Any man responsible for three kingdoms comprising a great slice of Europe and over 20 million people in the early fifteenth century had every reason for anxiety. As King of the Romans Sigismund had to supervise a mixed collection of some hundred states, sees and cities, often at odds with each other, but having to make do with limited powers and resources; as Holy Roman Emperor expectant he was obliged to implement papal orders to suppress Bohemian heretics; as King of Bohemia, crowned but barely acknowledged, he had to do this by whatever mixture of negotiation and force he could contrive; but the only effective power he could exercise was as King of Hungary, and that must most urgently be used against the Turks. In order to mount a Crusade against Islam he needed the support of the Poles, now united with the Lithuanians to form the most powerful state in Europe. They were even then fighting the Teutonic Knights, pillars of the Holy Roman Empire, and plotting, he rightly believed, an alliance with the rebellious Bohemians.
To a realist – and Sigismund was essentially pragmatic, although liable to fits of temperament – his first duty was to Hungary, and for much of the time after the first anti-Hussite Crusade he remained, if not at Buda, at least within the kingdom. With the support of the most powerful aristocratic families, headed by the successive Garai Counts Palatine, he enjoyed unrestricted power, within the fairly generous limits of the customary law. One significant advantage he brought back from Constance had been the valuable right to control Hungarian benefices. It was at this time that the extensive royal palace, the Friss-palota – the Fresh Palace – and church were built on the Buda hill; although later devastated by the Turks, excavations have revealed what must have been a magnificent late-medieval complex.
After the Germans had withdrawn from Prague following the defeat on the Vitkov hill the Bohemian conflict became the stage for a persistent civil war – the daily war, it was usually called. Civil wars are frequently the most violent and this one was no exception, as local power shifted between Hussites and Catholics. When ?i?ka led his men against the town of Prachatice in November 1420 the Taborites killed many with their flails and chased others who tried to escape, ‘slaughtering them all like calves in the streets’. Only women and children were spared: on ?i?ka’s orders seventy-five of the men were locked in the vestry. Vavřinec described the scene:
Clasping their hands together they begged him in the name of God to forgive them and give them the chance to do penance for their sins. [They promised] to follow the Hussites and do whatever they wished, but this was of no avail. The Taborites behaved as though they were deaf. They rolled up barrels of pitch, covered them with straw and threw them on to the heads of the men locked up in the vestry. All of them were suffocated by the flames and the smoke. After this they were covered with stones in the cellar of the vestry as though in a grave and there they were left to rot. Two hundred and thirty corpses lay in the streets. They buried some of them, threw others into the well and expelled all of the women and children.
From Prachatice ?i?ka issued a manifesto which significantly hardened the Four Articles: the third, which had condemned ecclesiastical extravagance, was now extended to state that ‘the power of the priests, from the highest level – even the papacy – to the lowest was not be tolerated’. As the Taborites became more extreme, the likelihood of a negotiated settlement retreated, but local truces were still possible. One such was negotiated between ?i?ka and Oldřich Ro?mberk after the capture of Prachatice, to last until the following Lent: was it peculiarly Czech and practical that the penalty for breaking the truce was fixed at 10,000 groschen in authentic Prague silver?
In places where Catholics held power similar atrocities were reported. The Master of the Kutná Hora mint, Mikalas ‘the Fierce’, was one of the leaders of a Catholic army which captured the town of Chotěboř. After having been promised safe-conduct, the Taborites were all taken prisoner, three hundred killed on the spot and the rest either burned en masse or thrown down the mineshafts. Within a month the town was recaptured by a combined force of Praguers and Taborites. The horrified Vavřinec reported:
the villainous Taborite women committed a horrible crime. They took women and young girls out of the town, all of them crying out, with the promise of releasing them and allowing them to depart unharmed. However, when they got out of the town they stripped them, took their money and jewellery and locked them into a shed in the vineyard where the grapes are pressed and burned them, not even sparing the pregnant women.
While war was devastating the Bohemian countryside, the Germans, and a somewhat reluctant Sigismund, were preparing another Crusade. The initiative was taken by Duke Ludwig of Bavaria, the Count Palatine, and the three ecclesiastic electors, in a Reichstag held first in Nuremburg in April 1421, adjourned to Mainz in June; the preoccupied Sigismund attended neither of these sessions. The April meeting pledged the electors, together with many other bishops and cities, to support another crusade without – a telling condition which illustrates German internal jealousies – seeking or accepting ‘any special advantage from the King our master, without the knowledge and the consent of the others amongst us, all reservations and malicious intent completely excluded’. It was therefore a shock to the Catholics to learn that the Archbishop, Konrad of Vechta, had declared for the Hussites in April, ‘turning towards Satan and away from the correct faith and rite, and foully going apostate from the observances of the universal Church, joined himself to their sect and perfidy’. A similar unity was being reforged in Bohemia as leagues of towns supported by clergy, nobility and gentry were formed to resist Sigismund and support Prague. A typical pledge vowed: ‘We will not accept another person as king of this Crown unless he is accepted by the city of Prague, the aforementioned capital, together with its supporters, even in the future, when this kingdom is fatherless through the deprivation of the king.’
Similar leagues were formed by anti-Hussite Czechs, who were termed conveniently but hardly accurately ‘Catholics’. The only vital division between them and the Utraquists was on the administration of the Mass in both kinds; in other matters both were conservative royalists, devoted to all the usual rites and traditions of the Church, and on the sole point at issue the Hussites were more Catholic than the Pope. The formal meeting of the Bohemian Estates held at Časlav in June 1421 was therefore primarily solidly Czech rather than sectarian. An extensive gathering, it included the Prague municipal officials, the ‘administrators of the people and towns of Tabor’, Archbishop Konrad, still somewhat improbably the Papal Legate, Oldřich Ro?mberk, Čeněk, ?i?ka and Hus’s old friend Jan of Chlum, altogether a formidable array of united Bohemian nationalists. The Four Articles were confirmed in a less Taborite sense, and Sigismund spiritedly denounced.
… the Hungarian King Sigismund, and his supporters have done the most damage and through whose injustice and cruelty the entire kingdom of Bohemia has suffered very serious harm. We have never accepted him as our king and not as hereditary lord of the Czech Crown. By his own worthlessness he had demonstrated that he is unfit to bear this [responsibility]. As long as we live and as long as he does, we will not accept him unless it is God’s will and ratified by the community of Tabor, the knights and squires, towns and communities of Bohemia that accept or will accept the truth of the articles noted above. This king is an infamous despiser of these holy truths which are clearly shown in Holy Scripture. He is the murderer of the honour and the people of the Czech nation.
A provisional government was formed, the twenty ‘wise steadfast and faithful men’ including the ‘Catholic’ Oldřich, the loyalist Čeněk and the Taborite ?i?ka, who were given ‘full power and authority to establish peace and to cause the Czech land to be at rest’.
?elensk? and the more radical Taborites were alarmed by the formation of a conservative coalition, and quickly mounted a modest coup by replacing the Old and New Town Councils with their own supporters. Several months of dissension followed with Jakoubek and ?i?ka now leading the Prague conservatives, a long way removed from their original positions. Just as Catholics had condemned Hussites as heretics, they in turn attacked the new religious extremists, those breakaway chiliasts still proclaiming the end of the world. ?i?ka unrelentingly pursued the naturist Adamites, and burned every survivor, seventy five in all, and heretics were once again burned in the Prague marketplaces. Hussite divisions were shown even as the Časlav Estates were sitting, when the Silesian Dukes invaded Bohemia in August 1421. Accompanied by the now usual atrocities – ‘they cut off either the right foot and left hand or the left foot and right hand of forty children and also cut off the noses of some’ – the Silesian advance was suddenly halted by the news that the Bohemians from Časlav were advancing. The Silesians quickly decamped, but the priest Ambro? wanted to pursue them to be ‘smashed to pieces by the flails of the common people’. Čeněk, always hoping for a peaceful compromise, refused to permit this, and an angry exchange continued when both had returned to Prague.
The real thrust of the second Crusade followed at the beginning of September. Duke Ludwig and the three archbishops led the Crusade in person; once again the Crusaders had benefited from plenary indulgences. When they reached the border the prelates dismounted and prayed for success before walking across. The crusading troops had been ordered that ‘everyone must be killed in the land of Bohemia, with the exception of children who are not yet at the age of reason. No women are to be taken or are to march with the army.’ It seems that these orders were followed, for on 3 September all the garrison of Mast’ov save the leaders were killed, as well as the citizens ‘who could not speak German or were thought to be Czech’. Atrocities were plentiful but real fighting non-existent. The first and final action took place outside the town of ?atec, some miles over the border when, in spite of an imaginative attempt to fire the town by attaching lighted sulphur candles to captured birds, the Crusaders’ siege failed; the besiegers ‘rushed off in great shame’, as well they might.
