A Different Chalice - A Hussite Timeline

[Salvador79]

Does this update means that Muscovy, if it lasts as an independent state, will be less autocratic? And does Novgorod gets more chances for survival?

Well, at least the way it looks now, Ivan the Terrible and the like are butterflied away.
Maybe another Russian principality chooses the path of centralisation and autocracy, though? That`s certainly not excluded.
But the Muscovy-->Russia we know will, in all likelihood, never come to happen. Instead, it´s still a much more decentralised feudal polity. Large, but weak for the moment. (That´s usually when the vultures appear and pick their pieces...)
Novgorod hasn`t changed in comparison to OTL - but it doesn`t face the pressure and threat from Muscovy anymore, at least not for two decades or so. That does open up a window of survival opportunity for Novgorod - but it might as well just mean that Novgorod will be absorbed by someone else.
At least that`s how I see things so far - but I´m also curious as to how others think.

 

[Salvador79]

Here`s the first part of the update on Bohemia!


Bohemia 1425-1429: A Golden Age

The few years between 1425 and the Fourth Crusade led by Friedrich in 1429 were a golden age for the Bohemian and Silesian Confederacy. The country was at peace – or at least under a truce – with its neighbors, and the deep internal divisions were beginning to heal. New social structures began to function, and there was even a modest economic recovery, although all was not well by far. Theologically, it has often been stressed how the groundworks of what would become the Reformed Catechism were laid in this period, but this should not make us blind for the vast religious plurality of these years.

(a) Developments in economy and society

The Peace of Lublin brought some relief to the Confederacy`s economy, not just because the defenders of Hussite Bohemia and Silesia could return to their villages and towns, to their fields, mines, and workshops, but also because Poland and Lithuania consequently lifted the trade embargo against them. The exodus of many highly skilled German artisans was still felt, and so was the ongoing German embargo, which prevented especially “high tech” products from arriving in Bohemia or Silesia. (For example, from 1416 onwards, almost no new clocks arrived in the Hussite lands, and repairing the old ones did not always work perfectly either.) But now that trade with Poland and Lithuania was possible again, some of the raw materials which Bohemia did not possess (although it did possess quite a lot of others), or at least not in sufficient quantities, could enter the country once again. This was especially true for salt – quintessential for the preservation of food, which is why, after 1426, malnutrition decreased considerably –, but also, for example, for saltpeter, which, as an ingredient of gunpowder, was crucial to Hussite military strength which, from the beginning, had based itself on hand-held firearms and had increasingly come to rely on heavy cannons, too.

The gradual and uneven transformation processes from utopian communistic structures of the enthusiastic beginning towards a monetary and less egalitarian, but still comparatively cohesive market economy has already been described. It should not be omitted, though, that a different, equalizing development, which benefitted Bohemian and Silesian peasants overall, took place, too. When servitude, de facto overcome anyway, was outlawed, too, peasant mobility increased even more. Some ended up in the more traditional towns, where the reviving production created labor shortages (still consequences of German emigration); others found a plot of land in one of the egalitarian obce; others found employment in military service both at home and abroad, where Bohemian experience was (gnashingly) recognized as valuable. Rural labor shortage was exacerbated by the consequences of warfare, famine and epidemics in the years around 1420. Its main consequence was that the landlords of the remaining middle-sized and large estates – among the gentry of the Poděbrady League, but also towns like Nymburk and Kostelec – could only charge small rents from tenant farmers, or had to pay decent wages to seasonal labourers. By 1429, Bohemia`s and Silesia`s peasantry were on the way towards being the continent´s economically most comfortable peasantry. One consequence of this was that more and more country folk decided to send their children to one of the many Hussite schools, which had sprung up in all different flavours throughout the country.

As peasants and craftsmen gained self-confidence and felt themselves as the lords in their own land, the old elites, especially the knightly gentry, struggled to find their place in the consolidating society. The developments at the confederal level [more on that later] offered opportunity at least for some of them, while an increasing permeation of religious morality in matters of commerce and finance placed further hindrances on the business especially of Bohemia`s merchant class.


(b) and (c) will be political and military, and theological developments, which I hope to upload next Tuesday and Wednesday.

 

[Salvador79]

Cont.:

(b) Political and military developments

Socio-economic stabilization and a growing mainstream popularity of Chelćicky`s pacifist Hussitism strengthened localist tendencies inevitably encountered in any pre-modern federation. Content free and self-governing peasants and craftsmen cared for a smooth, stable and equitable functioning of their village or small town first, and without existential external threats, they put its interests first. While such anti-centralist tendencies were not so pronounced in Prague, in Tabor and its four fellow Founding Obce or among the Ore Mountain Pikards, they were strong in the small towns of North-Eastern as well as Southern Bohemia, in the rural communities of the Chodové as well as in those formed within the liberated former Nysa Duchy. The Oath of the spříseženstvo affirmed this preference for a loose confederacy: war and peace as well as new laws could only be decided upon by a nine-tenth majority – a hurdle which was rarely jumped.

In a multicultural and cosmopolitan city like Prague, a ravaged victim of recent aggression like Breslau, and a politico-intellectual centres like Tabor itself, this was viewed with disquietude. From late 1426 / early 1427 on, the elites of the revolution were increasingly worried about Bohemia`s and Silesia`s ability to remain free and defend itself within the existing loose framework.

Their ranks were joined by individuals of a background which, at first glance, appears most unlikely and removed from that of the revolutionary zealots: noblemen from the Poděbrady League. Of course, quite a few leaders of the radical Hussite wing had already had knightly backgrounds: Jan Žižka, Nicholas of Hus, Konopišt of Sternberg… But now, in the phase of consolidation, even conservative members of the gentry attempted a rapprochement and sought to find new roles in the common confederal institutions for themselves. Chivalric self-concepts of having a wider geographico-political horizon may have contributed to this – but the main reason was the above-mentioned socio-economic development concerning rural rents and wages, which benefitted the peasantry, but eroded the powerbase of the gentry. With less and less means at their disposal, dozens of knights came to realize that they could neither play an influential role individually by themselves, and nor were they satisfied with their merely obstructive veto power they commonly held as the Poděbrady League in the annual assemblies which were often deadlocked anyway.

Formally, there was no way to change the constitutional outlook of the confederacy – not against the solid and strengthening block of anti-centralists. From 1423 to 1426, annual budgets allotted by the general assemblies to the confederal institutions even decreased.

Creative political minds would soon find a back door, though.

It bore the name of Kutná Hora. Ever since the establishment of the spříseženstvo, Bohemia`s silver town had the special status of a common dominion. Its administration was presided over by a rýchtar elected by the annual assembly. With allotted budgets decreasing and demand for the silver mined and minted in the common dominion rising, the contribution handed over by the rýchtar to the confederal treasury became more and more important.

