while
Sigismund was diverted by issues in Hungary. However, support for or against
the king of Austria (also fighting his own brother) drew in some of the
marauding bands, so some pillaging continued for several more years. During
these times of troubles, Žižka had come to the attention of John Sokol, the
most militarily talented of the Bohemian nobles, who had placed himself under
Vaclav’s banner. Sokol apparently had seen something in Žižka the previous
commanders had not; in the guerrilla warfare Žižka had shown himself to be a
natural leader. In 1409 Žižka joined himself to Sokol, who had been hired by
the king of Poland to fight the Teutonic Knights.
The Poles had recently allied themselves with Lithuania,
which had long been targeted by the Teutonic Knights as a pagan nation. That
changed in 1386 when Lithuanian prince Jagiello became king of Poland and
converted his nation to Christianity. The Knights had come to dominate Prussia
since their arrival at the beginning of the fourteenth century and, with no
pagans to fight, expanded their holdings just because they could. They had the
finest heavy cavalry in the region and no organized resistance to slow them
down. However, with Poland and Lithuania united, an organized government now
could place an army in the field that might present a real threat to the
Knights. The Polish cavalry was made up of bold nobles on outstanding mounts,
proving themselves a fit rival. The Lithuanians were primarily light cavalry on
the Asiatic model, having faced the Mongols for many decades. Unfortunately,
the Polish-Lithuanian infantry was poorly armed and trained, no match for the
Teutonic Knights in open battle except in terms of bravery. Hence, the
government needed to recruit soldiers from Bohemia, who at the time were considered
to be superior to almost anyone in central and eastern Europe.
During the Battle of Tannenberg between the Knights and the
Polish royal forces in July 1410, Sokol was with the Polish king Władisław.
Whether Žižka was with him is debated. However, Žižka got either firsthand
experience of fighting heavy cavalry or exposure to high command procedures. He
stayed with Sokol as the Polish army moved deeper into the Knights’ lands, and
was involved in the capture and subsequent defense of the fortress of Radzyń,
staying there until the 1411 peace treaty went into effect. Unfortunately Sokol
died during the siege, and Žižka lost both his patron and mentor in warfare.
By 1411 Žižka was in Prague, employed in Vaclav’s household
guard. (His official title, portulanus regius, or doorkeeper, was much the same
position held by Subedei when he joined the Mongols.) Žižka seems to have
gotten closer to King Vaclav as well as to his wife, Queen Sophia, whom he
regularly escorted to church. It was on those Sunday trips that Žižka must have
first heard the preaching of Jan Hus, a proctor at the University of Prague who
was on his way to upsetting the religious life of east-central Europe. A
follower of the English theologian John Wycliffe, Hus believed in the ultimate
authority of scripture over the church hierarchy. His sermons, as well as his
teachings at the university, horrified the Catholic nobility of Bohemia, who
were predominantly of German heritage in keeping with the lineage of the House
of Luxemburg. The two main criticisms Hus leveled at the church were its
worldliness and its practice of “communion in one part,” wherein the priest
received both the wine and the bread, but the communicants received the bread
only. Hus argued that the practice violated the scriptures, and he called
instead for “communion in both parts,” or sub utraque specie: hence his
followers came to be known as Utraquists. Hus’s sermons must have affected
Žižka. Heymann comments, “We know that at that time Hus had his most faithful
and most determined adherents among the King’s courtiers…. There is no doubt
that Žižka later fought for what he believed to be Hus’s tenets, though we may
be much less certain whether Hus, had he lived, would have approved of Žižka’s
fierce ways.” It is true, however, that Hus was often described in the same
words that would be used to depict Žižka: bold, fiery, powerful, and popular.
The more popular Hus became, the more the German nobles
pushed for church action. When the Czech ecclesiastical authorities condemned
Wycliffe’s works in 1408, Hus refused to recognize their action; the archbishop
of Prague excommunicated him, as did Cardinal Collona, speaking for “anti-pope”
Pope John XXIII. The city of Prague was laid under an interdict until Hus was
removed from the city. Hus appealed the ruling to a general council in 1411 and
received another excommunication in return. In 1412 Vaclav convinced him to
leave Prague for a castle in the country, but this only gave Hus the
opportunity to take his message to the peasants. In 1414, Hus was summoned
before the Council of Constance to answer a charge of heresy. Hungary’s King
Sigismund, who hosted the council, granted Hus safe passage to and from
Constance. When the council condemned Hus and his teachings, however, Sigismund
reneged on his promise; Hus was burned at the stake in 1415. In his history of
the Moravian Church, J. E. Hutton describes the execution: “At last the cruel
fire died down, and the soldiers wrenched his remains from the post, hacked his
skull in pieces, and ground his bones to powder. As they prodded about among
the glowing embers to see how much of Hus was left, they found, to their
surprise, that his heart was still unburned. One fixed it on the point of his
spear, thrust it back into the fire, and watched it frizzle away; and finally,
by the Marshal’s orders, they gathered all the ashes together, and tossed them
into the Rhine.”