Sigismund had planned an attack from the east, through Moravia, to coincide with the German August invasion. He cautiously waited for their failure to become apparent before moving with large numbers of Hungarians and Tatars, ‘not too well armed’, to the capital Brno, whither in mid-November he summoned the Moravian notables. They were accorded the calculated brow-beating at which Sigismund excelled, and which had initially been successful with the Bohemians. With one exception, the Moravians agreed to renounce the Four Articles, and the King’s diplomacy seemed to be working even better when a number of the Hussite Bohemian nobles, including Čeněk, came to promise loyalty, at the same time asking him to ‘cease the burning and destruction of the kingdom and its inhabitants’. The King might have replied that so far the destruction had been caused more by the Taborites than the Crusaders.
The army, reinforced by Austrian forces under Albert of Habsburg, some Silesians, and a contingent led by Bishop ‘Iron John’, all commanded by the experienced and versatile Pipo Span, was ready to move by the end of November, very late in the season for successful campaigning. Caught up among their forces, acting as a Polish ambassador, was that same Swartz Safftins who had been applauded as the best swordsman at the Constance Council, and who left his own record of the war. Their plan was to move to Kutná Hora, where they could rely on supplies from a loyal population. Anticipating the move, the Hussites united; the Časlav government again appealed to ?i?ka, who arrived on 1 December, with a field army including cavalry and war-wagons. ?i?ka, who had lost his remaining eye during the previous fighting, could rely upon his now well-trained commanders to exploit tactical situations. Three days later the Taborites arrived at Kutná Hora. The population there grew nervous, were horrified by the Taborite Mass, said by priests without vestments and administered to both the men and women; they left confirmed in their suspicions that ‘these Czechs are indeed the real and worst heretics’.
On 21 December the two armies met in the first real battle of the war. The Hungarian army had never faced a Hussite force, but knew that they could be formidable, and Pipo had devised a new tactic of sending hundreds of cows before the cavalry to confuse the defenders. The Hussites were, however, too well organized to flinch. Each wagon had been given a number, and took to an allotted station, ready to respond to the words of command. As they moved into action, the command was given and the wagons formed a complete circle, the horses and cavalry inside, the infantry manning the wagons. Iron shields were placed between each wagon, and screens raised above to protect the occupants’ heads. Hand-gunners, small cannon and cross-bowmen had an unrestricted field of fire from adequate protection: any cavalry who got near enough were repelled by lances and halberds, a combination of axe and bill hook. Vavřinec, who was actually killed in the battle, described the first part of the action.
The infantry, as well as the citizens of Kutná Hora who had joined them, some to actually fight, others to observe how the battle would go, were put into position within the wagon fortress with their flails and weapons. Numerous guns were prepared. After a short exhortation, everyone knelt down on the ground and humbly prayed to God. After they had finished praying and stood up they appointed new recruits in order that they might defend the truth even more courageously and arm themselves against the King. Although some of the squadrons attempted to storm the wagons they were beaten back by the guns and suffered a high number of casualties. These kinds of attacks characterized the early stages of the battle and continued until nightfall.
The end came at nightfall when the Hussites charged the royal army, which fled.
Three more battles followed in the next few weeks before the royalists made a final stand on a hill not far from Německ? Brod. This time there was no fight, for the Hungarian army fled ‘when there was a great blast of trumpets and the Czechs attacked forcefully. What help could the royal power be when God had sent great horror into their hearts?’ Outside Německ? Brod itself the royal army abandoned more than
… six hundred wagons, full of supplies with various goods including money, clothing, chests, full of various books, both Jewish and Christian, the number of which made it impossible to gather together into three wagons. Here they remained overnight and early in the morning, after hearing Mass, they attacked the town throughout the day of Friday. Stones were shot over the walls and cannon were used on both sides to a great degree.
The next day the town fell with ‘several hundred people killed and many thrown from the Town Hall on to the staves, lances and pikes.’ Five hundred and forty-eight heavily armoured bodies were found drowned in the river, and altogether several thousand royalists must have perished in the winter campaign. The jealous Windecke blamed Pipo for the defeat.
One of the Hungarian lords who was with him, whose name was Pipo whom the King had elevated as a lord, was an instigator of the people and quite equal to it. After all, it was said that he was the son of a shoemaker from Florence. Evidently he asked the King why he wanted [to wait for] more Germans, those sons of bitches. He was already strong enough.
The Hussites jeered at Sigismund:
Do not talk about it, you Hungarian king,
It was easier for you to hand it over by words in Constance
Rather than try to conquer Prague with the sword.
Therefore go away, O Hungarian king, do not remain here any longer,
You can not expect anything good here
After three years of war some very tentative diplomacy began. Nothing could be hoped for from Pope Martin, still in the insecure early years of his reign. After having heaped abuse on the heretics, only unconditional surrender would be acceptable to the papacy. German rulers were similarly intransigent. Their experienced soldiers had been humiliatingly beaten by the despised Czech peasants. Bohemia, however regrettably, was part of the German Reich, and had to be subdued. Sigismund, their overlord, was far away in Hungary, preoccupied with the Turkish border, and strains in the relationship were appearing.
There were even deeper divisions among the heretics, where the Taborites’ unrestrained violence and revolutionary interpretation of Hussitism scandalized the conservatives. The radicals were proving quite as violently intolerant as the orthodox ever had been. Mainstream Taborites and Utraquists continued their debates, centring now on the doctrines and ceremonies of the Mass, without arriving at a conclusion. Even ?i?ka left the Taborites to lead another hill-top commune, the ‘Orebites’ on the hill Horeb, who could be accounted more moderate than the Taborites, but equally proficient in battle.
A Hussite Prince
Seeking a solution, the Provisional Government appointed at Časlav opened negotiations, proposing that King Wladyslaw of Poland, no friend of Sigismund’s, take the throne of Bohemia. The King politely declined, passing the offer to his co-ruler in Lithuania, Grand Duke Vitold, who in turn suggested the Prince Zygmund Korybut, nephew of both King and Grand Duke. With the assent of the Polish King, in May 1422 Prince Zygmund Korybut arrived in Prague with a strong cavalry force. ?i?ka assured Zygmund of his support in a letter which indicated the old warrior’s essentially conservative view of a properly regulated society.
Should someone have difficulty with another person over matters of goods or anything else besides, then that person should go to the magistrates, councillors and judges, without causing great unrest, and seek justice from them in a proper fashion. The elder officials, such as the magistrates, councillors and judges, ought to be respected and everyone should love each other as if they were bothers. In this way our Lord God will be among us with his holy grace and God will give us the victory in everything which is good and proper.
Zygmund’s military assistance was a welcome reinforcement but the hoped-for diplomatic support from Poland was not forthcoming, and the wars continued. Together with Zygmund’s Poles the Praguers began the siege of Karlstejn Castle, garrisoned by royalist Czechs. ‘They shot 932 stones into the castle with the catapult, 820 barrels of dirt which they had brought from Prague, along with carcasses and excrement. Also, they were shooting the Prazka seven times daily as well as the Jaromerka seven times a day and Rychlice thirty times per day. But they caused little damage to the castle.’ The unsuccessful siege illustrated the Hussite lack of heavy artillery: they remained essentially a mobile army.
Prince Korybut’s most important contribution to the Hussite cause was not military, but diplomatic, patching over the rift in Prague between the moderate Utraquists and the revolutionaries, which had led to murderous violence in March. Jan ?elivsk?, who had inspired the 1419 riots, and the following year’s coup; had not distinguished himself in the subsequent fighting. In August 1421 ?elivsk? led a Hussite army against the well-defended northern town of Most. Attempting an assault, without proper preparation or discipline, ?elivsk?’s force was bloodily repulsed, in one of the rare Hussite defeats. Back in Prague ?elivsk? assumed the leadership of the radicals, mostly in the New Town, and once more began to encourage the activists. When this led to the arrest and murder of a moderate Hussite officer, ?elivsk? was accused by Jakoubek. The Old Town magistrates deviously invited ?elivsk? and some of his allies for a discussion on 9 March 1422; on arrival they were instantly arrested and decapitated in the Town Hall courtyard. When angry New Town crowds stormed in to the Old Town Hall ?elivsk?’s head was found on a dung heap and carried on a dish back to his church of St Mary in the Snows. As many of the Old Town aldermen as could be found were killed; the mob invaded the University – the intellectuals had to be the culprits; the library was destroyed and the usual finale of any riot was enacted by looting the ghetto. The arrival of Prince Zygmund allowed for a reconciliation, and the restoration of a moderate Utraquist government in Prague. ?i?ka and Zygmund became close friends, calling each other ‘father’ and ‘son’.
The next crusading army was therefore faced, at least for the moment, by a united Hussite front. In the early summer of 1422 Pope Martin wrote sternly to King Sigismund:
We have no doubts about Your Grace’s willingness to move quickly and zealously in order to eradicate the Czech heresy and that this holy task is foremost in your mind and that you have no need to be admonished further in this respect … this is a priority and is to be preferred to all other points of business.
This heresy dishonours all that is sacred and after polluting divine law, it subverts human law and the human estates, removes political authority and thereby alters the lives of people which have been instituted by reason and law. All of this is transferred into the irrational grossness of beastly license and continues in such a criminal manner that what else are we to do?