Evidently, such an important position could be filled only as part of a larger deal between the factions which dominated Bohemian-Silesian politics and the annual assemblies, too. For example, to get a Taborite and a member of the moderate towns elected as hejtmans, it would help to fill the position of rýchtar of Kutná Hora either with a Poděbrady knight, or a pan-Slavic Silesian, or a Praguer of a different religious orientation from that of the Taborite.

The rýchtars of 1423/4, 1424/5 and 1425/6 were bleak compromise candidates, who kept their town quietly running and turned over nice amounts of money into the confederal treasury, yet who inevitably faced allegations of embezzlement on the assemblies. In 1426, though, the assembly elected Jan Žižka [1] as rýchtar. The 65-year old enjoyed incredible moral authority across the entire spectrum and throughout all of Bohemia. He was a candidate whom delegates trusted not to enrich himself – and, in the context of a very pacifistically-minded assembly in 1426, the military-minded Žižka was Tabor`s candidate for rýchtar of Kutná Hora when the two hejtmans of the spříseženstvo had to be noted “doves”.

To be continued.

[1] IOTL, he was dead by this point in time. Since he died of the plague during a military campaign which ITTL never took place, though, I thought it was OK to have him survive.

 

[KotoR45]

Loving these mini updates! I enjoy hearing about the way this brave excitement is trying to work. Though the nobility of Bohemia have been weakened to the point that if the confederation survives more than just a couple of decades their days will be numbered, it's nice to see them ally themselves with some of the less isolationist factions. No matter what comes of this, I'm sure it will be thoroughly interesting.

 

[Salvador79]

@KotoR45 , I am so glad that you like it! The shortness of the updates is due to the scarcity of my spare time, but I promise to produce one or two more this week. I share your views concerning the long-term perspective of the Bohemian nobility; similar things happened in Switzerland; but then again, the future of this brave adventure is still unknown!
@Archangel , thanks for your steadfast readership and feedback! Your likes and messages always tell me that my TL is still being read, and have more than once made my day.

 

[Salvador79]

Cont.:

Žižka interpreted the role of rýchtar of Kutná Hora very differently from his predecessors. Drawing on his enormous political charisma, he gathered a large informal group of “advisors” in the common dominion, which united some of the most politically astute strategical thinkers in Bohemia and Silesia, without having to distribute offices except for very few individuals who had no means to sustain themselves otherwise.

Žižka`s Kutná Hora group was the 15th century equivalent of a think-tank – and it was prepared to not only think but act. The spříseženstvo needed to close its security gaps, the group quickly agreed. It needed more defensible borders, and it needed some degree of military professionalization and centralization. None of these aims would be pursued by the newly-elected pacifistic hejtmans, who even thought they could negotiate a peace treaty with the Roman German King Friedrich, – but somebody had to do the job. And if not them, who would?

Three gaps were identified as most urgent: the Elbe valley from Usti Northwards, the Ohře valley from Kadan Westwards, and Moravia`s larger towns. Žižka preferred the latter: if only one target could be met within a year, this one would be the biggest achievement, creating ample new common dominia on which next year`s centralization efforts could build.

Žižka and his Kutná Hora group used a loophole in the confederal “constitution”: the Oaths explicitly stated that no obec, no nobleman, and no elected hejtman would take up arms without all of them taking up their arms, and that if only one in ten assembled men minded, no-one would take up arms. But the Oaths were silent about military actions of a rýchtar of a common dominion (because no-one had anticipated such a thing).

Using the comfortable income the dominion brought him each month, Žižka acquired the military dernier cri from Prague: cannons, larger and more powerful than any before, and which cooled faster, too. He hired a few thousand mercenaries. The latter was incredibly easy – eight years after the Defenestration of Prague, Bohemia seemed to abound in men who were ready to earn their living by going into battle – many more than the peaceful last one-and-a-half year had made many people guess. Especially if it was the Invincible Žižka who led them into battle…

Moravia fell as easily as Žižka had anticipated. Its towns had been granted almost total autonomy by Sigismund, who felt no wish to be defeated, humiliated and dethroned by Hussites all over again and who concentrated on maintaining Hungarian control in Serbia and Wallachia against local factions of pro-Ottoman boyars. The campaign began in February already with a successful surprise attack on the Moravian allied forces, who were supported by Sigismund only with a token cavalry contribution, in the Battle of Ostrava. After a Hussite victory, the namesake town and the castle which guarded Moravia`s Northern gate towards Poland were taken. A few successful sieges later, in which the new artillery proved incontestable, Olomuc, Brno, and Znojmo had fallen into Hussite hands, too, by the end of April.

In yet another hour of triumph, Žižka showed caution and circumspection. He was operating in a completely grey zone; yet what he sought was not to overthrow the Bohemian confederal state, but to strengthen it. Thus, he resigned himself to establishing control over the conquered towns with the help of local sympathizers, and to plundering a number of monasteries in order to reward his mercenaries at minimum cost for the common dominion`s cash box, and then disbanded the mercenary forces. With a few of his closest followers, he personally conducted negotiations with rural groups who had remained relatively neutral throughout the conflict (e.g. the Moravian Vlachs, the Haná and the Horáci), then they returned to Kutná Hora.

At the annual assembly in 1427, pacifists and anti-centralists raged furiously – but they could not destroy Žižka`s youngest legacy. The assembly amended the Oath, explicitly inserting the interdiction against a rýchtar`s taking up arms without general consent, and limiting the number of soldiers he may hire to 1,200. And, of course, a new rýchtar would replace Žižka in Kutná Hora. But nobody proposed to hand back control over Moravia to Sigismund`s loyalists, and the creation of free obce was possible only where the population was at least mildly supportive of the Bohemian-Silesian spříseženstvo.

Thus, the assembly mandated the two new hejtmans to continue the negotiations with Moravian groups which Žižka had begun, and which would ultimately lead to the creation of the new obce of Horácko, Haná, Lašsko, Valašsko, Podyj, Hřebečko and Odry and their admission into the (now) Bohemian-Silesian-Moravian spříseženstvo in 1428. Olomuc, Brno and Znojmo, where Hussite control over mostly hostile Catholic urban populations was still feeble, were declared into three separate common dominia, each with its own rýchtar. The centralizers had achieved two of their goals, thus: securing the Moravian flank, and broadening the resource base from which future confederal administrations could draw. Although they had drawn the ire of the assembled majority against them, they had made an impressive appearance as the latest political faction in Bohemian politics.

