Pod Insights Gone Medieval The Hussite Wars: Crusades Against Bohemia About this episode In early 15th century, the execution of Jan Hus — a fiery preacher who dared to challenge the might of the Catholic Church in Bohemia — ignited a rebellion that shook medieval Europe to its core. The Hussite Wars were not just a fight for religious reform; they were an explosion of new ideas, military innovation and national identity that would echo across centuries.
Dr. Eleanor Janega recounts this tale of heresy, revolution and a relentless quest for justice. From the thunderous defenestration of Prague’s city council to the ingenious war wagons of Jan Žižka, discover how a movement of peasants, preachers and visionaries defied crusades, toppled kings, and carved out the world’s first Protestant state.
MORE
Anne of Bohemia
https://open.spotify.com/episode/19zx9ph2V4RtGOxnI50POx
The Czech Braveheart: Jan Žižka - Gone Medieval
https://open.spotify.com/episode/59wq9imDllVuDj97YoPCxl
Gone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. It was edited by Amy Haddow, the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.
All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.
Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.
Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.
You can take part in our listener survey here https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK: https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Matt Lewis? From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Yanega, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
0:42 Speaker 01 Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasiapro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.
1:20 Eleanor Janega? Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Yanega, and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were, and how we got here.
1:53 Eleanor Janega? You've probably heard me say that one of the easiest ways you can tell that something is early modern rather than medieval is to ask, are there Protestants? This is a hard and fast rule, and one that uses what we now call the Catholic Church as a cultural hegemon, mostly untroubled and understood as the arbiters of the faith, at least in Europe outside of the Byzantine Empire. But the thing about hard and fast rules is that they lead to exceptions. And in the case of my favorite area of study, the Holy Roman Empire, one big exception: the Hussites, a group of medieval rebels who decided that they had had it up to here with the Church's excesses.
2:39 Eleanor Janega? They were the first Christian faction to successfully split with the Roman Catholic Church, and they did it in the 15th century, almost 100 years before Martin Luther ever pinned up his 95 complaints and became the poster boy for Protestantism.
2:56 Eleanor Janega? However, as you can imagine, this didn't go down particularly well with either the Church or the Holy Roman Emperor. And so, a number of crusades were called against them, all of which failed. Today, we'll be diving deep in to learn all about this fascinating intellectual and religious movement, and the men and women who were so moved by it that they fought to bring about a better world, and actually won, for a while.
3:41 Eleanor Janega? The story of the Hussites begins, like all my favorite stories, in Prague. You'll remember that the last time I took you on a deep dive in my favorite city, we talked about Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, who had been busy turning it into a Holy Roman Imperial capital and a major religious destination, as well as entrenching his family as the heads of the empire.
4:07 Eleanor Janega? As a part of this, he made two moves that would end up creating a new Christian faction, and ironically, taking Prague out of the Holy Roman Empire altogether.
4:18 Eleanor Janega? The first of these was his creation of the University of Prague, now known as Charles University, in 1348.
4:28 Eleanor Janega? The second was a politically charged move, contracting the marriage of his daughter Anne to the English king Richard II, a wedding which took place after his death in 1382.
4:42 Eleanor Janega? This marriage was unusual and somewhat controversial. From the Czech point of view, the marriage was incredibly beneath Anne's station. No one in Prague really knew what they were up to in England, except for rearing sheep. And it wasn't considered a desirable destination for a cultivated empress like Anna. However, at this time, the Church was also undergoing the Western Schism. There was a Pope in Avignon, as well as one in Rome. And the idea was that a marriage between the imperial household and other kingdoms, however obscure, would help to shore up opposition to the French papal faction.
5:24 Eleanor Janega? After Charles's death, Anna's brother, Václavus, the king of Bohemia and the Romans, cited the necessity of bringing together Christendom as he signed off on the marriage. There were provisos, however.
5:39 Eleanor Janega? A marriage this far below Anne's station meant that she would bring no dowry with her, and that the English would have to send a rather hefty payment to Prague of 20,000 florins, or about 4 million pounds in today's money, as well.
5:58 Eleanor Janega? One of the upsides to the marriage for the English, as well as getting a very fancy queen, was that English traders were allowed to freely trade in Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire.
6:11 Eleanor Janega? This led to rather a lot of happy traipsing across the North Sea and up and down the roads of the Empire. Wool was always in demand from England, as was silver from Bohemia. And so it was that an exchange was born. But goods weren't the only things that began to transfer between England and Bohemia. So too did ideas. Traders weren't the only people who moved around in Europe, and scholars began to move between Oxford and Prague, and they brought books along with them. In particular, those moving from England often brought the books of one specific Oxford scholar, John Wycliffe.