Any other concerns must be set aside for the Holy Cause.
It was a difficult order for Sigismund to obey, since he had suffered severe losses in the winter war and the Turks were pressing their raids. It was, King Sigismund considered, up to the Germans to take a lead in what was to be the Third Crusade. A Reichstag was therefore summoned to be held in Regensburg for July 1422, adjourned to Nuremberg. Nothing very much came of it. An imposing ceremony in St Sebald’s Church in Nuremberg inaugurated the Crusade and blessed a banner, which was given to Sigismund, who in turn transferred it to Duke Frederick of Brandenburg, thus avoiding a personal commitment. The unenthusiastic Duke Frederick was given extensive authority to pardon repentant ‘Wycliffites’ or to torture and put to death by burning or otherwise ‘the obdurate’. Every prince, city and bishopric in the German-speaking Empire was assessed for its military contribution, including 754 ‘men with swords’ and 777 cavalry from the cities and many more from the civil and ecclesiastic rulers.
Most were able to remain comfortably at home, since apart from a tentative move across the northern border nothing was done, but Sigismund had obtained an advantage from another quarter. He had always hoped for assistance against the Turks from the Teutonic Knights, those ‘athletes of Christ’, and Korybut’s initiative had provided Sigismund with an excuse to enlist their help. A letter dated 1 May 1422 asked the Grand Master of the Knights for help in suppressing the heretics, who,
…not satisfied to have infected Bohemia entirely they have sent their followers to foreign countries in order to deceive souls. They have invited Zygmund, the Duke of Lithuania in whose shadow they desire to hide their sect, to take up the crown of the Kingdom of Bohemia … They have taken up, together with him, a great multitude of Poles and annexed Tatars who have been designated by Duke Vitold for the support of the aforesaid heretics.’
The letter was intercepted by the Poles, and transmitted to the Grand Duke. Rightly apprehensive of a new war with the Knights, Vitold quickly recalled Zygmund and his men, and explained that the Prince had only been sent to persuade the Bohemians to a peaceful solution. In the absence of Zygmund’s unifying influence the Czechs resumed fighting among themselves, between conservative Utraquists and the radical Taborites and Orobites, led by ?i?ka who now signed himself Jan ?i?ka of the Chalice. Sporadic fighting went on throughout 1423–24, with one campaign in the spring and summer of 1423 when ?i?ka established a personal rule in eastern Bohemia from his own Castle of the Chalice, north of Prague.
Like other commanders of the period, King Henry V and the Crusaders themselves, ?i?ka issued army regulations. Many items were common to most codes – no breaking the order of march, no quarrelling within the ranks – but ?i?ka’s are distinctly Hussite. They began with a recitation of the Four Articles – very rarely in history have war aims been so precisely or constantly stated – but with his distinctive interpretation of the first and second:
… the word of God is to be free, preached in all places, without exemption and that it be received in one’ s heart with love in order that it may be fulfilled and observed, so that others might be brought to it and taught. Second, that we all partake of the body and blood of our lord Jesus Christ, with piety, reverence and devotion, both young and old as well as children immediately following their baptism and throughout their childhood. Everyone is to be involved without exception. This we urge at least on every Sunday each week.
Another article that might have been drafted by Oliver Cromwell, but would not have suited the English at Agincourt; although Henry V was personally pious, he knew the limits of possibility:
Eleventh, we shall not tolerate among our ranks any faithless person, disobedient one, liar, thief, gambler, robber, plunderer, drunkard, blasphemer, lecher, adulterer, prostitute, fornicator, or other definite sinners, either men or women. All such persons shall be banished and sent off or otherwise punished with the aid of the Holy Trinity according to the law of God.
One reason for ?i?ka’s consistent victories was illustrated by his fifth article on march discipline:
Fifth, following this, all people shall fall in proper formation under their banner. A password shall then be given. After this and without delay, they shall begin to march behind the leading troop under its banner designated for that day. No one shall interfere with them, create an obstruction or go a different way. Once they have been assigned to a particular battalion or placed in formation beneath a banner, battalions shall not mingle with each other. They shall march taking due care to protect the van, the rear as well as the flanks in such a way as ordered by their superiors.
There was one significant omission from ?i?ka’s Articles of War; unlike the crusader manifestos there was no reference to killing and ‘extermination of the enemy’; many fights were Czech against Czech.
On one occasion ?i?ka’s force was encircled by royalists – when reported to the King by Oldřich Ro?mberk, he was not impressed. Windecke told the story:
Lord Ro?mberk said to the King, ‘My lord King, that fellow ?i?ka is surrounded and cannot escape.’ But the King said, ‘He will get away.’ The lord Ro?mberk said ‘He cannot escape.’ The King replied, ‘He will get away.’ Then the lords of Bohemia all said together, ‘He cannot escape.’
Sigismund, still smarting from his defeats, replied he would wager a colt that ?i?ka would in fact escape; he won his bet. Various attempts to arrive at an armistice between the rival Hussite factions were made, but it was not until after the final battle near Kutná Hora when ?i?ka’s troops were gathered outside Prague that unity was achieved, helped by the return of Prince Zygmund in June 1424, no longer representing Vitold, but accepted as a leader by both factions of the Prague conservatives.
Within weeks of the settlement ?i?ka was dead, a victim of the plague; in life he was formidable, and after death an even more effective legend. If anything the Hussite forces were even stronger under the new leadership of the priest named Prokop Hol?, ‘the Great’ or ‘the Shaven’, who controlled the Taborites, whose more extreme views had distanced them from ?i?ka and from his Orobites, who now called themselves ‘the Orphans’. But most Hussite warriors accepted Prokop’s leadership.
The Crusaders delayed for some years in resuming the offensive, in spite of papal urgings. The persistent defeats had been painful and the Taborites too dreadful:
The Taborites and Orphans were men exceeding black from the sun and the wind and also from the smoke of their camp fires. Their very appearance was frightful. Their eyes were like those of an eagle, their hair wild and stood on end, their beards long and their stature prodigiously tall. Their bodies were hairy and their skin so hard that it appeared able to resist iron as though it were a piece of armour.
In 1423 economic sanctions were attempted: ‘That those infected by the contamination of defending or receiving them in delivering any food, spices, clothing, salt, lead, gunpowder, weapons, military equipment, or any other items, or entering into negotiations or business with them, either publicly or privately’, would be liable to be burned as heretics. All inquisitors and bishops were commanded to curse all heretics with bell, book and candle every Sunday and feast day. The economic penalties of heresy were pointed out: their property was forfeit and they, their friends and family would become slaves of those who captured them. It is not recorded that any of these threats had any effect.
As so often happens, the party in the middle was the most uncomfortable. The Prague Utraquists, most strongly represented in the Prague Old Town, seemed unreliable conservatives to the Taborites and heretical revolutionaries to the Catholics. It was true that their continued defiance puzzled and dismayed their Catholic friends. In the past heretics had been minorities, often adopting strange clothes and customs, but these Czechs were normal respectable folk, prosperous burghers and gentry, supported by perhaps a third of the Bohemian nobility. Their worship was entirely orthodox, except in this matter of administering communion in both kinds. And that, Catholics knew, had indeed been the ancient custom of the Church. Hussite armies were led by decently dressed priests, bearing the Host in a monstrance: if their banners were emblazoned with the chalice, that was hardly an un-Christian or pagan symbol. They even had an Archbishop of Prague, Konrad of Vechta, who had converted in April 1421, but was certainly a consecrated bishop in the Apostolic succession, authorized to ordain Hussite preachers, which he did, creating a grave embarrassment and much shocking Abbot Ludolf of Zagan by ‘turning towards Satan and away from the correct faith and rite, and foully going apostate from the observances of the universal church, joined himself to their sect and perfidy’. Konrad was succeeded in 1427 by the more radical Jan Rokycana, priest in charge of the church of Our Lady of T?n, dominating the old Town Square, but Rokycana was not consecrated as Archbishop until the final settlement of 1435.
To Pope Martin such considerations were irrelevant. The Council of Constance, their decrees underwritten by him as Pope, had judged the laity’s being allowed to receive both elements as heretical, and however absurd the judgement might have been, it was Catholic policy and must be maintained. From Rome, too, it was impossible to distinguish between obdurate Utraquists on the one hand and fanatical Taborites on the other. Their unremitting success had made the Tabor soldiers arrogantly confident, sustained by further victories, which continued after ?i?ka’s death, under Korybut and Prokop. Prince Zygmund, however, hoped to carry his uncle’s evasive promise to arrange a settlement with Rome into effect, and be elected himself by the grateful Bohemians. A conference was therefore arranged in the spring of 1424 with Lord Ro?mberk, who gave a safe-conduct to Taborite representatives to meet in the Prague Old Town Hall, which got as far as drawing up a draft agreement. When a copy of this was sent to Sigismund it provoked great indignation: the Ro?mberks were by some way the most powerful of the Bohemian noble families.