In 1428, the group around Žižka had to adapt its strategies thus. Some of the centralizers secured positions in the new common dominia`s administrations. A solid core around one of Žižka`s most militant followers, Andry Prokop, resolved to attack the second target on the list, the Eger valley, as complete freelancers with no official backing. With very limited means, their onslaught on Vary, Sokolov and Cheb took a high human toll on them as well as on the Catholics they attacked, especially since the population of Cheb stubbornly continued to put up resistance. Ultimately, they had to leave Cheb alone, but established new (and very militant) obce for themselves in Vary and Sokolov, from where they had expelled anyone who was suspicious of harbouring anti-Hussite feelings (as usual, particularly people who spoke German), while noblemen who had participated in the adventure took to the task of rebuilding and manning some of the castles watching over the valley which their company had only recently stormed.

This time, the majority in the annual assembly, afraid of growing centralism, refused to condone the aggression post factum. Vary and Sokolov were not admitted. In reverse, this meant that the Hussite revolution had sprouted yet another offshoot beyond the confederacy`s borders.

The hostilities in Moravia and in the Ohře valley must not contort our view on the political developments of 1425-29, though. Overall, these were peaceful years, in which only very few people and only peripheral areas were affected by armed conflict. And the new rift between centralizers and localizers was, by no means, the most palpable political development of these years.

A candidate for such a widely felt political development was the consolidation and formalization of the rules of post-revolutionary living-together in the highly different communities of the Hussite realm into six distinct and separate legal traditions:

In Southern and Western Bohemian obce, Taborite Law emerged. At its base stands the conception of the polity as a close communion of coreligionists, who hold all property in common, even though throughout the period of consolidation, more and more rules stemming from the extension of separate possession rights and the reintroduction of market exchange had to be established. Each Taborite obec takes its decisions in general assemblies of all citizens, who also elect a Small Council, which serves both as communal administration and as judicial body, and whose members hold their offices for one year only without a possibility of re-election. While during the revolution, women and young people were actively involved in politics and warfare, in the process of consolidation, citizenship became restricted to adult male “members of the community” (i.e. Hussites), who also had to serve in the town`s defense, which was organized by four hejtmans elected annually, too. Taborite Law did not explicitly forbid non-Hussites to live in its obce, but it assumed that this was normally not the case: since all property was supposed to be held in common by “the community” and the community was formed by the believers, any property of non-Hussites was a legal non-entity, for example. Also, if non-Hussites were involved in legal conflicts, these would be ruled by the Small Councils where non-Hussites were not represented (and which usually made use of ample Hussite religious symbolism). At least, Taborite Law soon developed safety mechanisms against ostracizing members of the community by branding them as “non-believers”: such a verdict had to be agreed upon by a majority of two thirds in a Great Obec, and ostracized citizens could appeal to the National Synod. Overall, Taborite Law emerged from entirely new social relations and had to come up with original solutions. Some of the more hilarious details included, for example, specifications of how pathways must be marked where oxen-carts could travel, or how grazing rights for sheep across obce were to be settled. As was the case with other central European communal legal traditions, too, the process of legal homogenization came about through Tabor`s Small Council`s function as Court of Appeal for cases hotly debated in other obce. In 1429, almost half of Bohemia`s territory was organized in accordance with Taborite Law.

A variation of Taborite Law in North-Eastern Bohemia was Orebite Law, for which Hradec Kralové served as Court of Appeal.

An even stricter communistic outlook developed in the Ore Mountains as the Pikard Rule. It defined its obce as quasi-monastic communes, stuck with the provisions of common property without exceptions and with the abolition of marriage, and explicitly excluded non-members of the Pikard confession from permanent residence. To a great extent, it was the extension of radical Beghard rules onto the level of entire villages. Necessary innovations concerned difficult questions like how child-rearing was supposed to be organized, for no Pikard commune was able to entirely prevent such things from happening.

A more liberal mindset was embodied in Prague Law, one of the most recent trends. In Prague, Breslau, Opole, Časlav, Litomyšl, Kouřim and Šumperk, different political traditions had developed after 1422`s anti-aristocratic revolts or even after the Silesian Easter revolt, which had been supported by members of religiously varied backgrounds. As a result, Prague Law shared the democratic features of the above-mentioned codices, but it lacked their theocratic exclusivity. Instead, there were provisions about how different religious communities, but also crafters´ guilds etc. could form corporations. While important decisions would be taken by the general assembly, too, jurisdiction was in the hands of jurymen elected from each of the different corporations. And while, even here, Catholics and Jews would not gain outright citizenship, at least their rights and their property were treated like everybody else`s, and if they came into conflict with others, their cases would be judged by multi-partisan bodies. Consequently, the towns with Prague Law, like the towns with the traditional Magdeburg Law, were havens within the borders of the confederacy which attracted the remaining Catholics and Jews.

The (predominantly Catholic and rural) Silesian duchies (except for Breslau, Opole and parts of Nysa Duchy) retained their pre-revolutionary legal and institutional traditions to a greater extent. Similarly, yet also differently, the culturally different mountain communities of the (Orthodox) Moravian Vlachi experienced some changes after they were freed from Sigismund`s overlordship in 1427, but the few hints which we can take from the mere two years up until 1429 betray considerable cultural and political divergences in how they organized their own communities from what was becoming the new norm elsewhere across the spříseženstvo.


To be continued (hopefully tomorrow) with a short part c) on theological developments.

 

[Salvador79]

Cont.:

(c) Theological developments

Looking at Hussite theology in the second half of the 1420s, what strikes us most is still the apparently endless heterogeneity of countless smaller and larger groups. Insofar, no substantial change seems to have occurred from the eruption of the revolution in 1419/20 and its heyday of sectarian chiliastic ecstasy. Virtually everything – it appears – was controversial among the Hussites, from the nature of the eucharist over the authorities of scripture, patristic and scholastic thought, to moral philosophical questions concerning warfare, punishment, violence, statehood and charity.

Upon second glance, a few trends which distinguish the second half of the 1420s from the first half of the decade can nevertheless be reconstructed. Also, the new Hussite communities beyond Bohemia`s borders, especially those in Poland, show significant divergences from how Bohemia´s theological landscape looks.

One important overarching theological development, which had already manifested itself in the first half of the 1420s and which has been discussed already, was a subsiding chiliastic ecstasy. This can be seen most clearly in a comparison of Pikard communities with the rest of Bohemia. Among the Pikards, the chiliasm of Húska and others who combined Beghard and Free Spiriter theology into a new radical sect which believed themselves to be elated, sanctified, freed of sin and were still in expectation of a very real Apocalypse and New Jerusalem, persisted considerably longer than anywhere else in the wider Hussite sphere. It was this chiliastic exceptionalism which kept Pikard communities so fervent, so extreme in their dismissal of social and cultural traditions, so fluid with regard to social structures, and also so prone to repeated purges, in which individuals who were found lacking of sainthood and of an internalization of the Law of God were expelled, often forever, from the community.