The execution was a turning point for Bohemia. There is
always a risk in killing popular religious leaders: if their followers don’t
dry up and blow away, they hunker down and get tough. That’s what became of the
new movement, the Hussites. Sigismund was held responsible for not enforcing
the safe conduct of Hus to Constance, and all Germans in Bohemia felt the
citizens’ hostility. A group of 452 nobles signed a document protesting the
execution of Hus, and public opinion turned against the Catholic Church. In
towns where the Hussites dominated, Catholic priests were expelled and
monasteries attacked. In the countryside, pro-Hussite noblemen distributed
parish offices to priests identified with Hus. In response, the Council of
Constance in 1417 declared a mass excommunication of all Hussites. Vaclav tried
to enforce the ruling, offering cash rewards for information identifying
Hussites and ordering their churches to be seized and destroyed. Prisons were
soon filled while hundreds were burned at the stake, drowned, or died as slaves
in the Kutná Hora silver mines.
Persecution only hardened Hussite resolve, however. Although
there was some success suppressing believers in Prague, the peasants organized
themselves and began to fortify towns and hilltops. The old town of Nemějice,
some fifty miles south of Prague, was renamed Mount Tabor, and became the soul
of the Hussite movement and the headquarters for Jan Žižka.
The Hussite movement gained new leadership under the priest
Jan Zelivský, more a firebrand than Hus himself. He and Žižka got the Hussite
rebellion against the Catholic Church under way at the end of July 1419. On 6
July Vaclav had replaced the Hussite councilors of the New Town of Prague with
hard-line Catholics, signaling a restoration of Catholic priests throughout the
city’s churches and a corresponding removal of the Hussite priests. On 30 July
Zelivský held mass and served the communion in both kinds, then led a march
through the streets that ended up at the New Town Hall, where they discovered a
number of the Catholic councilors the king had appointed. They demanded the
release of the Utraquists being held in prison. When the councilors refused,
the mob broke in and threw thirteen of them from the windows into the street
below, where those who survived the fall were killed. (A similar defenestration
in Prague two centuries later would set off the Thirty Years War.) This proved
entirely too much for the increasingly vacillating Vaclav: he died of a stroke
two weeks later.
Whether Žižka actually led the citizens in the
defenestration is questioned, but he was soon elected captain of the Hussite
troops to serve in Prague; by late October he had seized Vysehrad Castle, which
dominated the southern approach to the city. The situation across Bohemia was
fluid, with no single Hussite faction in charge and Hussites making a wide
spectrum of demands. There were relatively conservative groups that wanted
limited reform, mainly the communion in both kinds. Others, epitomized by the
force centering on Mount Tabor (the Taborites), were increasingly millenarian,
calling for a war against the church in order to bring on Christ’s second
coming. Conservative and reform groups among the Catholics also vacillated.
Queen Sophia, whom Sigismund had named regent, wanted to preserve the peace
(and the government) in spite of her own Hussite leanings. She reinforced
Hradčany Castle to defend the western half of Prague and waited for outside
aid.
Warfare of the Time
By the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the
era of heavy cavalry in the form of the armored knight was declining. In France
the English longbow was reestablishing the dominance of the infantry; the Swiss
pikemen were doing the same with a reborn but more effective phalanx. Neither
of these developments, however, had reached eastern Europe by the time of the
Hussite wars, so the German aristocrats still dominated the invading armies. On
the other hand, they were hardly the only military arm deployed in combat;
infantry, especially cross-bowmen, outnumbered the mounted knights.
The relative importance of the knights is the subject of
much debate. Some scholars have argued that in spite of the increasing number
of infantry from the lower classes, the aristocrats were still the dominant arm
with their heavy cavalry. The charge of the heavy horse breaking through
anything in its way was receding, but it could still play a decisive role in
coordination with the other arms. The early Middle Ages (up to about 1300)
actually saw few wars and few battles outside the Crusades, so the knights
suffered few casualties in European warfare, which may have given impetus to
the concept of their bravery and overall success.
The knights had reached the apogee of body armor by the time
of the Hussite wars. Chain mail continued to be used by soldiers in the
fourteenth century, but as longbows and crossbows were able to break the rings
and penetrate, new, more capable defensive wear was needed. Ultimately, this
led to the development of plate armor, initiated in the thirteenth and early
fourteenth centuries and lasting well into the sixteenth century. Plate armor
was developed first for the upper body and later for the limbs as well. The
suits of armor for which knights are today best known were a trade-off between
protection and weight. A standard suit of armor weighted fifty to sixty pounds.
Thus, an unhorsed rider was at the mercy of swarming infantry, especially on
muddy terrain. While astride his charger, however, armed with a strong straight
sword and with a lance supported by a bracket fastened to the breastplate (an
arrét de cuirasse), the heavy cavalryman of the fifteenth century remained a
formidable warrior when intelligently used.