We are amazed and regretful that you have been deceived and betrayed so naively by the other side and drawn into such matters which are contrary … You must appreciate that this commitment and these arrangements are in entirely in opposition to us, against all of our supporters, and faithful Christians everywhere … it seems to intend to help the heretics. We have found many other improper dishonourable, unworthy and unchristian articles against the faith, against Christian order and also against your rank and liberties and all of these aim entirely at your extermination and your irreversible dishonour.
Ro?mberk replied belatedly but abjectly in October 1425 pleading the great strength of the Taborites: ‘I endure great injury and I do not foresee the end of these troubles.’ He concluded regretfully, ‘Futhermore, I am unable to oppose these enemies successfully any longer owing to their great power as I do not have as many people as heretofore. However, I have ordered them to do what they can in secret around the army and elsewhere. We cannot any longer hang them [Hussites] publicly even though they drown or secretly murder anyone they capture.’
When the Cardinal Legate Giordano Orsini received copies of the correspondence he angrily forbade Sigismund to pay any attention to these ‘devilish suggestions’ of a conference. The ‘sons of perdition’ are ‘not to be listened to in any way but are to be avoided completely, [especially] when their infamy is so great that they work to subvert the faith; the faith of which nothing is more worthy as I call the divine matter. What remains? I strongly admonish Your Majesty and I desire, as much as I can, that you would not cease from the laudable and worthy undertaking [i.e. the Crusade] which you have begun.’
The Cardinal’s letter was written on 13 June 1426. Three days later the Czechs, once again, had their enemies on the run. This short campaign began with the Hussite siege of the northern town of Ústi-nad-Laben occupied by the Margrave of Meissen. A German relief force despatched by Princess Catherine of Meissen was met by a combined army of Utraquists and Taborites under Korybut and Procop. The fight began on 16 June 1426 in an approved medieval fashion with heralds discussing the terms of engagement, the Czechs proposing that any prisoners taken should not be killed. This was refused by the confident Germans, a decision many did not live to regret. Their initial cavalry charge broke through the first Hussite defences but stalled in the face of the fire from the armoured wagons. When the Germans recoiled, the Hussites charged in turn and a panic flight began: as agreed, the Czechs killed all captives but took more than two thousand wagons and a hundred and eighty guns. Their own casualties, thanks to the shelter of the wagons, were extraordinarily light. Hussite history, like that of the Scottish borders, was recorded in ballads, and the song of the battle of Ústi describes Sigismund’s reception of the news of his allies’ ‘defeat’.
The palace of the Hungarian King –
Asking that he advise those of Meissen –
Immediately he speaks to the lord (Heinrich) of Plavno.
My friends tells me
What can be done in order to save the honour of the princess?
He replies, the one who wishes to fight in Bohemia
Must have strength, good fortune and righteousness.
Seven years I waged war in Bohemia
Not once have I gained anything
If one wishes to avoid dishonour and injury
He should leave the Czechs alone.
The victory was not enough to save Korybut. His attempts to negotiate with the Catholics provoked general indignation among many Utraquists as well as the predictable fury of the radicals. On 17 April 1427 Prince Zygmund was arrested by the Praguers and unceremoniously deported. It was an unfortunate move since his efforts were beginning to look successful. Even Pope Martin had softened somewhat, expressing a willingness at least to hear the heretics provided they agreed to abide by his own decisions. More positively, he appointed a new legate to replace the irascible Orsini.
Bishop Beaufort’s Wars
Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, who had already proved himself a friend and ally of the Pope’s at Constance, was appointed Cardinal in May 1426, and in March the following year made Papal Legate for Germany, Bohemia and Hungary. Having studied at Aachen, he spoke German, and was already an accomplished diplomatist. As an Englishman, removed from central European politics, he should have been able to act as an honest broker, and one enjoying the prestige of being great-uncle to the baby who was both King Henry VI of England and Henry I of France. He began his embassy with an extraordinarily civil letter to the Prague government of 18 July 1427, addressed as ‘My little children, for whom I suffer the pains of childbirth until Christ is reformed in you, grace and peace be unto you … We offer the grace of peace to you. May you not reject it. We invite you into Catholic unity. May you come.’ There was, it was true, also a clear threat: ‘Of course if you remain alone and separated you will provoke all the Christian powers and princes to exterminate your community which we regret to report will happen.’ But also a touch of humility: ‘We have all erred and each one of us has fallen away from the way of the Lord. But as others have come back so may you return.’
There was no opportunity to answer, for Crusade preparations were already in full swing. At an April meeting of the electors the plan had been agreed to organize a ‘spirituale torneamentum’ against the Hussites. Sigismund was not present, being totally occupied with the fight against the Turks: it was to be entirely a German affair, with a fourfold co-ordinated attack by armies from Saxony, Austria, Silesia and Franconia. Few campaigns of the time can have been better organized, at least on paper. Maps were provided, supplies requisitioned and the number of men and horses carefully noted.
In fact, the only serious incursion came from Bavaria, into western Bohemia, towards the Catholic stronghold of Tachov. The commander in chief, Frederick of Brandenburg, was ill and from the start as at Nicopolis there were quarrels for precedence between the Crusaders before they began the siege of Střibo, recently captured by the Hussites. On 25 July Prokop’s field army caught the beseigers. As soon as they heard of the Hussites’ approach the Germans simply mounted and fled. Cardinal Beaufort arrived in time to see the stampede and proved himself a true son of John of Gaunt. He unfurled his papal banner, stuck the staff in the ground, and rallied the fugitives – but not for long. The Crusaders again lost their nerve, leaving the furious Cardinal to tear down his banner and stamp it into the ground.
Prokop’s force then successfully besieged Tachov, leaving the unfortunate Frederick to explain the dual defeat to Sigismund, who had carefully distanced himself from the whole business. Duke Frederick had not agreed with the Střibo plan, but had been talked into it. The battle had been a disaster. At the first shots his men had fled the artillery, wagons and cavalry crashed into each other so that some of them drove one way and the others went in the opposite way and they struck each other to such an extent that the army came (i.e. fled) as far as Trocnov. ‘We were shocked as you can imagine – they were panic-stricken beyond what might be regarded as proper.’ A Jewish chronicler recorded the flight: ‘It was the sound of a falling leaf that caused them to run away even though they were not pursued by anyone. They left behind all of their wealth and riches and they no longer cause destruction in this country.’
A disillusioned German poet lamented:
I said, ‘If as many prostitutes had been sent to the land of Bohemia
As the men which were sent
They would have worked out a plan
And conquered Střibro and defeated those inside
Who would not tolerate the Christian faith
Is it not a great disrepute
That all of the princes withdrew from the land
Before they had won any castle or town?
I am afraid they have stretched out a clothesline
Upon which lament and heartache are hung.’
Sigismund, who had expected nothing better, was not unhappy at the further humiliation of his inefficient German vassals. On 27 September he wrote to Cardinal Beaufort from Belgrade, where he was again organizing an expediton against the Turks. He was ‘deeply troubled by the fact the army had for unknown reasons rushed out of the Czech land altogether’, which ‘causes great disgrace, scandal and sorrow to the German people’. It had nothing to do with him; he had only ‘been informed’ that the electors had discussed the project. And was it not time, he asked, the Cardinal to
… observe with the utmost caution the imperial princes and the Czech Crown and to persuade them, together with all of the faithful Christians, that the will of God is to put all other matters aside, issues like petty disputes, and work hard with great zeal on behalf of the Christian faith? As [Christ] did not hesitate to accept death on the cross for us so now these ought not to hesitate to expose themselves to risk for him.
The King pointed out that he could hardly be expected to contribute. His army was fully occupied on the Turkish frontier with the recapture of Turnu Severin and reinforcing Duke Brancovic of Serbia. And, he continued, as a great secret, he was planning to co-operate with the Duke of Milan in order to ‘bring peace to Italy and to all Catholic kingdoms’: in reality, to have himself at last crowned as Roman Emperor.
Safely back in Germany, Cardinal Beaufort set about organizing yet another Crusade: Pope Martin levied a year’s tenth of all clerical income throughout Christendom. Perhaps more reliably, Beaufort and the electors agreed a general scheme of taxation for all Germany in order to fund a Crusade led by Beaufort and Frederick of Brandenburg to begin in the summer of next year. But Beaufort had taken the measure of the Germans.
We do not know by what feebleness, lack of skill in war or inconstancy of faith our princes and Catholic people are changed in these days and their manliness sapped so that not merely one but all of them collected together with their forces are scarcely able to resist the infidels of Bohemia who are not nobles nor skilled in arms, not such as are made pre-eminent by nobility of blood or outstanding industry in military exercises but a weak rabble flowing to Bohemia to add evil to evil from amongst the wretches in every kingdom whose aim is to subvert and throw down both faith and human society.