6:56 Eleanor Janega? Wycliffe is a guy that was interesting enough that I could happily regale you with an explainer episode on him as well, but suffice to say, he was one of those church reformers that you see so often throughout the medieval period, and especially in the 14th century. He believed that the church had got away from its roots, owned too much property, and needed to rededicate itself to a life of apostolic poverty. He believed that people should have access to bibles written in their own vernacular languages, as opposed to Latin. He also thought that church clerics shouldn't be holding political offices and working alongside the king.
7:37 Eleanor Janega? This was all very well and good, even if it did rile up the clergy. But he also argued that transubstantiation, the idea that the bread and wine used in mass becomes the actual body and blood of Christ during the Eucharist, wasn't real. This went down less well, and Wycliffe spent some decades defending himself against various accusations of heresy before dying in 1384. This did not stop the church being mad at him, however. And by 1401, Wycliffe and his followers, the Lawards, were declared heretics, and it was ordered that his works should be burnt. The trouble with all of this from the Czech perspective is that it was too late to be
8:22 Eleanor Janega? burning books back in Oxford. They were already in Prague, and incredibly popular with the scholars at the university.
8:32 Eleanor Janega? In particular, the works were popular with Jan Hus, a preacher, priest, and the dean of the university's philosophy department, which is pretty much to say that he was considered the brightest and best jewel of the university.
8:47 Eleanor Janega? Hus had begun speaking out publicly for the ideas of Wycliffe since at least about 1399.
8:55 Eleanor Janega? Soon, he was given his own chapel called Bethlehem in 1402, and there he continued to preach much in the same vein as Wycliffe, saying that the church was too wealthy and advocating for prayer and devotion, more particularly in Czech.
9:12 Eleanor Janega? And well, yes, the church had banned the works of Wycliffe, but they hadn't banned the works in translation out of Latin, which Hus had made in Czech. This was all pretty par for the course in Prague. Since Charles IV, preachers had been having a grand old time denouncing the church for its excesses, and the Crown had been funding them. Hus was no different as far as Charles's son Venceslas was concerned, and he enjoyed the Crown's support and toleration. At least, for a while.
9:49 Eleanor Janega? By 1408, Pope Gregory XII wrote from Rome that he had heard about all the heresy going on in Prague, and Venceslas got spooked.
9:59 Eleanor Janega? See, Venceslas had been made king of the Romans while his dad was still alive, but he hadn't had the necessary papal coronation to declare him Holy Roman Emperor. If you're confused about that, I don't blame you, and you might want to go back and check out my deep dive on the Holy Roman Empire for more details. At any rate, Venceslas wasn't exactly sure what to do here. Should he butter up Pope Gregory in Rome? Or did he need to be working Pope Benedict XIII in Avignon?
10:32 Eleanor Janega? He decided to play it cool and asked Hus and the rest of the Prague scholars to submit whatever text of Wycliffe they had for correction, which Hus did, saying he would happily omit anything that was declared heretical. Venceslas also decided that he was going to attempt to remain neutral in the papal schism. He asked that the scholars at the university try to do the same.
10:56 Eleanor Janega? This is where things got tricky. Technically, the university had been divided into four nations, representing the groups of people who studied there most often. There were the Czechs, obviously, who Hus represented, as well as the Bavarians, Saxons, and Poles. Ordinarily, when it came to university affairs, each of these groups would have a vote in what went on. However, in 1409, Václav Záklavský changed that. He summoned the groups to appear before him and demanded statements of allegiance, which Hus and the Czechs were only too happy to give. The other nations, who were a bit wary
11:39 Eleanor Janega? of all the Czech stuff that had been happening most Czechly, were less enthused. And as a result, Václav Záklavský declared that the Czech nation would now receive three votes in all matters, and the other three nations were to be bound into one German nation and only get one vote. No, I do not understand how Poles count as Germans here. I did not say that this made sense. The change in voting structure meant that the dean of the German nation was soon replaced with a Czech, and all the Bavarians, Saxons, and Poles went home in a huff to start their own universities and grumbled that the Czechs were all heretics. To make this all the more confusing,
12:21 Eleanor Janega? shortly thereafter, in Pisa, a new papal council was held. The idea was that, given all the unpleasantness with the two popes, maybe everyone could just tell those two to step down, and a new pope could be elected who could then take over. As a result, a new pope, Alexander V, was crowned. But the other two popes didn't back down.
12:50 Eleanor Janega? But King Wenceslas had already committed to the bit and was backing Alexander. So Hus and the university did as well. Alexander then died in 1410 and was succeeded in 1411 by yet another third pope, John the 22nd, who decided that he was going to declare a crusade against Naples, who had been supporting the pope in Rome. In order to pay for it, Pope John was selling indulgences. Hus hated this. He preached that indulgences shouldn't be sold because forgiveness only came from true repentance. And he made an argument given by Wycliffe that the Church had no right to take up arms
13:33 Eleanor Janega? because they were supposed to pray for their enemies. This was an incredibly popular take, and some of Hus's followers decided to celebrate by burning the papal bulls announcing the crusade. They also said that the Church was no longer to be trusted and that Hus should be followed instead of whichever pope you were confronted with. This was getting a bit too hot for King Wenceslas, and he ordered that three men who came from the lower classes and spoke against the indulgences should be beheaded. He also tried to get Hus and the university to knock it off with all the Wycliffe references, which Hus was now adding to, declaring them heretical.