Elsewhere, reminiscences of chiliasm had merged with other fundamental Hussite theological tenets – the centrality of the “Law of God” (as opposed to the law of the worldly church or other worldly authorities, i.e. a fundamentally theocratic, anticlerical and democratic outlook) and the emphasis on “faith formed by love” (fides caritate formata) – into a blended religious-political sense of living in God`s chosen polity where especially social sins (i.e. injustices) were overcome and more personal sins were bound to gradually recede, too, as Bohemia`s (Silesia`s, Moravia`s, …) Hussites grew out of their old ways and into new ones (a hope for common redemption, as it were, with a later expiration date).

The last point touches yet another observable trend in late 1420s mainstream Hussite theology: a focus on practical questions of moral philosophy, from the sinfulness of money-lending for interest over the differential social duties of men and women to the problem of the death penalty. On almost all of these matters, the different branches of Hussitism found divergent answers during this period. One reason for these divergences was the absence of a consensus regarding the sources on which any inquiry into what the Law of God actually consisted of had to rely: while some radicals acknowledged only the Holy Writ, anticipating much later Biblicist movements in their rigor, more moderate groups also included dogmas from early Christianity, with some even accepting the entire patristic canon from Polycarp to Augustine. The convergence which ultimately led to the formulation of a Reformed Catechism would come much later – for now, what the different sects had in common was that they asked themselves the same (kind of) questions.

All of the above-mentioned trends were only observable in (those parts of) the confederacy, where social structures had indeed been turned upside down and Hussites formed a majority. Polish Hussitism, on the other hand, developed quite differently. Operating in a feudal society which they could not basically alter, Hussite priests and laymen distinguished themselves from their Catholic neighbours primarily on the liturgical level, where Calixtianism dominated near-totally (Polish liturgy, wine for everyone).

Regarding the old debates which had sparked violence throughout the heyday of the revolution, no further developments or reconciliations were achieved. In the question of the Eucharist, the overwhelming majority of Hussites even in the confederacy were Calixtians, who shared wine and bread standing shoulder to shoulder, even though communities still differed with regards to the age at which they admitted children to the Eucharistic communion. Pikards and other Free Spiriters as well as some of the Old Waldensians and Lollards continued to reject this view, but while Waldensians and Lollards still shared bread and wine during service and merely differed from mainstream Calixtians with regards to their judgments on the nature of the wine and bread after the communion, Pikard and Free Spirit groups celebrated quite different feasts altogether.

Moving from doctrine to ecclesiastical structure, all Hussite groups within the confederacy shared the distaste for and were characterized by the absence of a scholarly trained clergy and of universities with professors of theology. Instead, they favoured lower-threshold and more practical schools – an important structural factor which contributed to the shift in emphasis away from Europe`s well-established scholastic disputes and towards more down-to-earth moral questions. On the negative side, though, this trend began to sever the ties between the Hussite confederacy and the broader European world, where humanism was growing in size, depth and influence, even more. Additionally, the decrease of priests trained in the Greek and Hebrew languages would have proved highly problematic for any future critical translations of the Bible – a very important task for the Hussite movement altogether, and one into which it put great effort –, had this trend continued for a few more decades. (None of this applied to Poland`s Hussites, though, who were, for once, theologically more competitive in this aspect. Confronted with much more virulent and direct criticism from Catholic scholars especially from Krakow, they produced a greater amount of apologetic literature aimed at the wider non-Hussite public and preserved a higher esteem for scholarship. Founding the Hussite university at Melsztyn was one of Lord Spytek`s lasting contributions to history.)


OK, update on Bohemia finished! Next week, it´ll get dirty and we`ll reach a major pitchfork. I´ll introduce you to Friedrich`s Crusade against the confederacy and let you decide who prevails.

 

[Augenis]

Looking good!

 

[Salvador79]

1429-1431 (I): Friedrich III. and the Fourth Crusade against the Hussites

Throughout June 1429, Friedrich III. gathered troops and oversaw final preparations for his attack against the Hussite confederation. In a speech on a (poorly attended) Imperial Diet in Magdeburg, imbued with the enthusiasm from the successful crack-downs he had orchestrated in Wismar, Rostock, and most recently in Pomerania-Stolp, he declared his offensive as a crusade against the heretics, still covered by the papal bull of ten years ago – which made it the fourth crusade against the Hussites, after 1420, 1421, and 1422.

But while Friedrich alluded to a certain continuity, there were important differences which set this fourth crusade apart from the previous ones conducted by Sigismund (1420 and 1422), Albert of Habsburg and Friedrich of Meißen (1421).

For one thing, Sigismund had sought to win his Bohemian throne at first, so he had called crusaders from all over Christian Europe with the promise of glory, religious merit, and of course some loot, should they succeed in quelling the rebellion with which he was faced. Albert and Friedrich of Meißen had both wanted something from Sigismund – the designation of a son-in-law as successor to the thrones of Bohemia and Hungary the one, the elevation into the rank of prince-elector the other –, and so they and their retainers had put up a show, as best they could (which wasn`t very good, especially in Albert`s case), of beating up the Bohemians. And finally, Sigismund had gathered the better part of the forces of his one kingdom in order to regain his second one. In all three previous crusades, thus, the integrity of the Kingdom of Bohemia was not thrown into question: it was to be restored to the heir, not carved up.

In 1429, things were different. In Magdeburg, Friedrich declared what was plain to see for everyone – namely that the Kingdom of Bohemia had ceased to exist. Along with all its estates, it had fallen from the one true Catholic faith, or defected to the Polish King Wladislaw Jagiełło II. with the exception of Lusatia, Cheb, and a handful of small towns in the Elbe valley. Whoever would help him conquer Bohemia, Silesia, and Moravia could be rewarded with a slice of the cake: a town, a few villages and castles, or maybe even an entire new county, depending on the contribution… and the next Bohemian Diet could only be called together, and the next Bohemian King only be elected once “faith, law, and order” were restored to these Eastern lands, which meant the complete removal of all structures created by the Hussites in the meantime and the ruthless and unconditional extermination of the heresy. While Albert of Habsburg, the designated heir to the Bohemian throne, and Friedrich von Meißen, who still resented Friedrich`s coup against Sigismund, refused to accept this declaration, the rest of the Diet appeared to share Friedrich`s views and showed renewed interest in the whole Bohemian business. There was something to be gained: good fertile lands and resource-rich mountains, to be acquired by whoever managed to subjugate or depopulate it from its heretical Bohemian, Silesian, and Moravian inhabitants.

Secondly, Sigismund, Albert and Friedrich of Meißen had relied mostly or even exclusively on traditional military tactics from the Golden Age of the European knight: heavy cavalry accompanied by a not-so-disciplined infantry armed with bows, pikes, and shields. Their Hussite enemies, even when they were grossly outnumbered, had triumphed against these armies thanks to the use of war wagons, hand-held firearms, and a great morale. Over the past few years, they had even begun their own offensives, relying primarily on innovative heavy artillery along with their older tactics.