He had certainly underestimated the Czechs, but was quite right that they could never be beaten by German knightly tactics. A strong contingent of some three to six thousnd English archers would be needed, and Pope Martin duly authorized the Cardinal to preach a Crusade in England. Given the long experience of English resistance to papal demands, the prospects were not good. Pope Martin was resentfully conscious of the Statutes of Provisors and Praemunire and the distressing experience, in April of the same year, of a papal collector who had been thrown into the Tower for daring to enter the country with a papal document but without official permission. He was released only on the deposit of a very large sum in bail, contributed by the Italian merchants living in London.
Cardinal Beaufort took the precaution of writing personally to six-year-old King Henry VI in English, which Henry could apparently read, but assuming that his letter would also be read by the Council of Regency. This institution was headed by the Duke of Gloucester, the King’s uncle and an old antagonist of Beaufort’s, and the Pope’s request for money, made in May 1428, came at a bad time. Parliament had already financed a major new summer expedition to France and the Convocation of the English Church was facing demands for money from both Pope and King. The fine old device of procrastination was used, and Convocation delayed consideration of Pope Martin’s request until after the harvest. Meanwhile Beaufort had shown his confidence in a favourable answer by ordering two shiploads of bowstaves from Lubeck at his own cost.
On 1 September 1428 the Cardinal Legate entered London in great state ‘the legate’s cross was carried before [him], he wore a red velvet cape with sleeves spreading from the ears to the crupper of his horse, on each side of him two knights rode holding a red hat between them and esquires held his bridle decorated with silver and enamel’. It cut little ice with the English magnates, perennially suspicious of foreign intrusions, even when these were represented by the royal great-uncle. On 11 November, after a long wait, the Duke of Gloucester told Beaufort that, although welcome as a Cardinal, he could not be accepted as a Papal Legate. Pope Martin fretted over the delay and wrote a stiff letter to the English Council of Regency. The ‘pestiferous and abominable heresy [of Wycliffism], which has sown so much infamy and scandal in Christendom, had its roots in England …
wherefore the English for the sake of their own honour and reputation ought to consider it before everything. And they ought to consider how this plague is to be extinguished for whenever that is discussed between men it is soon pointed out that it came from England and the evil originated there. Moreover there remain in England not a few shoots of this heresy which if they are not quickly cut off will grow so high that it is greatly to be wondered whether England may not suffer the fate of Bohemia – which God by his mercy avert.
The papal request was formally presented to the adjourned Convocation in November by both the official papal envoys and the head of the London branch of Alberti’s bank, who were to handle financial details. Convocation decided on 7 December to grant a twentieth for the next year to the King, while Pope Martin was put off with the promise of a ‘notable contribution’ at some time in the future. In fact the cash flow was to be strongly in the opposite direction. The royal council was not producing any cash at all, but Beaufort was permitted to proclaim a Crusade, collect the proceeds of indulgences, and advertise for soldiers. The Pope was required to content himself ‘with special devotion of the King’s subjects’ but to ‘forbear any common charge from any estate of this land, be it clergy or any other.’
The Crusade was well enough advertised, but the financial results were disappointing. It seems doubtful whether Convocation’s contribution was actually ever made. Although there was doubtless more income from indulgences, the only record of a payment is of ten marks by John Pigot, a Yorkshire gentleman. The Medici bank, handling the receipts in Italy, wrote of sending ‘endless letters’ asking for money, and kept a very full record of the payments they had made. It was not only the English who refused to pay: it seems that by mid- 1430 by far the greater part of the Crusade’s expense had been met by loans from two Roman monasteries. Cardinal Beaufort’s expenses – not all, it was rumoured, actually incurred – were met by payments amounting to 15,000 florins made to him from Rome.
But if Cardinal Beaufort did not get his money, he did manage to gather his army. He had been authorized to take 250 lances – about a thousand men-at-arms together with their retainers and 2,500 archers. How many embarked is not known, although it must have been a considerable number. Conditions were attached: the men must all come from England, since the forces in France must not be depleted, the Cardinal must promise to promote English interests at Rome and he should personally assure a truce with the Scots in order to avoid any trouble from that quarter when so many English soldiers were absent, which he duly did in February and March. By June the force was assembled, but it was not destined to fight the Hussites. On the same day that Beaufort received the royal commission to take charge of the English contingent in what was meant to be the final Crusade against the Bohemian heretics, Joan of Arc led the French to victory in the battle of Patay. Something very like panic struck the English Council. The Crusade was cancelled and Beaufort’s army switched to the French front.
It was all embarrassing: by authorizing the English Church to contribute, the Pope had helped to raise an army which was now going to be used to fight the French; worse, Cardinal Beaufort had already spent the money Rome had advanced him, part of which had been raised from French contributions.
Unjust Rulers, Bad Wine, Crazy Women and Corrupt Popes
As it happened, there was no crusade for them to join, since new talks, held in Hungary, had delayed preparations. The papacy remained obdurate but Sigismund was willing to talk to the Czechs. He was still fully occupied with resisting the Turks, and had managed to keep out of fights with the Hussites since the débâcle at Německ? Brod seven years before. With the prospect of a Turkish truce in the offing the King invited a Hussite delegation to Bratislava, in April 1429. It was intended to be a serious conference with Duke Albert of Austria, Sigmund’s son-in-law, Dukes Ludwig and William of Bavaria, Philip the Good of Burgundy, Hus’s old enemy bishop ‘Iron John’ ?elezn?, now Archbishop of Ezstergom and Oldřich Ro?mberk.
Prokop Hol?, the only man capable of speaking with authority on most shades of Hussite opinion, led the Czech delegation, assisted by the remarkable Englishman Peter Payne. Formerly Master of St Edmund’s Hall, Oxford, Payne – who may well have known Jerome of Prague at Oxford – was a dedicated Wycliffite who fled to Prague in 1414, afterwards becoming a Junior Counsellor among the Orphans. He seems to have been one of those who deposed Prince Zygmund; a critical Prague ballad complained:
The Devil himself sent us the Englishman;
Stealthily he walks around Prague
Issuing laws from England
Which are not good for Czechs.
A stirring speaker, Payne, often known as Peter Inglis, was perhaps not ideally suited to mollifying Sigismund, but Sigismund’s opening speech was likely to affront the most moderate Hussite. There could be ‘no better way’ of exterminating heresy than ‘by the sword’, but ‘since this could not be done temporarily’ the Hussites would be offered ‘toleration, just as other faithless people are tolerated within Christendom’. Prokop’s delegation was given two days to present their case, and Payne’s speech was calculated to infuriate Sigismund. The Hussites represented the ‘immortal and everlasting truth, authorized by God’ which must succeed ‘against kings, princes, popes, legates and masters’.
Unjust rulers, bad wine, crazy women and corrupt popes will likewise perish together with the sons of men along with their works of iniquity. On the other hand, the law of God is powerful, great and victorious. It ever lives and continues for ever. To be faithful to this noble truth is to live with God. To serve this truth is to reign. To die for it is to gain life. To be mocked on its behalf is to be glorified. To endure innumerable dangers is to enjoy bliss.
Therefore you must know, O mortal king, that we will wage warfare against you, not for personal gain, but on behalf of the Truth of Christ. Before you will be able to take this from our hearts, your life will be taken from you. Before you are able to take this glory from us, your own body will be mutilated.
Pause now and stop, illustrious king. Allow me to steer you away from the conflict perpetuated by you and your lords against Christ.
As long as you have kept on God’s side, you have been victorious over the heathen. But when you departed from it, you suffered defeat at the hands of peasants. This is an incredible thing, sire, have you not been astounded that your armies, ten times more numerous and much better equipped, have been, on numerous occasions, overcome, thrashed and put to flight by a bunch of peasants? And this has been done causing much sorrow and shame to you.
After that the meeting was bound to dissolve in furious recriminations, forcing Sigismund, for the first time, to throw himself behind the Crusade project. In a single week following the breakup of the meeting on 10 August he circulated all the princes and cities of the Empire, instructing them that ‘Peace with the heretics is over. They have refused everything which has been offered.’ Funds must urgently be collected and men recruited since ‘His Majesty the king does not intend to stop until he exterminates the evil completely or he sheds his own blood even to death.’
Would the participation of an English army have changed things? They could have reached the musterpoint, probably at Nuremberg by August, but it was very unlikely that a Crusade would have been assembled in time. The Duke of Burgundy, very prudently, made a detailed analysis of what would be needed before he committed his troops, which he estimated could be 15,000, to a campaign. German princes and reliable Bohemians should be asked what financial help could be given, what accommodation and supplies would be available, what was known about the enemy’s strength. Some ‘wise and knowledgeable gentlemen’ should:
… inspect two or three roads for going there. Especially the rivers and routes, and what lodging one would find for entering into the country of the said enemies. If there are rivers to examine, how one would navigate them, and if one must go by carts, how one will obtain them. This will be thoroughly and religiously examined by my lord’s men so that he will be dependent for nothing on the people of the country and also that they will inform themselves truthfully, how one would find provisions and how the army could be cared for.
Arms would need to be collected
… with great and sufficient artillery, namely handbows, arrows, ropes, crossbows mounted on a stand and agmudas [sic] and arrows to serve this. Also lances, axes or mallets of lead and good hand guns and arrows would be best obtained from England, and the Duke would need further, large and small pieces of protective clothing to provide against the projectiles of the enemies. Similarly, of cannon, bombards, gunpowder and materials and other supports according to what one will find necessary.