14:17 Eleanor Janega? Hus fired back that if something was heretical, you should be able to prove that it was by scriptural means. Wenceslas could not do this because he was a king, not a scholar, and not a particularly bright one at that. The Church, King, and Hus were now at an impasse. Following an unsuccessful synod, a sort of meeting where Christian doctrine is discussed, little was gained. The Church wanted Hus to accept that they could make papal bulls calling for crusade or sell indulgences, and that the pope was the head of the Church and the cardinals were his body.
14:58 Eleanor Janega? And Hus wanted the Church out of Bohemian politics and for the state to decide religious matters. Hus decried the Church's findings, writing:
15:09 Speaker 03 "Even if I should stand before the stake which has been prepared for me, I would never accept the recommendation of the theological faculty."
15:20 Eleanor Janega? By the end of the year, Hus had left Prague, where he was convinced his popularity put the people in danger, and had left to the countryside, declaring that Jesus Christ alone was the supreme judge, and neither the church nor the king could be trusted in matters of religion.
15:39 Eleanor Janega? In the countryside, he began to work with ordinary people, as opposed to the highly educated theological scholars of the university.
15:49 Eleanor Janega? To help provide more direct religious education, he began to write in Czech more often, to help the countryside priests who had poor Latin gain a better understanding of religion.
16:02 Eleanor Janega? This was a really big deal, and peasants loved that someone was actually working with them more directly. Hus's following grew, and soon he was not just gaining adherents in the Czech lands, but in Austria, Poland, Hungary, and even as far away as Croatia.
16:23 Eleanor Janega? This burgeoning popularity was a serious problem, not just for the Church, but also for the conception of the Holy Roman Empire. If neither pokes nor kings nor emperors could judge the people, then why was there a state that existed to do God's bidding on earth? At the time, however, there technically wasn't an emperor.
16:48 Eleanor Janega? Due to his inability to keep his own kingdom heretic-free, the crown of King of the Romans had passed from King Václavus to his younger brother Szentjusmon, the King of Hungary.
17:00 Eleanor Janega? Sajdismund was incredibly unhappy with both the papal schism, which called into question exactly who crowned emperors around here, and all of the heretical goings-on in the Kingdom of Bohemia, which he stood to inherit from his childless older brother. So, where the previous synods had failed, he called for a general council in Constance, and he called Hus to it to explain himself.
17:28 Eleanor Janega? Hus may have been careless, but he was no fool. And to his credit, neither was King Ventuslas in this instance. The men asked for and were granted a guarantee of safe conduct for Hus, should he appear in Constance.
17:45 Eleanor Janega? Sajdismund duly granted it, and Hus began to make his arrangements. Part of these arrangements included writing his will, never mind what the King of the Romans had promised. And by the 3rd of November, 1414, Hus was in Constance.
18:04 Eleanor Janega? There, he was meant to have a debate with a fellow member of the Czech clergy, Michal Zemenske Hobrodu. Meanwhile, Hus set about saying masses and preaching to the adoring masses of people who kept showing up to hear him speak.
18:21 Eleanor Janega? As cute as this was for the fans, the Church was incensed, because he was explicitly meant to keep his head down and his mouth shut and prepare for the debate.
18:32 Eleanor Janega? By the 28th of November, he was arrested and imprisoned, both to shut him up and ensure that he couldn't flee.
18:41 Eleanor Janega? This was a violation of his guarantee of safety. But Sajdismund was convinced by the Church that since Hus was a heretic, though he hadn't been proven one yet, then any promises made about his safety were null and void.
18:57 Eleanor Janega? This may have been the biggest talk of the time if the Council of Constance hadn't also decided that all three current popes should step down and a new pope be elected.
19:09 Eleanor Janega? Hus had been under arrest by the Pisan Pope, John the Twenty Third. This same Pope John, meanwhile, pulled the stunt he was accusing of Hus of trying, and fled Constance disguised as a postman. Hus was then transferred to the custody of the Bishop of Constance, chained day and night, and his health took a commensurate nosedive. He would remain in dismal conditions, while the council meant to have a preliminary discussion about what they considered to be his many theological flaws. Hus, for his part, was not allowed to rebut whatever the council found. Instead, he was meant to simply respond to what the council presented to him as his
19:54 Eleanor Janega? theoretical errors.