Friedrich III., though, had understood this problem, and he had made meticulous and far-reaching plans. His fourth crusade did not rely on the haphazard assortment of contributions made by various vassals, and neither did it invite an undisciplined horde of soldiers of fortune. Friedrich had hired, with the funds from the Hussitenpfennig, a not very large but well-equipped, disciplined and professional army of select mercenaries who understood how the Hussites went into battle, and who had devised counter-tactics which focused on heavy artillery and Pistalen for the infantry, too. Among the contingents by various vassals which he would, of course, also lead into battle, Friedrich put some faith merely into groups from the Lusatian Sechsstädtebund and from the Vogtland, who followed his tactical leadership and had prepared for the kind of battle Friedrich planned to give.

This left Friedrich with some 8,000 to 10,000 selected mercenaries plus approximately 2,000 more whom Friedrich trusted to do what he asked them to do, plus a rest of 30,000 to 40,000 whose usefulness he was less sure of. The distribution across the arms was less cavalry-reliant than the three previous crusades, but there would still be a large number of horses.

Imperial war preparations were so conspicuous that the Hussites had ample time to prepare, too. In early June, an urgency assembly was convened, in which the quantities and details of each obec´s contributions were reaffirmed, general mobilization was agreed upon, and two new hejtmans – the Orebite Jan Čapek ze Sán and the Taborite Jan Roháč z Dubé, both from the radical faction, but also both with ample and glorious military experiences – were elected: Čapek ze Sán would hold supreme direct command over the gathered confederal army, while Roháč z Dubé was given exceptionary powers so as to gear the back area as best as possible towards sustaining the defensive efforts.

This pair of hejtmans was so strikingly unbalanced that the urgency assembly decided on additional measures in order to restore political balance while still allowing for a good management of the war effort. A new Permanent Small Assembly was created for the duration of the war; it would only consist of twenty people, but this was enough to include the moderate Bohemian towns, the Silesian obce and duchies, and the Moravian ones in the equation. The Permanent Small Assembly would be allowed to do everything only a regular assembly could normally do (levy taxes, pass, amend, or repeal laws, appoint or replace officials, conclude treaties with foreign powers etc.), but everything it did would remain valid only as long as the war lasted, and for one year at maximum, after which everything it had done would have to be confirmed by a regular assembly or else it would become null and void.

This new leadership witnessed, to a great extent, a swift mobilization. A handful of obce which eschewed their duties or objected to the mobilization for war on principal grounds or … were subjected to forceful drafts and confiscations, though – authoritarian and violent measures against fellow Hussite communities the likes of which had not been witnessed for years.

By early July, Jan Čapek ze Sán led an army of 30,000 to 40,000 defenders of the spříseženstvo downriver along the Elbe towards where he was sure Friedrich III.`s imperial army would strike. (The majority of Hussite men in the best fighting age was still in the back area, keeping supply production running, but also guarding other borders e.g. in the South, South-West and South-East in case of Bavarian, Austrian or Hungarian attacks.) They were mostly peasants and sons of peasants, accompanied by a mere hundred or maybe two hundred of men on horseback, but they were no longer equipped with flails, like their founding fathers had been ten years ago; instead, one in five wielded a pištala (and yet more were produced day and night in Bohemian workshops), to which crossbows and halberds were added. The dreaded and formidable Hussite cannons were carried on carts, and there were enough pieces around to assemble more war wagons than would ever be needed. The confederal soldiers had been equipped by their home obce – with weaponry, with blessings from the Hussite priests many of whom marched along, and with supplies for a few weeks, too. Should the war last longer, then the immediately concerned regions would evidently have to bear most of the burden of refreshing provisions, but hopefully Jan Roháč z Dubé`s system would work and spread the load more equally throughout the lands by redistributing food from unaffected back areas to front line regions.

As the Hussite army assembled in the Elbe valley and marched Northwards under a burning July sun, they were cheered on by the population of Mělnik, Roudnice, Litoměřice and numerous small villages they passed through. From thousands of mouths, their war hymn “Ktož jsú boží bojovníci” [listen here for atmosphere] rose to the skies as they approached the dark mountains where the Elbe valley would become narrower, and where their deadly enemies, who were bent on their utter destruction, marched Southwards towards them through quarters where a Catholic German population supported Friedrich`s cause.

As the mountains rose on either side, even the last doubt was removed in the hearts of the common young men that now would come a fight that would bring them either freedom or death.

But what would it be?

The answer is up to you - the poll is at the top of this thread now, using the new technical options of the forum now ;-)
The poll closes after 21 hours already because I have to write tomorrow night if I want to make any headway this week.

 

[Gian]

Go Hussites!

Make the Slavs (and to a lesser extent, the French) Protestant-ish in this world.

 

[generalurist]

GO, FOR BOHEMIA!

It's clear what Freddy here wants to do: Destroy the confederacy and exterminate the so-called "heretics" (meaning most of the country) to the man.... and possibly to the woman too.

We must NOT allow it!

 

[Sceonn]

Yeah, I truly hope they win, though if they are to survive they'll have to expand as well.

 

[Salvador79]

Hey guys, I love your enthusiasm. The poll was a mild surprise for me: 9-3 for a Hussite victory! I had scenarios for both sides fleshed out because I really wasn`t sure how this battle should turn out. What you`ll be missing out on now is how tens of thousands of Hussite refugees change Europe`s politico-military-religious landscape.
So here go the victorious Hussites instead!

btw: Can anybody help me and tell me how to remove the poll from the thread? I mean, can the poll option be recycled for the same thread?


Cont.:

Jan Čapek ze Sán led the Hussite forces around the Catholic-held Usti and deeper into the Elbe gorge; the confederacy`s defensive army was meant to be the cork in the bottle of the Elbe valley which prevented crusader forces from swarming out like locusts all over the country.

Imperial and confederal forces clashed near Děčin on the Western banks of the Elbe on July 13th. As soon as the enemy came into sight, both sides sought optimal positions and put war wagons into formation.

What we know today is that these formations were quite different on the two sides respectively. Čapek ze Sán had his men (and a handful of women, too) build them the way they used to be built for almost a decade now: the war wagons were outfitted with shielded walls on the outside. Behind these walls, they carried lots of useful stuff, among them unassembled siege weaponry, and hidden between all this stuff were men armed with pištala and crossbows, ready to fire from little holes and gaps between wagons at anyone in sight. The Hussite wagons only had to form a half-circle, for they were shielded by the river Elbe on one side. In the middle of this half-circle, groups of men with cut-and-thrust weapons were huddled together, waiting to storm out and thrash at a disorganized fleeing mass of enemies.