It was clearly impossible that preparations on this scale could have made in time for the Cardinal’s force to participate. If they had, and a battle had taken place, the archers would probably have made little difference, apart perhaps from covering the retreat. Arrows would not be totally effective against the Hussite wagons, although they would have harassed the defenders, but the key to English success had always been tight discipline and a united command, qualities which crusaders had never yet demonstrated. When the crusade was finally launched in 1431 there was no English participation. In the meantime, the Hussites had taken the offensive.
Since the first clashes eight years previously Hussite arms had improved considerably. The war-wagons, painted black, flying the Chalice flag, were now purpose-built, capable of mounting small guns and with a complement of fifteen to twenty men – or often women. Six of these would usually be cross-bowmen, with two hand gunners firing long-barrelled arquebuses, now with a curved stock, and using newly developed and more powerful gunpowder. Other wagons mounted medium-calibre guns, and all were equipped with detachable wooden screening. The concentrated firepower of a ‘wagenburg’ was unprecedently intense, with as much as one piece to each yard of the front. A typical Hussite army consisted of some 180 war-wagons and about thirty-five mobile guns; perhaps 4,000 soldiers in all. Against anything other than siege guns such a force proved unassailable, and heavy artillery could never catch up with the quickly moving wagons. Only another Hussite-style army could defeat the Hussites.
Hussite raids had begun in 1427 when a Hussite force led by Prokop invaded Austria and continued with raids into Silesia, Bavaria and Franconia. By 1430 all eastern Germany was exposed to Hussite attacks, as the war-wagons proved as useful in mobile warfare as they had been in the more defensive role. Far from leading a crusade, Frederick of Brandenburg was obliged to hurry from a Reichstag to negotiate with Prokop. The Hussite response was that the Germans should return to the truth of the Gospel: ‘If you agree with this then the plunders will cease immediately. They [the Hussites] would rather defend you from those who would assault you than plunder you in the manner of war.’ Making their case clear, a Hussite manifesto represented the views of all their factions, repeating the ‘evangelical Four Articles of Prague, which we hold to by the Grace of God even at the cost of being damned by this world’. But the manifesto ended with that consistent note of reason: ‘We proclaim our constant readiness to be instructed according to Holy Scripture, should anyone be able to prove to us any fallacy in any of these things which we or our people hold.’
Neither sweet reasonableness nor Prokop’s raids impressed the new Papal Legate, Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini, confirmed by Pope Martin just before his death in February. Cesarini was one of the few members of the Curia with the breadth of vision and common humanity needed, but it took him some time to adjust to the brisk realities. He began by being determined that the final clash must come, and in March 1431 presented his proposal for yet another Crusade to a Nuremberg Reichstag. The Germans were ‘admonished with great urgency and supreme diligence … No one can express how great is the urgency of any army.’ An immediate strike was to begin in August of the same year. No delay was permissible: the heretics might propose a settlement to King Sigismund, as they did in June, but Sigismund followed the papal line in refusing. The Hussites replied in July with a defiant manifesto addressed to ‘everyone of those faithful to Christ and the entire community of the Czech nation’. It was a national challenge and a demonstration of Czech unity. The Four Articles, that central doctrine of the Hussite faith, should be examined in open debate: ‘For we hold to a faith which is free, without obstruction, so that the entire Church of the living God might be reformed together with us in head as well as in member according to the teachings of Holy Scripture.’ Some hard words followed, as the people were asked to contrast the Apostles with the prelates. Whereas the Apostles
walked through the lands of the world, ragged and despised by people, but faithfully announcing the Lord’s truths to every tribe and nation, confirming these truths by their deaths. These [bishops] dressed in purple and fine linen, arrogant among the people, have become mute dogs, living quietly within castles and cities and despising these same truths and despoiling the faithful of their reputation, life and goods.
Conversations at Basel
Most Hussites wanted nothing better than to present their case to an authoritative Christian assembly, and the opportunity looked possible with the convocation of the Council of Basel. By the Constance decree ‘Frequens’ the Pope was obliged to call a Council not later than five years after the closure of Constance – and seven years after that, twelve years after the previous Council closed. Very reluctantly indeed, since he was said to abhor the very name of Council, on 1 February 1431, Pope Martin ordered that a General Council of the Church be summoned to open at Basel. He may have been forced into this by Sigismund, and by pressure from the University of Paris, expressed forcefully by a document nailed to the Vatican door, claiming that
every Christian under pain of mortal sin must strive for the celebration of a Council for this purpose; if popes or cardinals put hindrances in the way they must be reckoned as favourers of heresy; if the pope does not summon the Council at the appointed time those present at it ought to withdraw from his obedience and proceed against those who try to hinder it as against favourers of heresy.
Three weeks later the Pope was dead. He was succeeded by Gabriele Condumer, who had won promotions only by being a nephew of Pope Gregory; a stupid and obstinate man, he had laid low during most of the Council of Constance. He was elected on a reform platform, and published a Bull promising his commitment to a reform agenda, only completely to ignore his undertakings. His first actions as Pope Eugenius IV were to strike against his predecessor’s appointees, executing some two hundred and torturing one unfortunate bishop almost to death.
Very quietly, without Pope or Emperor and with only a handful of clerics, the Council at Basel opened on 23 July 1431. Cesarini, who had been appointed to act as President, was absent supervising the Crusade preparations and delegated his responsibilities to John Stokowic of Ragusa, a theologian, and Juan of Palomar, a noted canon lawyer. The preparations for the last Crusade followed very closely those of their predecessors. Frederick of Brandenburg, although now ill and sixty years old, was appointed as commander in chief. Once again splendid ceremonies were enacted in St Sebald’s Church, where Frederick was given the replacement for the papal banner that Cardinal Beaufort had trampled underfoot during the defeat at Tachov. From Weiden, on the borders of Bohemia, on 16 July Cesarini wrote gloomily to his fellow-legates at Basel that the Count Palatine’s force had become embroiled with that of another noble, none of the prudent suggestions offered by the Duke of Burgundy were heeded, and the Duke refused to come.
Here we are much fewer than is said in Nuremberg, because those princes hesitate greatly to enter Bohemia. The matter is doubtful, not only regarding victory, but worse yet because we are only at the beginning. We are not, however, so few that we are unable to enter Bohemia with a bold spirit. I am very anxious and greatly dejected. For if the army leaves with the affair unfinished, it will bode ill for the Christian religion in this region, great terror will be borne to our lands and the heretics will grow more daring.
Cardinal Cesarini’s forebodings were only too accurate. The Crusader force, in spite of the absentees, was formidable enough. Once again, it aimed at Tachov before turning south, ‘plundering, burning and harrying the land of Bohemia’. Twelve years of fighting came to a climax as the last Crusader army marched towards Prague. On 14 August they met with Prokop’s wagons near the town of Doma?lice. There was no battle since the mere sight of a Hussite army caused an immediate panic flight. Cesarini, honourably in the main force, barely escaped with his life, with most of his cavalry escort cut down in the pursuit. All the Crusaders’ equipment was left on the field. Cesarini now showed that rare quality, the ability to recover quickly after a shocking defeat. Three days after the battle he wrote to his colleagues at Basel starkly presenting the facts. ‘Our entire army fled … As for the people we hope that there are not too many who have been lost.’ He went on to draw the conclusion that the defeat was God’s will: after eleven years of consistent defeats other methods must be tried.
The Cardinal therefore lost no time in inviting the Czechs, on 15 October 1431, to send a delegation to Basel. Beaufort’s first letter apart, it was the first polite approach ever received by the Hussites, and Cesarini’s invitation included no concealed threats; ‘it rather breathed profound sincerity and true Christian charity’. All had suffered during the years of strife; if they assembled together, in a free and open debate, with no recrimination, all might yet be well. The Bohemians should send ‘men in whom you trust that the Spirit of the Lord rests, gentle, God-fearing, humble, desirous of peace, seeking not their own, but the things of Christ, whom we pray to give to us and you and all Christian people peace on earth, and in the world to come life everlasting’. It was a shot in the dark. Although there had been meetings with Sigismund, no Catholic prelate had even seen a Hussite except on the battlefield for the last ten years. Warily, considering the fate of Hus and the derision that had been poured on the whole nation for the last twenty years, the Czechs agreed to a preliminary conference at Cheb, where all shades of Hussite opinion were represented: Taborites, Orphans, Praguers and the major leaders, Prokop, Jan Rokycana and even Peter Payne.
Their agreement was embodied in a document known as the Cheb Judge – Judex compacta in Egra – issued on 18 May 1432. The Hussites would be given, ‘as they have requested, a full and free audience before the complete gathering of this Council as many times as they require, in complete and suitable conditions for negotiation in order to present principally the Four Articles for which they are under question’.
