Žižka: Reformation and Crusade in Hussite Bohemia, 1420-1421

Bohemia, 1420. The King was dead. Less and less able to resist the encroachments of higher nobility and ever more prone to leaving the matters of state in the hands of others, Wenceslas IV of Bohemia had passed away that previous August. Allegedly, a stroke killed him upon hearing the news of the defenestration in Prague of anti-Reformation councillors. Wenceslas’s brother Sigmund (or Sigismund) of Luxembourg, King of the Romans, expected to succeed to the Bohemian throne. Enter the Hussites. By early 1420, the Bohemian adherents of early-Reformation scholar and preacher Jan Hus, who died a martyr’s death in 1415, had grown in number and confidence. Radical Hussites even founded communes, awaiting the Second Coming of Christ. Sigmund, frustrated by his stalled succession and obligated to the Catholic Church, organized a crusade against the Bohemian heretics, supported by his Catholic loyalists. The Hussite factions rallied, fought the crusaders, and in June 1420 soundly defeated them before the gates of Prague. When Sigmund’s rivals in the Holy Roman Empire launched a second crusade, the Hussites beat them again in late 1421. In the first two years of the Hussite Wars, the one-eyed haytman Jan Žižka and other Hussite leaders had managed to secure two great strongholds—Prague and Thabor—along with most of Bohemia, making the Hussites a power which would soon threaten all of neighboring Europe. In Žižka, designer Petr Mojžíš (The Bell of Treason) brings Volko's Levy & Campaign series to the heart of late Middle-Ages Europe. The iron Lords of the Holy Roman Empire can withstand even crossbow bolts, and gunpowder is in its infancy. A new army emerges to collide with the seemingly invincible knights: peasants with no training but fanatical religious faith and therefore no mercy. The Hussites start with almost no Strongholds, cannot obtain Coin from the populace, and are slowed by the vulnerable flock of women and children accompanying their flailmen. They must build their capabilities step by step and use unorthodox tactics and weapons like war wagons and various firearms. Or perhaps their religious songs can even scare away the crusaders! The seemingly strong Catholics have challenges too. The number of crusaders joining the cause as well as the timing of the crusade are uncertain and the logistics daunting. Two mighty fortresses and a fortified hill complicate the struggle for control of Praha (Prague). —description from the publisher