Ulrich von Kittlitz, on the other hand, arranged Friedrich III.´s elite mercenary troops quite differently. His war wagons carried large assembled cannons behind their shields, which could be opened in places to allow for shooting - and they formed a crescent behind which the elite infantry and cavalry he commanded over were positioned in triangular formations, with the rest of the crusaders yet behind them. Furthermore, their armouring had been mounted at the front of each wagon instead of along its side. This allowed Kittlitz`s war wagon crescent to (slowly) move forward while assembled on the battlefield, even though this was still a risky endeavour. Under Friedrich III.´s auspices, imperial war wagons had become an offensive formation, while Hussite ones were still primarily defensive.

Quite logically, it was Kittlitz who opened the battle. From out of his war wagons, heavy cannonballs flew against the Hussite formations, where they blasted away the shields they hit, and even killed a number of people behind them who stood in their way. The imperial army had the moment of surprise on their side: the Hussites were shocked and in panic. While the imperial cannons had to cool down before they could be fired again, desperate Hussites attempted to repair their shield walls – not because they would be any help against the cannons, but because without them, they would have to face a cavalry onslaught without protection. It was a costly fight against the clock: each new cannon salvo, even though the precision was abysmal, would tear open new holes, and the repair efforts in the meantime claimed countless lives. But the alternative would have been a desperate attack in which the psychological momentum was not on their side, and neither was their equipment and training for melee combat.

Thus, the Hussite captains had no choice but to compel their cohorts to hold out until night fell – which was very late given the time of year. And holding out they did – but at what cost! At the end of the first day, the Hussites had lost over 3,000 men and a part of their mobile equipment, while von Kittlitz`s troops had not even suffered a handful of casualties.

During the night, though, Jan Čapek ze Sán came up with an idea which would change the game on the following day. For the Hussite survivors of the disastrous first day of battle, the night was short and busy.

As the sun rose behind the mountains on the other side of the river and the grey light of the morning in the valley signaled the recommencement of hostilities, von Kittlitz did not see everything which had changed in the Hussite camp. He was not surprised to hear the roar of Hussite cannons, too, now; he had anticipated them to have assembled their own cannons, and he was not afraid of that. His overall aim was to breech his enemy`s defensive formations – the diversified Imperial army relied much less on them –, and even if the playing field was inevitably more level now, he thought, it would be only a matter of hours or, at most, days until the goal would be achieved.

The moment seemed to come much faster than that. Only about half an hour into the new day`s exchange of artillery fire and arrows, the Hussite line of war wagons suddenly showed a gaping hole. As far as von Kittlitz saw, people were apparently busy behind it, but they did not seem to be able to close the gap. Had they run out of suitable material for defensive shields yet? He was not sure. It all seemed too sudden, too early after a night`s time for preparations. He voiced these concerns towards other division leaders, but his voice was drowned in a wave of optimism. The time had come to butcher the goddam heretics! Or so most of those leaders who had little experience with the kind of warfare which the Hussites imposed on their adversaries thought.

Von Kittlitz opened the line of imperial war wagons. Ludwig, Landgrave of Hesse, was at the forefront of the cavalry charge which broke out and stormed into the Hussite camp.

And perished there, in the trap laid out by Jan Čapek ze Sán. Throughout the night, the Hussites had erected a second wall of shielded wagons behind the first one which had miraculously breeched now. And they had also rammed sharpened sticks into the earth, dug out trenches, and done everything else they could do in eight hours` time to wreak havoc on cavalry which storms forward into what they expect to be a disorganized human mass. Within minutes, a few hundred men and horses were shot or cut down by the Hussite defenders.

This course of events had no significant effect on the numerical relations between the opposing camps, but it changed a lot on a psychological level. From cannon-fodder, the Hussites had morphed back into the virtually invincible cunning bastards they had been in German popular mythology for a whole decade now – and the Bohemians themselves shook off painful doubts whether God had forsaken them.

The tactics of deep war wagon formations was soon adapted by von Kittlitz, too – and combined with the river and the steep slopes on both sides of the valley, it led to a completely entrenched situation. The trench warfare lasted for another four days, each side hoping that the other would perhaps run out of supplies sooner than they would. Then, an increasingly impatient knightly cavalry obtained Friedrich`s consent to search for ways to ride out of the gorge, to ride through the thick woods undetected, and thus move behind the enemy`s main line of defense, into unprotected territory, and wreak as much havoc there as they could.

With this decision, it had also become clear that the main offensive through the Elbe valley would not take place. Friedrich III. and Ulrich von Kittlitz managed to organize a successful retreat of the main body of the crusader army, sacrificing only a few hundred men who held the wagenburg front long enough for the rest to march back into safety, and then some, as long as they could, for they knew that when they buckled, they would be butchered, which was what ultimately happened to them.

While at least as much Hussites as crusaders had died in Děčin, the battle was still considered a victory for the former. Friedrich III. was forced to retreat. While he reorganized and resupplied the crusaders` forces and prepared the next attack, which would land on Silesia – flat lands which provided no help for the defenders –, the confederacy prepared for this next onslaught, too, while defending itself against multiple smaller threats at the same time.

The marauding crusader cavalry which had successfully extracted itself from the Elbe gorge swarmed through North-Western Bohemia. While the civilian population sought and found refuge in forts and castles, none of which was successfully stormed by a cavalry which had brought no siege weaponry at all, the German knights still plundered the countryside as much as they could and left only smouldering ashes behind them. Their raids continued for weeks, until a confederal army of 6,000 men (and a few women) confronted and defeated them near Louny.

At the same time, Albert of Habsburg and Sigismund attempted a two-pronged attack on the South-Eastern part of the confederacy. Albert moved into České Budějovice, while Sigismund entered Moravia with Hungarian forces near Olomuc. They were aware that the confederacy`s main defensive effort would still be directed towards the North-West, and so they seized their opportunity. Both their advances were halted after a few dozen miles, though. The spříseženstvo was forced to fight on several fronts, in a war which strained and exhausted the small country and opened chasms between political groupings.

Fortunately for the Hussites, they were not the only ones for whom this conflagration was turning into a war of political, economical and financial attrition.

To be continued.

 

[Salvador79]

Go Hussites!

Make the Slavs (and to a lesser extent, the French) Protestant-ish in this world.

Interesting. What motivates your preference for an alt-Protestant France?

GO, FOR BOHEMIA!

It's clear what Freddy here wants to do: Destroy the confederacy and exterminate the so-called "heretics" (meaning most of the country) to the man.... and possibly to the woman too.

We must NOT allow it!

Very much so. That was his plan.

Yeah, I truly hope they win, though if they are to survive they'll have to expand as well.