One article almost conceded the Utraquist case then and there: ‘in the matter of the Four Articles which they advocate, the law of God, the practice of Christ, the Apostles and the primitive Church, with the councils and doctors truly established in it, will be accepted as the most true and indisputable judge in the Council of Basel’.
Communion in both kinds was, without a doubt, ‘the practice of Christ, the Apostles and the primitive Church’, and this was indeed to become the cornerstone of the eventual agreement. No previous condemnations, however official and enshrined in statute law, should ‘cancel, corrupt, weaken or annul the safe conducts and conditions of the compact’. Therefore no charge of heresy could be made against any Hussites coming to Basel. On these conditions the Czechs decided to attend the Council.
On 4 January 1433 the Hussites rode into Basel, having left behind them at Schaffhausen their formidable black wagons, painted with Hussite texts and images. With bearded priests, and the laymen in Bohemian dress, some with ferocious moustaches, they attracted a curious crowd. Apart from one or two agreed restrictions – they were asked not to preach publicly in German – the Czechs were warmly welcomed.
Concerning these wars we call almighty God to witness that although we did not deserve it, your side took up the bloody cross against us and thus began wars and attacks upon us. By fire and sword this brutally laid waste to the Kingdom of Bohemia. However, to this day, with the help of God we have stood against that.
We only tolerate the burdens of war so that we can establish these truths in their rightful place within the Church and thereby lay hold upon the blessed peace and condition which … would cause the unity of the Church to flourish.
Cesarini and Prokop, an unlikely couple, became close friends. ‘The more I talk with you, the more my heart inclines to you,’ the Cardinal acknowledged. Since Prokop had been a priest before becoming an unmatched war leader, they had to that extent a similar background and with a common language – both were fluent Latinists – they could speak frankly and exchange jokes. John of Ragusa, Cesarini’s deputy and famously long-winded, was often the butt of these; a sample, recorded by Peter of ?atec:
Cesarini: Be charitable to him and spare him.
Prokop: I am sparing him.
Cesarini: I’ll send him to lunch with you.
Prokop: No, since it is written: If there come any unto you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house.
Cesarini: But he had a meal with you before.
Prokop: We didn’t know he was so poisonous.
Even more extraordinarily, Cesarini asked Prokop to lend him some of Wycliff’s works
Relationships such as these enabled the marathon debates to continue in a particularly amicable fashion. The Hussites started by defending their creed, the Four Articles of Prague, in a ten-day presentation beginning on 16 January. Rokycana took three days to deal with communion in both kinds. It was not a difficult task, for all present knew perfectly well that this was the old practice, and that the real objection was that it detracted form the special prerogatives of the priest. The last speaker, Peter Payne, was the liveliest, on the civil power and wealth of the clergy. Certainly absolute poverty was not required, but they must on no account exercise civil power, which rightly belonged to the state. He finished by treating his audience to an exposition of Wycliff’s real doctrine, very different from that popularly attributed to the Oxford philosopher.
In the Council’s reply John of Ragusa exhausted everyone’s patience. His speech began on 31 January and continued until 12 February. At one point John asked if he might elaborate. The cardinals unanimously shouted ‘No’. The Czechs were even more annoyed when he appeared to be treating them as heretics, and Cesarini had to smooth things over. The Archbishop of Lyon offered apologies for John’s aspersion, and the following speakers promised to be briefer.
By 12 March everyone had had his say, but without convincing the other side. Private meetings followed, which at least separated the impossible – that the Hussites would unconditionally accept reunion – from the possible: that some sort of concordat might be reached within both the Church and the Kingdom of Bohemia which could allow some special privileges to the Czechs. It was agreed that the Council would send a delegation to Prague, where the details could be hammered out. The proceedings ended with Cesarini thanking Rokycana and Prokop, shaking each by the hand. Rokycana gave the final benediction, and as the Czechs left a fat Italian archbishop ran after them with tears in his eyes, for a final embrace.
This, however, raised the question as to whether the Council of Basel was a truly ecumenical gathering, authorized to conclude such a bargain. Unlike Constance, neither Pope nor Emperor was present, and the new Pope Eugenius was flatly defying the Council. Having been forced into convening the Council, Eugenius ordered its dissolution as soon as possible thereafter, preparing a Bull which was taken to Basel on 23 December, a week before the Bohemians were due to arrive. The Council was horrified: the Bull was confiscated, and the papal emissary imprisoned. Cesarini immediately wrote to the Pope. It was perfectly true that the Church urgently needed reform – especially as he had seen it in Germany. The Czechs were daily expected, and to dissolve the Council would be seen as yet another, even more serious, retreat. No punches were pulled in Cesarini’s address to the Holy Father.
What will the world say when it hears of this? So many councils have been held in our time, but no reform has followed. Men were expecting some results from this Council; if it be dissolved they will say that we mock both God and men. The whole reproach, the whole shame and ignominy, will fall upon the Roman Curia as the cause and author of all these ills. Holy Father, may you never be the cause of such evils! At your hands will be required the blood of those that perish; about all things you will have to render a strict account at the judgement seat of God.
If the Pope attempted to dissolve the Council and unseat Cesarini then another President would be elected.
All this, of course, was perfectly clear to the Hussites when they arrived. Cesarini grimly joked with Prokop that their relations with Pope Eugenius were the same: he would like to hang them both! Unless the Council of Basel stood firm on the ‘Haec Sancta’ decree of Constance, insisting that a Pope must obey a General Council, and Pope Eugenius retreated, the Hussites could not rely on any agreement that might be reached. With a good deal of courage, defying the Pope, on the 15 February the Council reenacted the Constance decree:
A General Council has its power immediately from Christ, and that all of every rank, even the papal, are bound to obey it in matters pertaining to the faith, the extirpation of heresy, and the reformation of the Church in head and members. It was decreed that the Council could not be dissolved against its will, and that all proceedings of the Pope against any of its members, or any who were coming to incorporate themselves with it, were null and void.
Once again it became Sigismund’s task to cajole and coerce the antagonists.
King Sigismund’s Third Throne
The King was at that time in Italy, moving at last to his imperial coronation, after thirty-two years as Emperor-in-waiting. On 10 January 1432, when Sigismund heard the news of the threat to the Council, he was in Piacenza, having already been invested with the Iron Crown of Lombardy, the second stage in the process, at Milan. He immediately wrote to the Council promising to intercede with the Pope and authorizing Duke William of Bavaria to act in his place as Protector of the Council.
Sigismund himself was mired in the complexities of Italian politics, and stuck in Siena, ‘caged like a wild beast’ within its walls, unable to advance to Rome, ‘a poor abandoned Lord’ as William of Bavaria put it, and having to do his best by correspondence. He was, however, much more than a pawn in the game. He needed both the support of the Council in order to enable him in due course to become King of a peaceful Bohemia, and of the Pope, in order to secure his coronation as Emperor, which would greatly bolster his authority in Germany, and put him again in a position of uniting Europe behind a Crusade; and at last this would not be against fellow-Christians, but the Turks. On the other hand, both Council and Pope needed Sigismund as an honest broker, as German King and Hungarian monarch the most influential European sovereign, and one with an unequalled experience in conciliar squabbles.
Within weeks of leaving Basel Prokop’s armies reminded Europe of their formidable power. The most ‘magnificent ride’ was that of the summer of 1433. Renewing the alliance with the Poles, some five thousand ‘of the most outrageous rabble of Hussites, collected from the most damned mob of all lands [in reality all Czech Orphans]’, drove their war-wagons through Poland to Gdansk, scattering the Teutonic Knights and reaching the Baltic, where they filled their flasks with seawater to take back to Bohemia. On their return through Pomerania and Lusatia they acquired considerably more valuable mementos.
Eugenius was in some danger: on 15 December 1432 the Council summoned him to attend, or be tried in his absence: it was a repeat of Constance’s command to his predecessor Gregory, and the Basel Council now looked nearly as powerful as its predecessor. Only six of the twenty-one cardinals were still prepared to support the Pope, all the most powerful states of Europe had sent delegates to Basel, and their patience was fast evaporating. Sigismund appealed to the Council not to press their charges against the Pope, and reluctantly, they agreed to wait. Eugenius now attempted negotiations, but was obliged to retreat, step by step, in the face of a resolute Council solidly behind Cardinal Cesarini.
Meanwhile the Hussites were convinced enough of the Council’s authority and sincerity to warrant continuing negotiations. The Council’s delegation arrived in Prague on 8 May 1433, to a cordial reception, Prokop keeping dissidents in order. On 13 June a Diet of the Bohemian estates began, when it became clear that the argument centred on the exact interpretation of the Four Articles of Prague. Even the first, although clear enough, was subject to debate – was communion in both kinds to be compulsory, or voluntary? Restricted to certain areas, or, in all Bohemia, including Moravia and Silesia? Was the Latin rite to be followed, or the much simplified Taborite version allowed? How often to be administered? And to women and children? And the remaining three articles were even more imprecise. Public debate in the Diet was supplemented by private discussion, and enough solidarity achieved to authorize another visit to Basel. Juan of Paloma produced a confidential background memorandum to his colleagues on the Council. The Czechs were divided, with a great gap between the conservative Utraquists and the radical Taborites, to say nothing of the other shades of opinions, and the faithful Catholics still holding out, particularly in Pilsen. If some assurance was given on communion in both kinds, those would come back into the fold, and thereafter perhaps abandon this peculiar practice, which all tacitly agreed was not in fact heretical.