Siege warfare dominated the era, and infantry was a vital
component. After the start of the fourteenth century, as battles became more
frequent and casualties mounted, what had once been chivalric combat between
Christian soldiers became class warfare. Perhaps the most convincing reason for
the increased numbers of battles after 1300 is that infantry was beginning to
dominate the battlefield. Although several battles during the Middle Ages had
been fought using primarily infantry and in some instances these troops had
been victorious, the myth of cavalry superiority prevailed. Perhaps the fact
that the defeated aristocrats were saved for ransom while defeated peasants
were without financial worth finally motivated the peasants to see killing
knights as retribution for being ignored. Certainly the increasing sense of
freedom and self-worth felt by Hus’s peasant followers could account for their
disregard for the lifestyle, and the lives, of their “betters.”
Infantry training came from an almost guild-like
organization in the cities and towns. As military historian Dennis Showalter
suggests, “If each task had its specific skill, taught and supported by
specific guilds and craft brotherhoods, was it not correspondingly reasonable to
divide up the labor of military service, and to provide specialists in this
craft as in all the others? From a few experienced captains and armorers held
on retainer, the permanent armed forces of Europe’s cities and city-states
tended to increase during the fourteenth century.” Infantry levies were
expected to provide their own weapons and acquired some training either at
fairs or under the direction of local commanders. As in all militia, training
standards varied wildly and there was no training in cooperation with the
cavalry. In Germanic states the basic unit of manpower was the gleve, numbering
up to ten men with at least one horseman in the group. This varied, however: in
Swabia a gleve denoted four horses; in Nuremberg, it meant two horses and a spearman;
in Strasbourg, five horses; in Regensburg, one spearman, one archer and three
horses. Further, there could be a variety of attendants, servants (who may or
may not have fought), and archers. Each city had a set number of gleven they
were to provide when called upon. Ten gleven were commanded by a hauptman
(captain), a hundred commanded by an oberhauptman.
Infantry tended to carry what weapons were handy:
townspeople used clubs or spears, peasants employed farm implements. The only
infantry technology was the bow and crossbow. Although crossbows were easy to
use and required little training, there were still some professionals (like the
Genoese) who were specialists and widely used as mercenaries. By the early
1400s the crossbow had evolved into a sophisticated weapon made of steel.
Although it could launch a bolt at a high velocity, the increased power
required increased technical measures to cock the bow, which lowered the rate
of fire. The crossbow’s penetrating power versus the knight’s armor led to a
constant game of tag through the medieval period, and a crossbowman had minimal
time to launch a bolt and reload with a cavalry charge approaching at high
speed. Only large units of crossbowmen behind some sort of protective screen
could hope to break a charge once it was under way. Generally, crossbowmen
tried to prevent cavalry’s forming-up process with harassing fire, for they
were lambs at the slaughter in an open field.
It was these types of soldiers and weapons the Hussites
faced: heavy cavalry to break an enemy’s line followed by infantry to take
advantage of the disorder. Thus, the best way to defend against such an assault
was, as noted above, from behind some sort of protective screen. Žižka made
defense the key to his battles, but kept his defense mobile by employing wagons
that had been specially adapted to stop arrows or bolts and to provide a
position for missile fire to cause disorder among the attackers. The concept of
circling wagons to provide a quick defensive position had been used at least as
early as the Roman experience in Gaul. A Gothic wagon fort was employed at the
Battle of Adrianople in 378, and the practice was used regularly by the
Byzantines. The Mongols likewise used the tactic, and brought the practice into
Eurasia. It has been suggested that the Teutonic Knights at Tannenberg
retreated into what came to be called a wagenburg, or wagon fort. The formation
was also called a tabor, from the Czech word for camp. Ernest Dupuy and Trevor
Dupuy call it “one of the simplest and most effective tactical systems in
history.”
Žižka’s contribution was to use wagons as specially
constructed war machines that could create a sophisticated defense; this became
the main part of his tactics. He started with common baggage wagons and
modified them for maximum defense. First, he had a quick release harness
developed to get the horses away from the wagon and the harness poles made
removable to get the wagons end to end as close to each other as possible. The
wagons were then chained together and any gaps between them covered with a
removable shield called a pavise. An extra wall of boards was suspended from
the side facing the enemy, with the bottom board covering the wheels and access
underneath. This board had loopholes for crossbow fire. On the opposite side an
opening, often with a ramp, facilitated reinforcement and resupply. Each wagon
was ten feet long and held a crew of sixteen made up of crossbowmen and hand
gunners as well as soldiers with threshing flails and polearms such as
halberds. Completing the wagenburg were small cannon placed between the wagons.
Even though the concept of a wagenburg was not new, Žižka
perfected it by constantly training his drivers. On hand or flag signals they
could very quickly deploy into circle, square, or triangle formation. Signal
flags raised on the leading and trailing wagon of each file controlled the
maneuvers. The wagon line moved ahead in four columns: two outer ones and two
inner ones. The wheels of the tabor were large and usually iron rimmed. The front
pair projected out slightly from the body, allowing one front wheel to be
locked into place with the rear wheel of another tabor and chained together.
The forming up and chaining together took one to two hours. Given more advance
notice of the enemy approach, the Hussites would strengthen the position with
ditches and throw the excavated dirt under the wagons for extra security
against infiltration. The first time Žižka used the formation he had but seven
wagons, but as his army grew he regularly deployed 180 wagons, which created a
position some 2,500 yards in circumference.