20:03 Eleanor Janega? In June of 1415, Hus's official trial began, and thirty-nine articles of accusation were brought against him, and he was told to confess that he had erred in his theses, that he renounced them in the future, that he recounted them, and that he declared the opposite of them. Hus refused, saying he would only do so if the bishops could explain where in the Bible his errors could be found. Further, he said that he had never taught a good many of the things which he was accused of, so he couldn't exactly refute something that he hadn't said.
20:41 Eleanor Janega? And anyway, he thought the council were actually wrong about the other ones, and that he was theologically sound and blameless.
20:50 Eleanor Janega? On the 6th of July 1415, it was announced that...
20:54 Speaker 04 This holy synod of Constance, seeing that God's church has nothing more that it can do, relinquishes Jan Hus to the judgment of the secular authority, and decrees that he is to be relinquished to the secular court.
21:09 Eleanor Janega? After his sentence was read, he declared to the council defiantly:
21:14 Speaker 03 "You may kill a weak goose, but more powerful birds, eagles and falcons will come after me."
21:22 Eleanor Janega? This was a pun playing on his last name Hus, which means goose in Czech. And, oh boy, did they ever.
21:33 Eleanor Janega? Hus was stripped of his priestly garments, dressed in a tall paper hat painted with demons and taken to be burned at the stake. There, the Count of the Palatine begged Husteri Kant to save his life, but Hus declined, saying:
21:50 Speaker 03 "God is my witness that the things charged against me I never preached. In the same truth of the gospel which I have written, taught and preached, drawing upon the sayings and positions of the holy doctors, I am ready to die today."
22:06 Eleanor Janega? He was duly burnt, and his ashes were thrown into the Rhine to prevent their becoming relics.
22:16 Eleanor Janega? The Church was right to be afraid of what Hus's followers would do, because the Czechs were enraged. On the 2nd of September, a document was drawn up with the seals of 100 Bohemian and Moravian nobles, declaring that: "Master Jan Hus was a good, just and Catholic man, who had consistently detested all error and heresies, and those who would denigrate the Czech lands as a nest of heretics were the worst of traitors." Hus and his teachings were now more popular than ever in the Czech lands. The numbers of converts were swelling by the day, and Catholic priests were routinely chased from their parishes.
23:01 Eleanor Janega? Siedzysmund was outraged, and probably worried that if he couldn't quell the rise of a new form of Christianity, then he would never be made emperor, and pushed his brother to crack down on the Hussites, declaring that he would drown the followers of Huss. This did little to sway the Czechs, and tensions were high. Hussites were routinely arrested. Those seen as friendly with the crown or emperor were regularly attacked. In short, it was a mess. This would come to a head on the 30th of July 1419. On that day, Jan Zlewski, a Hussite priest from the Prague Church of Saint Mary in the Snows,
23:46 Eleanor Janega? led his parishioners on a procession from their church to the new town hall to protest the cities holding several Hussite prisoners. As they stood below the town hall, a rock was thrown at them from inside. It hit the monstrance, a sort of see-through container that holds a host inside, that Zlewski was holding, and all hell broke loose. The parishioners stormed the new town hall, threw open the windows, and threw out a judge, the burgomaster, and several town council members, all of whom were subsequently killed.
24:29 Eleanor Janega? This was the first defenestration of Prague, and would become the signature move when Czechs became fed up with their overlords. It was said that when Venceslas heard the news, he was so overcome with shock that he died. His widow, Sophia of Bavaria, was left to rule over a population in the midst of civil war.
24:55 Eleanor Janega? Those who did not support the Hussain cause, largely German-speaking individuals, were often driven from their homes using violence. Sophia, a German speaker herself, though one who had felt softly towards Huss, attempted to regain control of the kingdom by hiring a mercenary army and marching on Prague. To make matters worse, Siedesmann was insisting that he was the rightful heir of Bohemia, a claim that the nobility rejected, stating that the kingdom was an elected monarchy and that they had never voted for that guy. Incensed, Siedesmann went to Pope Martin V,
25:37 Eleanor Janega? the first pope of a unified church in quite some time, and asked that a crusade be declared. It was granted. And on the 17th of March 1420, a bull calling for the destruction of the Weiklifites, Hussites, and all other heretics in Bohemia was announced. Bad move. This drew chancers from all over Europe. Bohemia was famously one of the richest kingdoms on the continent. And a crusade meant that any minor knight from across Christendom now had a legal and even a spiritual mandate to go on a smash and grab, taking whatever they could get.
26:21 Eleanor Janega? As cute as this idea was, it turns out that the Czechs were actually really serious about this whole holy war thing. And they had something much better than an embittered failsome like Siedesmann to guide them.
26:50 Speaker 01 Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional Editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at CamtasiaPro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.