And where and how do you think that is possible?

 

[Gian]

Interesting. What motivates your preference for an alt-Protestant France?

In OTL, the major Protestant powers happen to be Germanic nations,* and there aren't many significant surviving Protestant populations among the Romance and Slavic-speaking peoples (It's a little allohistorical pet peeve of mine, alongside a lack of a Christian Japan and North Africa). The French and Czechs are the closest to having such a group, as significant portions were Protestant before they were forcibly re-Catholicized by Louis XIV and the Habsburgs.

*at least among Indo-European-speakers (in case you're wondering why I don't refer to the Uralic Protestant Finns and Estonians)

 

[Augenis]

Great post!

Oh, and about this:

btw: Can anybody help me and tell me how to remove the poll from the thread? I mean, can the poll option be recycled for the same thread?

You can go to "edit poll" and enable the option to remove the poll after X days. Like, say, 1 day in this case.

 

[Salvador79]

Great post!

Oh, and about this:



You can go to "edit poll" and enable the option to remove the poll after X days. Like, say, 1 day in this case.

Thanks!!!

 

[Salvador79]

(removing the poll is not working, though; all I can do is CLOSE it; may have to speak to admins)

 

[Augenis]

(removing the poll is not working, though; all I can do is CLOSE it; may have to speak to admins)

Well crap.

I'll eventually have this problem in my own TL, too.

 

[Salvador79]

Cont.:

After the Battle of Děčin, both sides were faced with problems concerning the resources necessary for upholding their war effort.

In the spříseženstvo, political resistance against increasingly tighter war-time measures grew. Levying more young men for fresh troops, keeping production geared towards weaponry, and requisitioning and channeling food supplies towards the troops all did not go quite as smoothly in the second round as it had in the first. While many had survived Děčin and enough young Hussites still volunteered to take the place of those who had fallen, resentment began to grow among those obce which contributed soldiers against neighbouring communities, who failed to meet the avowed quotas. Especially rural obce in Central Bohemia, where Petr Chelčicky´s pacifism had grown the deepest roots, became targets of very severe criticism, forced levies – and in one instance, also of a violent anti-pacifist pogrom.

Requisitioning went even less smoothly: Jan Rohač z Dubé reacted to ongoing rumours about wealthy citizens in towns along the Elbe who were allegedly hoarding foodstuff by ordering armed guards (from the common dominia`s manpower pool) to conduct thorough razzias, and by having convictable culprits publicly whipped and exposed on pillories of shame. Such drastic measures against some of the most honourable and respectable citizens were considered outrageous by their fellows among the conservative urban elites, and soon, the Taborite hejtman faced conservative resistance and obstruction at every step, from the Small Permanent Assembly to local captains. Of course, such resistance was pointless without an alternative plan for Bohemia`s defense – but a conspiratorial group of urban oligarchs, Silesian and Poděbrady League knights already had such an alternative plan in their drawer: submission to the Polish king, like the towns and knights of the Prussian confederacy had done, who could defend them at a lower direct cost for Bohemia itself, and who could reign in Taborite, Pikard and similar excesses. Their plans did not come to fruition in 1429 – both because strong groups still supported the whole-hearted war efforts, and because the Polish king was quite busy in Prussia already –, but they show the strain under which the confederacy stood.

All of these factors were even more pronounced in the areas where the next imperial attack was expected, primarily on the Northern and Southern peripheries. Here, the entire population was integrated into preparations for guerilla warfare – from alarm networks over quick evacuations, the digging of escape and food reserve caverns, to training with the crossbow. Such a massive militarization of the civilian population was only possible due to the wave of patriotic defiance, but even then, it met with a lot of passive resistance – and it was pushed through by a Taborite-Orebite-Praguer-Pikard-Panslavist coalition against a qualified minority of five out of 20 members of the Permanent Small Assembly, which was forced to travel around the whole country tailing the hejtmans. This made all these measures, from a legal perspective, unconstitutional. (That fact, of course, mattered little to most people back then.)

The Holy Roman Empire was an entirely different beast – a polity so decentralized that, whatever Friedrich would have wanted to do, his subjects would never feel an iron fist of imperial wartime measures, and neither would ordinary town and country folk feel much involvement in the military conflict unless it happened in their very region. King Friedrich III. had no means to effectively coerce the Reichsglieder into contributing more troops for a second assault, and he also still aimed for something different: a modern army which could defeat the Hussites on their own tactical grounds, too. To this end, he needed hand-picked mercenary units, and those were costly. Having achieved nothing at Děčin, Friedrich III.´s funds from the Hussitenpfennig were exhausted. Maintaining and replenishing the army which he had led against Bohemia in July would require more funds from external sources. But with a “peace party” slowly forming across the Empire, too [1], none of the princes were willing to contribute more than symbolical amounts to Friedrich`s crusade. Thus, Friedrich had to pawn some of the last imperial holdings in Southern Germany to the Free City of Augsburg and others, and sell Nürnberg castle to the city council, in order to collect the necessary amount of money to send a good army against Silesia. It took him until October to achieve all of this.

Bohemia was protected on all sides by wooden mountain ranges – not exactly the terrain across which you´d lead an army with a certain emphasis on heavy artillery machinery, if you knew that the mountains were full of militant Chodové or Ore Mountain Pikards –; an easy access was possible only through the valleys of the Elbe in the North-West, the Oder in the North-East, and the Morava in the South. But Silesia was not so lucky: while its Southern parts were mountainous and forested, too, towards the North it was flat, cleared agricultural lands.

To reach the confederal holdings in Silesia, Friedrich had to march through lands which had been ceded to Poland in the Peace of Lublin – a treaty which Friedrich did not recognize anyway, and so he had no qualms marching and riding across Polish lands, especially since Wladislaw II. Jagiełło was busy in Prussia.

Friedrich had half-hoped that the Silesian dukes of Sagan, Glogau, Boleslawiec, Legnica and Jauer would renew their allegiance to the Empire when imperial troops showed up. That didn`t happen – but on the other hand, the newly Polish Silesian duchies were at least quiet (their szlachta currently fought against the Teutonic Order in Prussia), and the march Eastwards went smoothly. The first confederal Silesian town, Środa Śląska / Neumarkt, put up resistance, but after its defenses were breeched by imperial cannons, the town fell quickly. Everyone who didn´t flee fast enough was put to the sword, and everything that wasn`t looted was set on fire.

After Neumarkt, though, Friedrich`s luck seemed to wane. He faced the same problems Albert and Sigismund were facing in the South: there seemed to be archers and crossbowmen hiding in every grove, claiming the lives of soldiers but apparently disappearing into thin air when a party was sent to confront them. The towns were all newly fortified, and the villages in a radius of many miles around the army`s movements seemed to be not just deserted, but also depleted of anything useful. (The Germans set the villages on fire nonetheless.) Friedrich`s army was unable to feed off the land. So far, though, their supplies were still sufficient. As the army marched on, it almost never met its enemies directly, yet it was continually targeted and harassed by the guerilla warfare. As morale was sinking, Friedrich decided to abandon the scorched earth policy, speed up the campaign and head as fast as possible for Breslau.

The region`s old capital, a target of high symbolical value and also a key point for controlling the Oder, would have been a respectable stage win. Also, it would be a secure base from which to operate, and control over the Oder would allow Friedrich to row in fresh supplies for an assault on the Moravian Gates from his margraviate of Brandenburg.

The siege of Breslau never took place, though. A few kilometers to its West, Friedrich`s army had to cross a small river called Bystrzyca on an improvised bridge. Two thirds of the army had already passed across, and now there was mostly the indispensable baggage train left under the sole protection of the rearguard. These were openly attacked by a small, mobile Hussite cavalry force led by Duke Bernard of Niemodlin, which sowed chaos, set the wooden bridge on fire and specifically targeted the siege train, which they managed to damage seriously before they dashed off again, escaping their pursuers in a terrain which they knew much better.

With reduced siege capacities, Friedrich III. changed plans again, calling off the attack on Breslau and marching directly towards the Moravian Gates. With every kilometer that they marched deeper into Hussite territory, the needle pricks increased in intensity. Friedrich III.`s army, angry and insecure now after what looked like a string of misfortunes, lashed out brutally at whomever they managed to get their hands out – which was mostly old people, women, children, infants and whoever else was unable to make it to the next fort or cavern fast enough. Their atrocities not only diluted internal discipline and their self-concept as professional mercenaries; it also strengthened the resolve of the Hussite defenders to put internal divisions aside and put every last effort into the battle for the defense of their home land, their freedom, and the true faith.

Friedrich`s army clashed with the Hussites for a second time in the Battle of the Moravian Gate on November 21st, 1429, i.e. very late in the campaign season. This time, the Hussites were prepared against the adapted imperial tactics, and both sides implemented deep war wagon formations from the start. In the entrenched situation, the defenders profited from their control over the surrounding terrain, which allowed them to fire from stationary cannons mounted on the slopes, too. Accordingly, the battle went badly for the imperial troops, as was clearly visible on the second day. Friedrich, who knew that he wouldn`t get a third chance, tried his luck nevertheless, ordering the mobile war wagons to move forward, firing ceaselessly so as to force open holes and involve isolated enemy contingents into melee combat, where his better-trained swordsmen would prevail.

A difficult situation turned into a disaster when several of the imperial cannons exploded and parts of the shield wall and surrounding wagons caught fire. Now it was the imperial troops who were losing their order and formation, and Jan Čapek ze Sán signaled the Hussite attack. The frontal attack was only made worse by the arrival of Silesian Hussite ducal cavalry at the rear, where they involved the numerically superior imperial cavalry and kept it from dashing into the melee up front.

Where Děčin had been a narrow defeat, the Moravian Gates witnessed a slaughter. From the approximately 35,000 imperial soldiers, less than 10,000 escaped the Oder gorge alive, and less than half of them made it back all across the now snow-covered plains of Silesia into the safety of Lusatian and Brandenburger castles in December.

Friedrich III., King of the Romans, was not among them.

In the meantime, further South:

Albert and Sigismund had managed to avoid Friedrich`s fate by taking a more cautious strategy: digging themselves in. Albert had reached České Budějovice in late July 1429 and taken control of the town. No siege was necessary, for České Budějovice`s predominantly Catholic population had never shown any proclivity for the Hussite revolution and had successfully withstood two Hussite attacks. The town council was not exactly enthusiastic at Albert`s arrival, and not only because they now had to feed and house a few thousand soldiers. They had also found a tacit modus vivendi with the confederacy, and over the past decade, their town had enjoyed de facto independence, nominally pledging allegiance to King Sigismund of Bohemia, which meant practically nothing after 1422. In 1429, though, it meant that they had to accept Albert`s rule, whom Sigismund had entrusted – in anticipation of his inheriting him as King of Bohemia and of Hungary – with the (so far practically meaningless) offices of Highest Burgrave of Bohemia and Margrave of Moravia. And accept his rule they did.

Meeting stiff Taborite and Chody resistance further North and North-West, Albert chose to secure the tiny but symbolically relevant Southernmost corner of Bohemia he had gained control over until Friedrich would crush confederal resistance in the North. This entrusting a first part of his army with conducting and overseeing fortification works, sending a second part onto sporadic raids into Hussite lands, while having a third part subdue the countryside, bring the villages surrounding České Budějovice to heel, and take over the small castles and forts in the vicinity one by one.

Sigismund, on the other hand, had moved Northwards from Pozsony into Moravia`s Southern plains. He took back Brno`s Spielberg Castle and the town, but his siege of Olomuc failed, and his smallish army – he could not spare too many men, given the frequency and intensity of Ottoman border raids in the South – had to flee from confederal troops who relieved Olomuc. Falling back on Brno, Sigismund, too, ordered to secure the gains in Southern Moravia, and rode back to Pest.

When news of Friedrich`s defeat and death near Ostrava reached Albert and Sigismund, their offensive was abandoned. More important things than a few square miles of Bohemian or Moravian soil awaited them. Now was the chance to restore the throne to Sigismund! Although Friedrich`s exhaustion of the last Reichsgüter had made the position somewhat less attractive. Or maybe one would be able to find a suitable candidate who maintained cordial relations with the Houses of Luxembourg and Habsburg and yet bring his own fresh forces into the war against the Hussites?

As the shock of the news from the Moravian Gates subsided, intense debate ensued throughout the Holy Roman Empire. Not only would the seven electors have to choose a new Roman king – there was a long-planned Council to be convened in Basle. While the former decision would be taken by a tiny group of people, the latter would be a larger forum where numerous theologians and clergymen would discuss the difficult situation Western Christianity found itself in.

[1] More on that in the chapter on the Council of Basle.


In the next chapters, we`ll see
… how the Teutonic Order fares against the Prussian rebel towns and the Polish Kingdom
… who becomes new King of the Romans and what is being discussed on the Council of Basle, where IOTL, the Compactata with the Hussites were concluded.

The Hanseatic-Scandinavian War drags on throughout 1429-31 like IOTL, so no update on that in the next few weeks.
In the East, Russia gets a bit of rest.
In the West, no butterflies yet, which means Philip the Good grabs all the Netherlands he can get, Joan of Arc still leads the French to victory at Orléans, Charles VII. is crowned King of Frances at Reims, the Burgundians capture the maiden and hand her over to a pro-English inquisitional trial which has her burned at the stake.