Jan Žižka

Bohemian general

• Born: c. 1360
• Birthplace: Trocnov, Bohemia (now in Czech Republic)
• Died: October 11, 1424
• Place of death: Přibyslav, Bohemia (now in Czech Republic)

Žižka’s innovations in military organization and weapons, mobile artillery in particular, were directly responsible for the success of the Hussite revolution. They also spelled the end of the medieval system of mounted knights.

Early Life

Jan Žižka (yahn ZHISH-kaw) was born in Trocnov, Bohemia. Trocnov was only a few miles north of the border of what is now Austria. The region south of Trocnov was populated and controlled mostly by Germans. Žižka was thus brought up in an essentially bilingual culture. Žižka meant “one-eyed” and was a nickname derived from his early loss of an eye. His family was poor, and Žižka was apparently reared in the royal court, gaining military experience in its service.

From about 1380 to 1392, Žižka’s activities are a mystery, except that he was apparently the royal hunter in the town of Zahorany near the royal castle of Orlik for Wenceslaus IV. About 1405 Žižka returned to his homeland. Sometime during this period, he left the king’s service to fight as a mercenary in one of the guerrilla bands employed by barons who sided with either the Bohemians or the Moravians in their protracted struggle. In 1409, King Wenceslaus pardoned Žižka for his renegade military adventures, and Žižka was soon fighting with Jan Sokol of Lamberg for the Polish king against the Teutonic Knights. From this campaign Žižka derived considerable valuable military experience.

The court register of Prague’s New Town (Nove Mesto, established in the mid-fourteenth century) reveals that Žižka bought a house there in 1414. Two years later, he sold this house and bought another one closer to the king’s residence, at the same time apparently assuming some official position in the city palace. It is quite probable that during these years Žižka met Jan Hus and heard him preach.

Hus became dean of the faculty of arts at the university in Prague in 1401, and in the same year, he began an outstanding career preaching at Bethlehem Chapel. In many ways, he was a follower of John Wyclif, and in 1408 he was censured for ignoring an order from cathedral officials to reject a list of forty-five articles drawn up from Wyclif’s writings. Hus’s continued defense of Wyclif and defiance of the Church led to his being burned at the stake in 1415. A similar fate met Jerome of Prague the next year.

These events created a furor. Hus approved of the custom of administering Holy Communion in both forms wine as well as bread as expressed in the phrase sub utraque specie, and soon after Hus’s death, many nobles and university men took up the custom in what became known as the Utraquist revolt. By 1420, they were also demanding punishment for simony, freedom to preach the Word of God, and a halt to the venality rampant among priests and monks. These three points, along with the demand for both forms of Communion, became known as the Four Articles of Prague. Thus, the Hussite revolt can be seen as a precursor to the Reformation.

Life’s Work

After an angry crowd threw the members of the Prague council out of the council building’s windows in 1419, King Wenceslaus accepted a new council made up of Hussites. He died shortly thereafter. It is at that time that Žižka entered the complicated political and religious maneuvering, often in the service of the Taborites.

The Taborites were a radical, chiliastic (apocalyptic) sect who took their name from the biblical Mount Tabor. In November, 1419, when various Taborite groups approached Prague, several were ambushed by royalist supporters. Then Žižka took up arms for the Taborites and led them in capturing the royal castle, the Vyšehrad.

Following this triumph, Žižka left Prague to settle in Pilsen as the resident Hussite leader; in February, 1420, he received a call for help from Tabor (the home community of the Taborites). Thus, in late March, 1420, Žižka set out with a small group and twelve wagons, armed with cannon, determined to assist the Taborites against the royalists. When his forces were ambushed in the village of Sudomer, Žižka led them to a stunning victory over superior numbers and thereby kept radical Hussitism alive in the Tabor community. Žižka was soon elected one of the four captains of the Taborites, and during this period he carried out many terrorist campaigns against both castles and towns. He was also instrumental in building up the defenses around Tabor.

In the aftermath, King Sigismund of Hungary (Wenceslaus’s half brother) in 1420 led a military force against Prague; the Hussites quickly mustered an army to meet him. Žižka was called back to Prague, where he trained and commanded a force that completely routed Sigismund’s men. Important to Žižka’s success against Sigismund was the placement of his war wagons in a quadrangle surrounded by a moat. The decisive battle was fought on July 14, 1420, on the hill of Vitkov near New Town, where Žižka defeated a huge army that outnumbered the Hussites four or five to one.

The struggle between the royalists and the Hussites continued for several more years, with Žižka winning numerous important engagements; by the autumn of 1420, the Taborites of the south had become a potent national faction, which often disagreed with the moderate Utraquists in Prague. By the spring of 1421, the Hussites were in command of Hradčany Castle, forcing the Utraquists to sign an armistice on May 21.