27:25 Speaker 05 Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator, facing a roaring crowd as potential death in the Colosseum? Find out on the Ancients podcast from History Hit. Twice a week, join me, Tristan Hughes, as I hear exciting new research about people living thousands of years ago, from the Babylonians to the Celts to the Romans, and visit the ancient sites which reveal who and just how amazing our distant ancestors were. That's the Ancients from History Hit.
28:13 Eleanor Janega? They had the one-eyed military genius Jan Ziska.
28:19 Eleanor Janega? Ziska was a lower nobleman whose fighting prowess had been forged as a bandit. Somewhere along the way, he had managed to make good and come into the employment of King Venceslas.
28:32 Eleanor Janega? While in the household, he was exposed to the teachings of Huss, and like most good Czech boys at the time, he became a convert. In fact, he was so converted that he had been present at the first defenestration. From there, he knew that a war was coming.
28:51 Eleanor Janega? He felt that the Prague Hussites were too willing to capitulate to Sidsismund. He left the city to rally troops, eventually settling in the town of Tabor.
29:02 Eleanor Janega? In Sabre, they were absolutely not playing ball. They practiced a radical form of Hussitism, calling for communal property amongst Christians, and insisting that those present must train to fight the enemy Catholics. As a part of this, Jischka came up with a new military tactic: the Wojewahradba, or "wagonburg" in German.
29:27 Eleanor Janega? For this, he created a new sort of army unit assigned to a wagon. Each wagon was loaded up with between 16 to 22 soldiers, four to eight crossbowmen, two gunmen, and six to eight soldiers with pikes and flails, as well as two shield carriers and two drivers. The idea was this: If groups of Hussites were confronted with a numerically superior army, they would take their wagons and form them into a circle.
30:03 Eleanor Janega? The wagons were set at a tilt, and their wheels chained together, but with their corners left free so that horses could quickly be harnessed to them and a quick escape made. In front of the wall of wagons, the Hussites would then dig a ditch.
30:21 Eleanor Janega? They would then retreat behind the wagons and provoke the enemy into attacking them through artillery fire. Unanswered, this would result in seriously heavy casualties, and so the knights were usually drawn into battle.
30:37 Eleanor Janega? From behind the safety of the wagons, the artillerymen would continue shooting, aiming in particular for the horses, which eliminated the main advantage of any cavalry.
30:49 Eleanor Janega? When the enemy were wounded and morale was low, the Hussites would then begin their counterattack, specifically going for their enemy's flanks.
30:59 Eleanor Janega? This worked incredibly well, because Ziska was one of the first people to really understand how gunpowder weapons could be deployed in military settings. The wagon troops were the first to successfully use pistols on the battlefield. And Ziska was the first commander to mount medium-caliber cannons on carts, which would peek out from between the wagons. These weapons were so cutting-edge that Czech actually gave us two words in the English language for them. Píštola gave us the word for pistol, and hufnica, the word for the cannon, became howitzer.
31:39 Eleanor Janega? The weapons on their own wouldn't have meant much, and a fully armed cavalryman could run down any pistolman in the open. Ziska's Wagenberg allowed the weapons to be utilized to the fullest, and significantly cut into any advantage that the much-vaunted foreign knights would have had over a ragtag bunch of true believers. Still, Citismund and the Crusaders staggered forward through Bohemia, and eventually managed to descend on Prague, though much worse for the wear. There, they surrounded the city and demanded the Housites surrender themselves. Instead, the citizens set out a set of their own demands to the would-be-king.
32:24 Eleanor Janega? These were called the Four Articles of Prague, which asked that—
32:28 Speaker 04 The word of God shall be preached and made known in the Kingdom of Bohemia freely and in an orderly manner by the priests of the Lord. The sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist shall be freely administered in the two kinds, that is, bread and wine, to all the faithful in Christ who are not precluded by mortal sin, according to the word and disposition of our Savior. The secular power over riches and worldly goods, which the clergy possesses in contradiction to Christ's precept, to the prejudice of its office and to the detriment of the secular arm, shall be taken and withdrawn from it, and the clergy itself shall be brought back
33:13 Speaker 04 to the evangelical rule and an apostolic life, such as that which Christ and His apostles led.
33:21 Speaker 04 All mortal sins, and in particular, all public and other disorders, which are contrary to God's law, shall in every rank of life be dearly and judiciously prohibited and destroyed by those whose office it is.
33:42 Eleanor Janega? This did not go down well.
33:45 Eleanor Janega? The papacy refused the articles outright and told Sidismon that they were prejudiced against the power of the church, which, to be fair, they totally were.
33:55 Eleanor Janega? Thus, fighting continued. Sidismon thought that in more traditional siege warfare, he and his army would have the upper hand. They were of the opinion that they may have left Zhishka and his men behind, given that they were stationed in Tabor and had theological differences with the Praggers.