On this basis discussions continued in Basel and Prague. In December 1433 a formula was finally agreed by the Diet, the ‘Compactata of Prague’, and a Bohemian President, Aleš Vřeštovsk?, a noble who had fought alongside ?i?ka, elected. The Taborites were not happy with these developments and continued to press for more radical interpretations of the Four Articles, until it became clear that a peaceful solution was no longer likely. In April 1434 a conservative league of the Czech nobility and the Old Town burghers was formed, and all other armed forces ordered to disband. On 5 May the radical New Town was stormed and its best-known resident, Prokop, escaped to issue a Taborite call to arms.
On 30 May 1434 Czech armies faced each other on the battlefield of Lipany. Both had Hussite commanders – Prokop for the dissidents, Divi? Bořek of Miletínek, who had fought both with and against ?i?ka for the conservatives: both fought with wagons, in the Hussite style, and both armies were preceded by priests carrying the monstrance: the sign of the chalice was no longer relevant, for both sides were in that sense Hussites. Given the wide spectrum of support for the Compactata it would be reasonable to describe the opponents as the government and rebel forces. The government army was both more numerous and better disciplined, able to use the tricky manoeuvre of a feigned retreat. They were also helped by the desertion of the rebel cavalry and of some of the subordinate commanders who changed sides. Few prisoners were taken in the battle, which ended in a complete government victory, both Prokop and his lieutenant Prokopek being killed; the task of reconciliation now began.
At this stage Sigismund was able to take a hand. On 31 May 1433 he had achieved his long ambition of being crowned Emperor in Rome. Poggio was there and described Sigismund’s entrance, accompanied by six hundred horsemen, under a golden canopy: ‘anyone could see that this majestic and affable man, with a kindly smile and long beard, was indeed a king’. He was now in a position to resume the authority he had previously deployed at Constance. At that time the Council at Basel was indignantly proposing to depose Eugenius, who was still being difficult. Sigimund’s affable charm worked on Eugenius: one exchange was recorded. Sigismund: ‘Holy Father, there are three things in which we are alike, and three in which we differ. You sleep in the morning, I rise before dawn: you drink water, I wine: you avoid women, I chase them. But in some things we agree: you distribute the treasures of the Church, I keep nothing for myself; you have gouty hands, I gouty feet; you are bringing the Church and I the Empire to ruin.’
With much effort he was able to persuade the Pope to issue a conciliatory Bull on 1 August recognizing the Council as having been valid from the beginning. With his new Imperial authority Sigismund was also able to rally European rulers in smoothing over the dissension between Pope and Council. Once Eugenius was brought back into line Sigismund had to move to Basel, where the Council was quarrelling, just as it had at Constance. He arrived on 11 October 1433, and took charge, angrily insisting that neither he, nor any other ruler, was going to permit another schism. Cardinals and prelates had done well in convening the Council and carrying on some important business, but an understanding with the Pope was essential. The best he could do was to postpone a crisis, and to direct the Council’s attention to some modest reforms. Old questions of precedence were squabbled over between the Germans, the Bretons and the Burgundians, but at last, on 30 January 1434, Eugenius surrendered and acknowledged the Council’s joint authority. He never came to Basel, however, since his interference in Italian politics led to his expulsion from Rome and an inglorious nine years’ exile in Florence.
Sigismund found Basel totally unlike Constance: it was not an international meeting with an agreed agenda, but an ecclesiastical one, chiefly concerned with establishing its own authority against that of an absent Pope. Once he had reconciled Council and Pope and negotiated the right of the papal envoy to chair the meetings he could do little more than encourage the discussion of reforms. Possibly in a spirit of mischief, he prompted the suggestion that the right of priests to marry should be restored, but otherwise Sigismund felt superfluous, describing himself as ‘a fifth wheel on the coach’. With due ceremony he therefore left Basel on 29 May 1434 to deal with the Bohemians in his own way; since it was the day before the battle of Lipany he would find a very changed situation there.
The negotiations were now three-sided, between the Council, the Emperor and the Prague provisional government. Left to himself, Sigismund would have been able to reach agreement with the Bohemian Diet. Not much concerned with the quarrels over the bread and wine, his sole aim was to gain control of Bohemia and bring it back to the Empire: if that meant compromising in the formulae of union he was very ready to do so. The Council, however, was not. It had already sacrificed one vital point in condescending to argue with heretics and another in conceding even an agreement as limited as that of the Compactata of Prague. Beginning in Regensburg in August 1434 discussion continued for the better part of two years before a final compromise was reached. Only Sigismund could have managed it: making impassioned appeals for national unity in Czech to the Bohemians; patiently arguing in Latin with the Council delegates as to whether a phrase should be injuste deteneri or usurpari (that took four months); on one occasion at least losing his temper and roaring at the prelates in German; confiding in the Czech magnates as fellow-noblemen, while at the same time supervising Imperial and Hungarian affairs.
A Diet held at Brno in July 1435 accepted Sigismund as King of Bohemia, having undertaken that he would always defend the Czech nation and language, be guided by a Czech Council, appoint only Czechs to high office, and uphold the University of Prague. Another year of discussions, squabbles and compromises was needed before the Council of Basel accepted that communion in both kinds was admitted to be lawful, on the understanding that the King-Emperor would do his best to restore the status quo. In the market-place of Jihlava, on 5 July 1436, Sigismund, in full Imperial robes, presided over the signature of the Compactata by the Council’s legates and the heads of the provisional government. Bohemia was once again accepted into the community of European nations, but not by the papacy. Once the Basel Council had been dissolved all successive popes regarded Hussite practices as intolerably heretical; but they continued in Bohemia until the Lutheran Reformation absorbed the Hussite churches into the Protestant fraternity.
On 20 August Ales Vře?tovsk? resigned his office as President of the Provisional Government and with the other Czech barons pledged loyalty to King Sigismund. Accompanied by Queen Barbara, and sixteen years after his coronation in the Hradcany, the King was able to enter Prague. There remained, however, much still to be done before Bohemia was restored to peace. Two Hussite strongholds still held out, the Taborites and the followers of Lord Jan Roháč in his castle of Sion, near Kutná Hora. Two very different aspects of Sigismund as King were shown by his treatment of the two communities. With the help of Oldřich Ro?mberk, that accomplished survivor, a treaty was negotiated with the Taborites. They were allowed to keep all their Hussite rites, the Bible admitted as their only judge, and given a municipal charter, guaranteed by the King. In this way a distinctively proto-Protestant community was legally established for the first time, seventy years before the start of the Lutheran Reformation.
Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini visited Tabor in 1451. The people responded ‘most willingly’ to the travellers’ request for accommodation and ‘extended good will towards us’ but his description was baleful. ‘A great throng of rustic and indecent people, in spite of their efforts to appear civil’ came to meet them, with the signs of the violent past still visible. ‘Some had only one eye, others were missing a hand.’ Quoting Virgil, he continued, ‘It was something terrible to see those wasted faces with ears cut off and noses mutilated with obscene scars.’ He acknowledged that ‘this perfidious race of men has the single merit of loving learning … you will hardly find [even] a woman unfamiliar with the Old and New Testament’; the children were literate – although not in Latin – and all able to argue cogently on their faith. Their freedom worried Aeneas: ‘They were wandering about lacking all order and talking without any restraint. They welcomed us with an unseemly and uncouth ceremony, but offered us fish, beer and wine as gifts.’ A less jaundiced view than his might have found this intelligent conversation and relaxed friendliness pleasant enough, but Aeneas was both a fearful prig and merciless. ‘Emperor Sigismund granted to these sacrilegious and wicked people this town and made them free … However, they deserve to be exterminated or confined in quarries away from the human race.’
The other Hussite stronghold of Sion provoked the ferocity of the old King. Once the castle fell the garrison was taken to Prague and all publicly hanged, Roháč after being so severely tortured that his intestines fell out. Sigismund had forgotten neither the patience he had so often shown at Constance nor the brutality he had learned on the Turkish frontier. On 11 November 1437, three months after the fall of Sion, Sigismund left Prague on his last journey home to Hungary, followed at a respectful distance by a crowd of jesters and prostitutes, gathered behind their banner; it seemed that he had won the affection of the less respectable Praguers. Now over seventy, he was a dying man, his left leg progressively amputated, carried on a litter. He managed one more conference, at Znojmo, with his daughter Elizabeth and her husband the Hapsburg Duke Albert of Austria, son of his old friend.
On 9 December, after Mass, fully robed and crowned, but covered by a shroud, he sat on his throne to wait for death, which came about the time of Vespers. According to his last orders, he was left there for three days ‘so that men might see that the lord of the world was dead and gone’.