74
1000–1500
1
HUSSITE TABOR
As shown in this illumination, the Hussites compensated for their lack of trained
troops with a system of defensive wagons, or tabors, chained together into a fortied circle. From
within this cirlce, Hussite artillery could re at enemy formations. Even if opposing troops penetrated
it, they faced hails of missiles from the wagons and the dangers of a melee in a conned space.
US_074-075_Battle_of_Kutna_Hora.indd 74 06/04/2018 16:04
75
KUTNÁ HORA
◼
1421
In December 1421, Jan Žižka, leader of the radical
wing of the Hussite religious reformist movement, was
encamped with his army at Tabor, 50 miles (80 km)
southeast of the Bohemian capital, Prague. The
Hussite movement, which rejected the hierarchy and
ritual of the Roman Catholic Church, had grown in
strength after their founder, Jan Hus, was burned at
the stake in 1415. Sigismund, the Bohemian ruler who inherited the throne in
1419, was slow to resist the Hussites, and was unable to rouse much support
even when Pope Martin V launched an anti-Hussite crusade in 1420.
On December 21, 1421, Sigismund approached Kutná Hora with a royalist
army of 50,000 men. Largely composed of mercenaries, his army should
easily have been able to beat the Hussites’ force of 12,000 mostly untrained
peasants. Furthermore. the royalist commander Pippo Spano had secured
the betrayal of the town of Kutná Hora from its local militia.
Žižka formed up most of his troops behind a circle of war wagons linked
by chains. Seeing that the royalist army had encircled him, he formed the
wagons into a column, supported by carts mounted with eld cannon, and
charged them straight toward Sigismund and Spano’s lines. This mobile artillery
blasted through the encircling royalists’ line, allowing the Hussite army to
escape. Sigismund chose not to pursue, wrongly believing that capturing
the abandoned Hussite encampment was a victory. Throughout the rest of
December, Žižka’s forces launched a series of harrying raids on Sigismund’s
defenses, and within months the king was forced to evacuate Bohemia.
Kutná Hora
1421
◼
MODERN-DAY CZECH REPUBLIC
◼
HUSSITES VS. CATHOLIC FORCES
HUSSITE WARS
The execution of religious reformer Jan Hus led
to a state of near-civil war in Bohemia. King
Sigismund’s Catholic followers were expelled from
Prague, and from 1420 he launched a series of ve
crusades to crush the Hussites. They made little
headway against the able leadership of Jan Žižka
and his successor Andrew Prokop, as the Hussite
wagon forts and mobile artillery defeated a series
of royalist armies. An agreement at Basle in 1433
granted recognition to the moderate Hussites,
causing the reformists to divide. The Utraquist
moderates defeated the Taborite radicals at Lipany
in 1434, bringing the Hussite wars to an end.
THE HUSSITE WARS 141934
4 A Hussite force composed of cavalry
and infantry clashes with a largely mounted
crusader army during the Hussite wars.
US_074-075_Battle_of_Kutna_Hora.indd 75 27/04/2018 10:55
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.