34:15 Eleanor Janega? However, the Hussites had come together, and Prague had besieged Zhishka and his troops to come to their aid. Zhishka and his men took up positions on the Vitkov Hill, just outside of Prague. They were able to throw back the combined forces of the Crusaders so successfully that eventually the nobles held only two Prague castles, Vichirad and the Rajeni. But little else. Sidismon fled, and forces sent to relieve the Crusaders were beaten back easily. By November, both castles had fallen to the Hussites. Hussites won, Crusaders nil.
34:59 Eleanor Janega? With this great success, the Hussites turned their attention away from the capital and on to the powerful noble families, like the Rojenbergs, who were not particularly enthusiastic about a bunch of peasants demanding liberty, equality, and a new religion.
35:15 Eleanor Janega? Still, time and again, the Hussites won their battles, and soon, the majority of Bohemia was Hussite, and not under the authority of any king.
35:26 Eleanor Janega? Rather than appointing one, the Hussites decided on the 1st of June 1421 to appoint an interim government, where they would choose members to represent the various parts of the kingdom, 20 in all. Unsurprisingly, Zhishka was one of the two elected from Tabor. For all intents and purposes, Bohemia was now a Hussite state, the first non-Catholic entity of its kind in Europe. This is ridiculously cool from our modern perspective. From the perspective of a bunch of loyal and noble Catholics in the 15th century, it was an outrage. Just who did these upjumped peasants think that they were?
36:11 Eleanor Janega? How could they subvert the correct order of the world? How dare they convert agricultural flails into weapons of war and attack their social betters with such unbecoming and sneaky tactics? And so, a new crusade was called. This time, the Hussites were a little less well-prepared, as they had been having some internal troubles. In Tabor, the peace of the Theoretical Radical Commune was interrupted by the shenanigans of one of my favorite groups of people of all time: the Bohemian Atomites. "The Atomite" here was a reference to their practice of chilling out naked on their way through town.
36:55 Eleanor Janega? They believed that they were the saints of the last days and had rediscovered the utopia of Eden, which meant that stuff like marriage and monogamy and clothes were no longer necessary. I mean, who needs church when you could have a big naked rave around a bonfire, am I right? It was all very summer of love. However, even if I think that they were cool, Jizka did not, and spent a lot of time trying to crack down on the nudity and the free love and the what-have-you. Meanwhile, in Prague, Jan Szaljinsky, the guy who had a rock thrown at him and so threw
37:37 Eleanor Janega? everyone out the window, was attempting to consolidate power under himself. All this squabbling meant that a new army of crusaders were able to sneak into the kingdom and attack the town of Žápetz. They were unable to take it, and soon put to flight when they heard that Jizka was coming, and retreated to the town of Kutnora. Kutnora was home to Bohemia's famous silver mines, which kept the kingdom flush with cash. It was also home to a bunch of German-speaking Catholics who were happy to see Sidsman show back up.
38:15 Eleanor Janega? They managed to keep Ziska and his army outside of the city walls, while the crusaders moved in to encircle them.
38:23 Eleanor Janega? This could have been the end, but on the 21st of December 1421, Ziska managed to pull off what we think was the first ever mobile artillery maneuver.
38:36 Eleanor Janega? He formed all the battle wagons into a single column and charged them, guns blazing, directly into the crusaders' forces. They managed to force their way through and escape, retreating to the city of Kolon. Sijismind ordered that the troops should be allowed to run because he imagined the Hujsites had been totally defeated, and this was a last desperate scrabble for their very lives. Again, I cannot stress enough to you that this man was not very bright.
39:09 Eleanor Janega? Instead, Ziska and his men received reinforcements and returned just 16 days later. The ensuing battle saw Sijismind lose 12,000 soldiers, and he himself was put to flight, barely escaping with his life. The remaining crusaders retreated to the nearby city of Nemezki Brod, were quickly overtaken and killed. For those of you keeping score, that's Hujsites 2, Crusaders 0.
39:42 Eleanor Janega? All of this enemy repelling was all very well and good, but the Czechs were still uncertain about what it would all mean.
39:50 Eleanor Janega? In Prague, Jan Želewski had managed to annoy everyone enough that he was beheaded. Meanwhile, the moderate Pragueers and the radical Taborites were once again at each other's throats.
40:02 Eleanor Janega? The Pragueers wanted to call in a Polish or Lithuanian king to rule over them and stop the Church and Sijismind from breathing down their neck. But the Poles and Lithuanians in question required them to reunite with the Church to make that happen.
40:18 Eleanor Janega? The Taborites were not about to let their ideal communal utopia go down that easily, and the Hujsites fell to infighting.