The ceaseless haggling over theological and ecclesiastical issues soon brought Žižka back into combat, however, and in June, 1421, while directing an assault on the castle at Bor, Žižka was hit in his remaining eye by an arrow and blinded permanently. Nevertheless, his greatest victories were yet to come. He helped drive the Misnians out of Bohemia, and he purified the Taborite faith of what he considered the evil influence of Martin Houska, a Moravian priest, and his heretical teachings about the Eucharist. Žižka also defeated in pitched battle the Adamite wing of the Taborites. The Adamites were radicals who taught that one should succumb completely to one’s impulses, leading to nudity, the prohibition of marriage, and group orgies. Žižka’s campaign against them in October, 1421, finished the Adamite movement. Of his military conquests after his blindness, his defeat of Sigismund at Kutná Hora in December, 1421, and his victory at the Battle of Malesov on June 7, 1423, stand out.

Žižka’s death came in October, 1424, when he fell ill perhaps of the plague during the siege of Přibyslav. After his death, his followers called themselves “orphans” in acknowledgment of their bereavement.

Significance

Much of Jan Žižka’s fervor was generated by his dedication to the Four Articles of Prague. He strongly supported the third of the articles that which deprived monks and priests of their accumulation of earthly possessions and he even more strongly supported the fourth.

All mortal sins and especially those that are committed publicly, as well as other disorders offending against the Law of God, shall be properly and sensibly prohibited and punished in each estate by those who have the authority to do so; and . . . evil and slanderous rumors about this country [shall] be cleansed away, thus insuring the general welfare of the Bohemian kingdom and Nation.

A long list of sins accompanied this article. Laypersons were condemned for adultery, gluttony, and the like, while the members of the clergy were called to task for simony, selling indulgences, and taking money for saying Mass, as well as for whoring, brawling, and many other faults. For the many pious Christians such as Žižka, this list of human failings threatened the foundation of God’s Kingdom: Žižka clearly saw himself as a “severe avenger” (as he was described in the inscription to a sixteenth century portrait of him) whose duty it was to purify the church membership. According to Frederick G. Heymann, Žižka regarded himself as

the legitimate prosecutor, judge, and executor in implementing the Fourth Article. He never had any doubt that this was his office, that he was fully authorized by God and Christ, as was any true Christian with enough power on his hands, to destroy the deadly sins wherever he met them.

This conception explains the ruthlessness of many of Žižka’s actions.

Žižka’s success as leader of the Taborite military force can hardly be overestimated. The strategy that produced his enormous successes was his deployment of his wagons, and these were his major contribution to military science. Their use made obsolete the medieval style of military combat with mounted knights. In addition, Žižka’s deployment of his peasant warriors surpassed in discipline and flexibility any previous approach to military tactics. Finally, when Žižka mounted guns on his wagons, he created his own field artillery, an invention that proved to be psychologically as well as materially devastating to his enemies.

Bibliography

Durant, Will. “The Western Slavs: 1300-1517.” In The Story of Civilization. Vol. 6. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957. This chapter gives an excellent, succinct overview of the period, with sections on Bohemia, Jan Hus, and the Bohemian Revolution. A good introductory essay.

Fudge, Thomas A. The Magnificent Ride: The First Reformation in Hussite Bohemia. Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1998. Traces the social, political, and ideological events surrounding the Hussite movement in Bohemia. Includes a discussion of the role of Žižka and two other warriors, Prokop and Rohac, in the reformation.

Heymann, Frederick G. John Žižka and the Hussite Revolution. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1955. A detailed, five-hundred-page study of Žižka and the Hussites. Especially good at clarifying the role of the Taborites in the Hussite revolution and explaining what the Taborites meant to Žižka. The military campaigns are recounted in detail.

Holmes, George. Europe, Hierarchy and Revolt, 1320-1450. 2d ed. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000. Includes chapters on the Avignon and Roman papacies, the Great Schism, and the Hussite movement, and several maps.

Kaminsky, Howard. A History of the Hussite Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. A lengthy scholarly study with an excellent bibliography. There are frequent references to Žižka, and the discussion of the Taborite movement is very good.

Klassen, John M. Warring Maidens, Captive Wives, and Hussite Queens: Women and Men at War and at Peace in Fifteenth Century Bohemia. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. A useful text for broadening one’s understanding of the cultural effects of the revolution that Žižka helped bring about. Examines the changing roles of women in fifteenth century bohemia. The author argues that women gained more freedom from traditional roles as men came to respect those dissident women working to resist women’s oppression and subordination.

Urbanek, R. “Jan Žižka, the Hussite.” Slavonic Review 8 (December, 1924): 272-284. A glowing survey of Žižka’s career written for his quincentenary. Traces the key events in Žižka’s life.