40:28 Eleanor Janega? Seeing all of this, the Church thought it was a great time to call a third crusade. After all, if the Hulusites were fighting each other, then they were unlikely to be able to face down a unified Catholic front. The trouble was, they couldn't really find one of those. The Poles and Lithuanians weren't inclined to fight the guys who had just invited them to more or less take over the kingdom. The Germans were all fighting with each other for various German reasons, and the only large group who could be convinced to come together was a large Danish contingent under Eric VII, who got to the German lands, realized that no one was coming to hang out with him, and turned around to go home.
41:10 Eleanor Janega? That's Hulusites III: Crusaders Zero.
41:30 Speaker 01 Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasiapro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.
42:05 Speaker 05 Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator, facing a roaring crowd and potential death in the Colosseum? Find out on the Ancients podcast from History Hit. Twice a week, join me, Tristan Hughes, as I hear exciting new research about people living thousands of years ago, from the Babylonians to the Celts to the Romans, and visit the ancient sites which reveal who and just how amazing our distant ancestors were. That's the Ancients from History Hit.
42:52 Eleanor Janega? To celebrate, Žižka made some attempts at taking the fight to Szigetmúd in Hungary, and to extend the reach of the Housites from Bohemia into Moravia, the "other" Czech territory to Bohemia's east. These attempts never really went anywhere, but it was on one such campaign that on the 11th of October 1424, Žižka died. Not of battle wounds, but of an unspecified disease, thought of at the time to be plague. It was a bit of an anticlimactic end to one of the most impressive military careers the world has ever seen.
43:32 Eleanor Janega? With Žižka dead, Pope Martin V was convinced that a fourth crusade would do the trick. "Trust me, bro, just one more crusade, come on, I promise you, just one more." To oversee the Crusader forces, he appointed the English Cardinal Henry Beaufort. Beaufort seems to have been at least somewhat more switched on than the previous Crusaders, in that he decided that a good way to fight the Hussite forces would be to try to beat them at their own game. On the 4th of August 1427, at the Battle of Katchov, his forces attempted to use the Wagenberg technique themselves.
44:15 Eleanor Janega? What Beaufort hadn't apparently cottoned on to was that you needed to train in order to do it successfully, and these Crusaders emphatically had not. They were defeated, soundly. Say it with me, that's Housites 4, Crusaders 0.
44:37 Eleanor Janega? As successful as they had been against all these crusades, the Hussites were getting kind of tired of a bunch of random foreigners showing up and being a bit too forceful about the glories of Catholicism.
44:49 Eleanor Janega? To attempt to dissuade participation in such fripperies, the Hussites began to participate in what they called "spanile yizi", or glorious rides.
45:01 Eleanor Janega? These were essentially guerrilla attacks on neighboring areas that had aided the crusaders.
45:07 Eleanor Janega? Whether in Saxony, Hungary, or Cilecia, Hussites could and would show up and make your life miserable. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander, and all of that. And yes, that is my own personal goose pun. Thank you.
45:24 Eleanor Janega? What with all of the losing, the Church began to think it might need to actually work on coming to terms with the fact that the Hussites were here to stay. They suggested that a delegation of Hussites present themselves to the Council of Basel on the 3rd of March 1431. The Hussites, who were also interested in peace, agreed. But they suggested that representatives of the other types of Christianity, including representatives from the Orthodox East, be present. The Church balked, mad that anyone would point out that other types of Christians did in fact exist, and instead of seeking peace called a "fifth crusade" against Bohemia.
46:08 Eleanor Janega? This one was led by the Roman Cardinal Giuliano Cesareini, as papal legate, and with Frederick I, the elector of Brandenburg, at its helm.
46:19 Eleanor Janega? They got as far as the town of Domajlica and were putting it to siege when the Hussites showed up.
46:27 Eleanor Janega? By now, Hussitism had escaped the borders of the Czech lands, and alongside the Czechs, there were about 6,000 Polish Hussites as well. Frustratingly, we don't know exactly what went down, but according to legend, on the 14th of August 1431, the crusaders were busy sieging the city when they heard the army approaching, singing the Hussite battle hymn "Kto js tu bojoj bojovnici", "We who are the warriors of God".
47:02 Eleanor Janega? The Crusaders panicked and began to flee through the thick Bohemian woods. The Hussites, in hot pursuit, cut down their antagonists. It was, again, in utter rout.
47:18 Eleanor Janega? They seized some 8,000 wagons and all of the Crusaders' equipment, including Cardinal Cesarelli's luggage and the papal bull calling for the crusade.
47:29 Eleanor Janega? Final score at full time: Hussites 5, Crusaders 0.
47:37 Eleanor Janega? The Church was by now apparently sufficiently embarrassed, and on the 15th of October 1431, they formally invited the Hussites to attend the Council of Basel to find a way forward.
47:51 Eleanor Janega? By now, the Hussite delegation sported members from varying nations. Alongside a cadre of Czechs, there were also Poles, and even an Englishman, Peter Payne, the so-called English Hussite.
48:06 Eleanor Janega? Negotiations were slow at best, and this meant that back home, the Hussites had time to, once again, fall to infighting.
48:16 Eleanor Janega? In the Czech lands, the Taborites were fighting their more moderate counterparts. At the Battle of Lipanyi on the 30th of May 1434, the Taborites and the concept of equality among people that they had been fighting for were finally defeated.
48:35 Eleanor Janega? In Poland, the Hussite factions were defeated by Catholics at the Battle of Grodniaki in 1439, the end of the last official Hussite war on Polish soil.
48:48 Eleanor Janega? With Hussitism somewhat contained both within the borders of the Czech lands and safely inside a less radical social vision, the Church was now more willing to make peace. The remaining Hussites created a document known as the Compacts, modeled on the original Articles of Prague, and asking that:
49:08 Speaker 04 "The Holy Sacrament is to be given freely in both kinds to all Christians in Bohemia and Moravia, and to those elsewhere who adhere to the faith of these two countries. All mortal sins shall be punished and extirpated by those whose office it is so to do."
49:28 Speaker 04 The word of God is to be freely and truthfully preached by the priests of the Lord and by worthy deacons. The priests in the time of the law of grace shall claim no ownership of worldly possessions.
49:44 Eleanor Janega? Sigismund and the Church assented on the 5th of July 1463 in theory. In practice, the Church wasn't particularly happy that there was a whole non-Catholic kingdom in what used to be the money-making centre of the Holy Roman Empire.
50:04 Eleanor Janega? When the Hussite king, George of Bodibradi, came to the Bohemian throne in 1458, they excommunicated him and forbade any Catholics from working under him.
50:15 Eleanor Janega? Various attempts to take the kingdom over would come from time to time, until, in 1458, the religious peace of Cuthenora was promulgated, and the Church officially gave up on defeating the Hussites. The peace stated that both the Hussite and Catholic faiths would be equal under the law.
50:36 Eleanor Janega? Bohemia was now officially, finally, at peace.
50:42 Eleanor Janega? And Hussite.
50:45 Eleanor Janega? This didn't mean that things were all fine. Bohemia had been totally ravaged. What we estimate as a population of around 2.8 to 3.37 million people in the year 1400 had dropped to around 1.5 to 1.85 million people 100 years later. It did mean, however, that a whole European kingdom was now out from under the thumb of the Church, and that a new form of Christianity and Catholicism were living more or less peaceably side by side. Until the Thirty Years' War broke out in the 17th century, but that's another story for a different podcast.
51:28 Eleanor Janega? The Czechs continued to revere Hus as a national hero, and he's even considered a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
51:37 Eleanor Janega? So why doesn't anyone talk about this in the Anglo sphere? This story has everything: upstart priests fighting for justice, one-eyed military geniuses blazing new trails, the humiliation of the united forces of the church, a whole honest-to-God Protestant kingdom before the term Protestant was even invented. Naked people!
52:02 Eleanor Janega? Your guess is as good as mine, but I think that a lot of it simply comes down to two things: language and empire.
52:14 Eleanor Janega? The Housites wrote a lot of their initial religious ideas in Latin, like most medieval people. But as the movement took off, increasingly, things were written in Czech, and most people just don't bother to learn minority languages, even if they are as pretty and cool as Czech is. Secondly, the Czechs never ended up taking over anything. Instead, during the great imperial colonial conquests of the early modern period, they were busy being subsumed, quite violently, into the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a position that they would have to fight their way out of after the First World War with the formation of Czechoslovakia. Unfortunately, because of the way old-fashioned, great-man history is written,
52:59 Eleanor Janega? we just don't bother to look at countries that didn't go on to take over a bunch of other ones later.
53:05 Eleanor Janega? So despite that we very much have a number of interesting and indeed, great men on display during the Hussite Wars, they just don't really get a look in.
53:16 Eleanor Janega? So instead, Martin Luther gets all the credit for cribbing Hus's notes after the fact and then hiding out in a castle. You heard me.
53:28 Eleanor Janega? The Hussites are one of those genius, messy, and indomitable groups that shows us that medieval people were more than just meekly subservient and accepting of their law. These were people who were willing and able to fight for what meant most to them. They were bold thinkers, fighters, and yes, sometimes enthusiastic defenestrators. They were ready to set the world on fire, sometimes literally, for what they believed in. The least we can do is acknowledge that they were successful in doing just that. It really was one hell of a ride.
54:23 Eleanor Janega? Thank you for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my recent film, The Medieval Apocalypse, and ad-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com/subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions, or wherever you get your podcasts, and tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time.
55:15 Speaker 01 Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasiapro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.
Previous Edward IV: A King's Will Next The Galloglass: Gaelic Mercenary Warriors Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated