Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans, episode 176, A Great Idiot of History, which is also episode 13 of season 9, the Reformation before the Reformation Now Revolutions are exceedingly rare in world history, and they're so rare because they require a whole host of things going wrong and going wrong all at the same time.
Speaker AIn 1419, 1420, a whole host of things were going wrong in the Kingdom of Bohemia.
Speaker AWe did already hear about the defenestration, the first in Czech history, but as dramatic an event as that was, there is no reason to believe that death and destruction was inevitable from that point forward.
Speaker AAfter all, there had been dozens, if not hundreds of bloody revolts before then, did not end up with a revolution.
Speaker AAmongst the great podcaster Mike Duncan's very many achievements, the concept of the Great Idiot Theory of History is my absolute favourite.
Speaker AA Great Idiot of History is someone whom, out of incompetence, stubbornness, narcissism or any other impediment, created a situation where historical time accelerates and change occurs.
Speaker AIt is essentially the counterpoint to the Great Man Theory of history that is presumably a bit better known, which gets us to what we will discuss in this episode.
Speaker ALooking at my gradually swelling library of books about the Hussite revolt, it appears as if Sigismund the King of the Romans and heir to the Bohemian crown was one of these great idiots of history.
Speaker AMany an author, and not all of them Czechs, has blamed him for turning a simple revolt into a revolution out of bigotry, incompetence, or even sheer malice.
Speaker ABut is that fair?
Speaker AThat is what we will investigate in this episode.
Speaker AA longer spot of street fighting on Europe's top three backpacker destination before we get down to the soon blood soaked streets of Prague.
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Speaker AAnd with that, back to the show.
Speaker ALast week we ended with the first defenestration of Prague in 1419, the one that was much deadlier than the more famous second one.
Speaker AIn 1618, a protest march of Hussites demanding the release of prisoners had gathered outside the town hall of Prague's newtown.
Speaker AThings got out of hand, or went according to plan, depending on who you listen to.
Speaker AWhat's not disputed is that in the end, 13 royal councilors lay dead on the pavement, having taken involuntary flying lessons.
Speaker AThe Hussard revolt had its own storm of the Bastille.
Speaker ALouis XVI's diary entry for 14 July 1789 was famously nothing.
Speaker AThe King of Bohemia, Wenceslas Ivan, did not display the same sang froid.
Speaker AOur chronicler Lawrence of Brezova reports that King Wenceslas was angered, vexed and aggrieved and decided to eradicate all Wycliffites and Hussites, especially their priests.
Speaker AThis decision, like all his other great pronouncements, came to naught.
Speaker AInstead, a month later, having vexed, angered and aggrieved a bit more, he suffered a long overdue stroke and died with a great shouting and roaring like a lion.
Speaker AThe city of Prague was in such a state of unrest that the king could not even be given a proper burial.
Speaker AHis body was moved under cover of darkness from the royal castle on the hill to the castle of Wisrat on the opposite bank of the river, and from there again in the night, to the monastery of Ala Regia, where he was finally put to rest.
Speaker AOnly a few monks, fishermen and bakers were in attendance at the funeral of a man who had once been the King of the Romans, King of Bohemia, Duke of Luxembourg and Margrave of Brandenburg.
Speaker AHis father, the great emperor Carl iv, was lucky not to have seen what had become of the boy he had placed so much hope in, whose election had cost him the humongous sum of 500,000 mark of silver and the support of the once loyal imperial cities.
Speaker AWhen news of the king's demise spread, Prague erupted in an even greater frenzy of destruction.
Speaker AThe mob broke into the remaining Catholic churches and tore down the images and decorations.
Speaker AThe priests and monks fled or hid.
Speaker ABy the evening, the crowd looted the Carthusian monastery and took away everything that wasn't nailed down, got drunk from the liquor the monks produced and spilled what they could not Pour down their throats.
Speaker AThey seized the friars and dragged them through the streets of Prague in a riotous procession, because, as the chronicler said, they had consented to the death of master Jan Hus and resisted utraquist communion.
Speaker AThe next day, that same monastery was consumed by fire.
Speaker AOver the coming days, even more churches and monasteries were ransacked and put to the tower torch.
Speaker AThe mob controlled almost the entire city, with the exception of the royal castle.
Speaker AThe nobles and rich merchants either left town or hunkered down in their fortified houses.
Speaker AMeanwhile, out in the countryside, the faithful of Mount Tabo were replicating the events of Prague in dozens of towns and cities.
Speaker AThe death of the king not only triggered street violence, it it also caused a massive political problem for the more moderate, the barons, patricians and university doctors.
Speaker AUntil now, their strategy, assuming there was one, had been to put pressure on the weak king Wenceslas to recognize the Hussite programme.
Speaker AThe masters of the university and the barons knew their king extremely well.
Speaker AThey knew that his wife, and maybe he himself, had Hussite sympathies, and that the only reason Wenceslas had sanctioned the conservative backlash of 1419 had been the external pressure from his brother Sigismund and from the pope.
Speaker AHence, a carefully administered spot of mob violence was needed to tilt the balance in favour of reform.
Speaker ABut now Wenzelas was dead and the waving of flags and shouting had turned into full blown riots.
Speaker ANot what the moderate Hussites had been aiming for.
Speaker AMoreover, Wenceslas heir was none other than Sigismund, the man many of the Hussites held responsible for the burning of Jan Hus, the man who had urged Wenceslas to clamp down on the spread of utraquist communion across the country.
Speaker AIn short, the man who was at least one of the major forces behind the Catholic retaliation that left the moderate Hussites basically the intellectual and political elite of Bohemia, between a rock and a hearthstone.
Speaker AOn the one hand, they really, really, really, really did not like Sigismund.
Speaker ABut on the other hand, the university professors and barons could not imagine a world without a legitimate feudal ruler.
Speaker AThis is the 15th century, after all.
Speaker AAnd for the barons in particular, their legitimacy was also tied closely to that self Same feudal system.
Speaker AAnd hence, as we've heard in the episodes about Karl IV and Wenceslas, Bohemia had a rather unusual constitution.
Speaker AUnlike the other prince electors, the king of Bohemia ruled by and with the consent of his barons.
Speaker AThe barons were able to, and had in the past deposed kings and invited new contenders to take the throne.
Speaker AThis is how the Luxembourgs had become kings of Bohemia in the first place, and new kings could be made to sign settlements with the barons laying out their respective rights.
Speaker ACarl IV had done that, and so did Wenceslas.
Speaker AFor many moderate Hussite barons, such a capitulation seemed to be the most sensible solution.
Speaker ATherefore, at the same time as monasteries were going up in flames all across the country and the radical reformers were dancing on the tables, the Hussite barons and the university masters opened up negotiations with the royal party, who holed up in the ratjin above the city.
Speaker AThey put together a list of demands that, if granted, would allow them to recognize Sigismund as their overlord.
Speaker AThese demands contained four main that priests could preach freely only subject to the jurisdiction of the praek that the Eucharist could be offered in both forms as bread and wine that the church was to give up all its property and that no Bohemian could be forced to stand trial outside Bohemia in particular, not in Rome.
Speaker ATo soften the blow, they promised to leave the Catholics unmolested and would even return some of their churches.
Speaker AThat was the offer the Crown of Bohemia in exchange for the recognition of some key Hussite demands.
Speaker ABefore Sigismund could even respond to the offer, events moved on.
Speaker AOn September 28, there was a large gathering of rural Hussites in a place called the the Crosses.
Speaker AAfter their usual extended sermons and religious rites, followed by communal dinners, they decided to march on Prague.
Speaker AThe inhabitants of Prague welcomed them, led them through town in a torchlight procession, fed them, and housed them in one of the monasteries that were still standing.
Speaker AWhat further happened during this stay is shrouded in mystery.
Speaker ABut most likely the two radical factions, those from the new town of Prague and.
Speaker AAnd the rural activists, who we'll call the Taborites after the name they gave the hill they usually gathered on, agreed to a joint position, a position that is unlikely to involve the kingship of Sigismund or the toleration of Catholics.
Speaker ASeeing thousands of militant peasants all over Prague who were talking about sharing the wealth and forcing babies to take wine at communion, was was their final straw for the moderates.
Speaker AThey joined the beleaguered royalist party up in the royal castle.
Speaker AConditions agreed upon or not, this newly formed royalist party, made up of Wenceslas widow Sophia, the Catholic barons and the moderate Hussites, mustered their forces and then recruited some further German mercenaries.
Speaker AMeanwhile, the radicals down in the city formed militias.
Speaker AWe are moving to the stage in the revolt where a military confrontation becomes almost inevitable.
Speaker AWhich begs the question, where was Sigismund, the heir to the Bohemian crown?
Speaker AWhilst the kingdom was tumbling towards civil war.
Speaker ANow, in one of these twists of fate, the man who could have de escalated the situation was unable to come to Bohemia.
Speaker AAfter his long stay in Constance, the situation in his kingdom of Hungary had become even more challenging than normal.
Speaker AThe Ottomans had recovered from the catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Ankara in 1402, Sultans Mehmed I and Murad II consolidated the divided empire and resumed their expansion policy across the Balkans.
Speaker AHungary was now Europe's forward defence against the Turks, not counting the Byzantine Empire, but that had shrunk to not much more than the city of Constantinople.
Speaker AMoreover, Venice had begun its territorial expansion first along the Dalmatian coast and then into the Terra firma, its northern Italian hinterland.
Speaker AThis impacted two of Sigismund's the kingdom of Hungary that used to comprise Croatia and Bosnia, and the empire, which included the patriarchy of Aquileia and the Friule.
Speaker AVenice not only dominated the Adriatic, but was also completely ruthless.
Speaker AIn 1418, the Great Council had passed a formal to have Sigismund assassinated.
Speaker ANothing personal, just business.
Speaker AIt was cheaper than raising an army.
Speaker ASpoiler alert.
Speaker AThey did not succeed and they still had to raise the armies.
Speaker AThen, I think, were good enough reasons for Sigismund to stay away from Bohemia.
Speaker ABut there weren't good enough reasons to mess things up.
Speaker AHe played for time.
Speaker AIn his letters, he said things do not worry.
Speaker AI will confirm all the rights and privileges of the estates and we will surely find a solution for all these religious differences once I come down.
Speaker AJust for the time being, could you please or refrain from any more violence against the Catholics, restore the monasteries to the monks and nuns and allow the expelled German citizens to return to Prague being the future king and emperor.
Speaker AHe did not say please, please.
Speaker AInstead he ended his statements with if you do not what I command, well, we will make you do it.
Speaker AAfter decades of drunken Wenceslaus rule, his new subjects were not accustomed to imperial commands.
Speaker AThey did not refrain from violence against Catholics.
Speaker AThey did not return the monasteries to the monks and nuns.
Speaker AAnd they did not allow the expelled German citizens to return to Prague.
Speaker AAt which point Queen Sophia, who is now Sigismund's regent, put the second part of his statements into action.
Speaker AThe mercenaries and baronial troops took over several of the monasteries and garrisoned key strategic points in the city.
Speaker AThey rounded up some of the radical preachers and then they waited.
Speaker AJan Zulewski, the leader of the New Town radicals, called on the Taborites in the provinces to come to Prague and defend their religion.
Speaker AAnd as they had promised in the meeting a few weeks earlier, the civil war began on October 25, 1419 with the Radicals capturing Wischerad Castle.
Speaker AIt may be useful at this point for you to get an idea of the topography of the city of Prague.
Speaker AThe city spans two sides of the Vltavar river, which the Germans call the Moldau.
Speaker AThe left bank is dominated by the Royal Castle, the Ratchin, with its huge cathedral and enormous palace.
Speaker ABelow the castle is the so called Lesser Town.
Speaker AThe Lesser Town is connected to the Old Town on the right bank of the river via the Charles Bridge.
Speaker AThe Charles Bridge itself is protected by two towers, one at each end.
Speaker AThe Old Town is, as the name suggests, the oldest and still richest community of the city.
Speaker AThat is where you find the famous Times Square and the Jewish Ghetto.
Speaker AThe Old Town is surrounded on three sides by the New Town, the massive extension Emperor Carl IV had begun.
Speaker AThat is where the artisans and the labourers lived.
Speaker AIt is also where the enormous squares St.
Speaker AWenceslas Square and Charles Square are found, as well as the Bethlehem Chapel.
Speaker AAt the southern end of the New Town, also on the right bank is Visharat Castle, the original residence of the Bohemian kings.
Speaker AIn October 1419, the royal castle and the Lesser Town were held by the royalists.
Speaker AThe New Town was held by the Radicals.
Speaker AThe Old Town was caught between both sides, trying to steer course between them.
Speaker AWhen the Vishehrad fell to the Radicals on October 25, the royalists were confined to their bank of the river to the Ratchin and the Lesser Town, unable to relieve the Old Town against any attacks by the radicals.
Speaker ASo the radicals now moved into the Old Town, the two sides heading for showdown.
Speaker AThe radicals in the New Town were waiting for more of the rural radicals to join them.
Speaker AWhilst the moderates and royalists tried to prevent these supporters from getting to the city, several groups were intercepted and forced to return.
Speaker AThe largest contingent, the one that had gathered on Mount Tabor, was held up by a platoon of royalist soldiers.
Speaker AThis was the very first battle of the Hussite war and one where the Tabarites sustained severe losses and were forced to return.
Speaker AOn November 4, 1419, the war got underway.
Speaker AProperly led by Nicolas of Hus militiamen from the New Town, the Old Town and rural insurgents crossed the Charles Bridge under cannon fire and broke into the Lesser Town.
Speaker AThe drawn out street fighting lasted until nightfall and ended with a victory for the radicals.
Speaker ABefore they could be wiped out completely, the royalists rushed back up the hill into the safety of the Royal Castle.
Speaker AIt is hard to understand why, but the same night the radical militia returned across the bridge to the Old Town.
Speaker ASo the next morning, the royalists reoccupied the Lesser Town.
Speaker AAnd so the process repeated itself.
Speaker AThe militia crossed the bridge, followed by street fighting.
Speaker AOnly that this time several of the main buildings on the left bank, including the Arch Episcopal palace, the monastery of St.
Speaker AThomas and the house of the Dukes of Saxony, caught fire and burned down to the ground.
Speaker ALooking on her burning capital, Queen Sophia and her ally and largest landowner in Bohemia, the the Baron Rosenberg, fled.
Speaker AThe remaining garrison in the royal castle was put under siege.
Speaker AOut in the countryside, a royalist army was defeated by the rural radicals and the mercenaries were turning tail.
Speaker AHurrah.
Speaker AThe revolution had won.
Speaker AThe queen and her mercenaries were gone.
Speaker AThe barons were defeated.
Speaker ASurely now a radical Hussite paradise of free worship, primacy of scripture and utraquist, communion for everyone, for from baby to grandma was at hand.
Speaker ANot so fast.
Speaker AThere is also another way of looking at this.
Speaker AThe Prague that was burning was not just the city of the Queen and the barons.
Speaker AIt was a city where people lived.
Speaker APeople who had followed Jan Hu's sermons whose most famous quote, love the truth.
Speaker ALet others have their truth and the truth will prevail.
Speaker AThe Hussite movement had not been about overthrowing the Catholic Church and the existing political order.
Speaker AIt had sought to bring the Catholic Church back to its roots in the Church of the Apostles, a church built on the faith, on the teachings of Christ, on forgiveness and community.
Speaker AAnd now, instead of sharing food and listening to the word of God together, dead bodies were strewn across Charles Bridge.
Speaker ANot just foreign soldiers, but Bohemian men and women too.
Speaker AThe night sky was illuminated by the embers of the burning houses and monasteries.
Speaker ADid anyone really want that?
Speaker AOnce the frenzy of the fighting was over and calmer minds surveyed the wreckage, there were two options laid out before the Hussite leadership.
Speaker AOne route was to push on, to cleanse the country of the Catholic clergy, establish eutrac communion everywhere, set up a new political system with another king, or even no king, and brace for the inevitable backlash from the Catholic forces of Europe.
Speaker AThe alternative was again to seek reconciliation with King Sigismund, with Pope Martin V and the Catholic forces of Europe.
Speaker AA reconciliation that would seek toleration of the Hussite beliefs, freedoms and practices, but would allow Bohemia to remain within the Catholic Church.
Speaker AIt was the same question that had been posed right after the defenestration.
Speaker AAnd that would be the question that would run through the entirety of the coming decades of Bohemian history.
Speaker AThe pendulum will swing back and forth between these two extremes.
Speaker AAnd just now, the pendulum had swung far out towards the radical side, which could only mean that it would swing back to a more moderate position.
Speaker AWhat is astonishing is the speed with which this happened.
Speaker AThe battle over the lesser city of Prague had taken place on November 4th and 5th.
Speaker AOn November 13th, nine days later, the magistrates of Prague signed a truce with the royalists in the castle.
Speaker AThis truce was scheduled to run until April 1420.
Speaker AUnder the agreement, the royalists could not only keep the royal castle, but also get the Vigirrad back and with it some control over the old town.
Speaker AIn return, the queen promised to not just tolerate, but but to defend the Eutraquist Communion and what the chronicler calls the law of God, that is the freedom to preach from Scripture.
Speaker AAt the end of December, Sigismund finally appears.
Speaker AHe called for a diet of the Bohemian crown in Brun in Moravia.
Speaker AAll the barons, Catholic and Hussites, the magistrates of Prague and the major cities and the church leaders gathered there.
Speaker AThis was the big moment.
Speaker AThe great reveal.
Speaker ASigismund will now finally disclose where he stood on the deal the moderates had been proposing for a toleration of the Hussite beliefs and rights in exchange for the Bohemian crown.
Speaker AThis was the opportunity to reinvigorate the royalist coalition of catholics and moderate Hussites, suppress the more extreme elements in the new town and on Mount Tabor and bring an end to the unrest.
Speaker AIf that is what the delegates from Prague were hoping for, they were in for a very cold shower.
Speaker ASigismund was in no mood for reconciliation.
Speaker AHe let the delegation from Prague wait for three days before receiving them.
Speaker AOnce admitted to his presence, they knelt before Sigismund and recognized him as their hereditary king and master.
Speaker AThen he spoke to them quite harshly and sent them to Prague with the order to remove all chains and posts from the streets of the town and to pull down all fortified buildings in front of the castle.
Speaker AThis was to be indicative of their submission to his power and reign.
Speaker AAt the same time, he deposed all of the officials of King Wenceslas, as well as the Bografs of castles who were supporters of the Utraquist Communion and installed in their posts adversaries of the truth and blasphemous.
Speaker AEnd quote.
Speaker AIn other words, Sigismund ordered the power structure of the Hussites to be dismantled.
Speaker AThat was a very hard line position because let's say the conditions posed by the moderates weren't really that demanding.
Speaker AAllowing Utraquist Communion wasn't that much of a theological issue, despite the decision of the Council of Constans.
Speaker ABecause after all, that is what had been the practice in the Catholic church until the 12th century.
Speaker AAnd the freedom from courts outside Bohemia was, at least on temporal matters, something that had been part of the various special privileges of Bohemia for centuries.
Speaker AWhilst on the other hand, forcing the bohemians to accept him as king unconditionally.
Speaker AWell, that will prove extremely expensive, if at all possible.
Speaker ASo why did Sigismund not take the offer?
Speaker ASome see him simply as evil and debauched.
Speaker AAfter all, he sported a forked beard and was in the habit of dancing wildly and dropping his pants at the end of dinner parties.
Speaker AFrom there, it's only a small step to being the devil's apprentice.
Speaker AMany writers point to his Catholic faith as the reason why Sigismund turned this option down.
Speaker ABut that is confusing to me.
Speaker AAt no point so far had Sigismund displayed any of the deep personal piety of his father.
Speaker ASure, he was a believer like everybody else in the Middle Ages, but a malicious bigot who was hell bent on destroying heresy.
Speaker AThat simply does not gel.
Speaker AThen others say he wasn't a great politician and diplomat, but that does hold even less water.
Speaker AThis was a man who had acquired the kingdom of Hungary despite not having a valid claim to the throne against the opposition of the dowager queen, the heiress of the kingdom herself and two thirds of the magnates.
Speaker AAnd then he had engineered the end of the schism, something that had eluded the brightest political minds of Europe for 40 years.
Speaker ASo if Sigismund took such a hard line position, it wasn't for bigotry or for stupidity, then it must be based on some sober political calculation.
Speaker AAnd that calculation might have gone as Sigismund was not just the hereditary king of Bohemia, he was also the King of Hungary and the King of the Romans.
Speaker AHungary, as we have just heard, was in a fragile state under pressure from both Venice and the Ottomans.
Speaker AAnd Sigismund's position as King of Hungary was still subject to potential challenges from his nobles and from the Angevins in Naples.
Speaker AAnd just re listen to episode 169 to remind yourself of the cut and thrust and then the occasional decapitations of Hungarian politics.
Speaker AHis position as King of the Romans was actually even more wobbly.
Speaker AIn 1420, this king of the Romans had no land holdings in the empire.
Speaker ANada, zilch.
Speaker AHe had granted his Margraviat of Brandenburg to Friedrich von Hohenzollern.
Speaker AHe had lost the ancient family lands of Luxembourg to his niece when he was unable to repay a loan.
Speaker AAnd as for the most valuable part of the Luxembourg inheritance in the empire, the crown of Bohemia, well, see above.
Speaker AThat meant his position as King of the Romans and his eventual imperial coronation in Rome was down to nothing but his personal standing, his imperial prestige, and he had been working very hard at that.
Speaker AHis involvement in the Council of Constance had less to do with his personal spiritual unease about the schism, but had been an amazing platform to establish himself as the first Lord in all of Christendom.
Speaker ABut all of this was a walk on a tightrope walk.
Speaker AOne false move and it would become apparent that this emperor could not even afford any clothes.
Speaker AEmbracing Hussite positions, even just tolerating them, would have been such a misstep that would have tarnished his reputation.
Speaker AThe Bohemian reform ideas had percolated into Saxony and Poland, but not much beyond.
Speaker AFor the prince electors, the senior imperial princes and the magnates of Hungary, the Hussites were heretics whose leaders had been convicted by a legitimate church council and had been burned at the stake.
Speaker ALeaving them be was not only negligence of the part of the ruler of Bohemia, it jeopardized the unity of the Holy Mother Church and thereby endangered everyone's smooth transition to the afterlife.
Speaker ASo, as far as Sigismund was concerned, the offer from the Hussite moderates amounted to no more than to resume the position of his brother Wenceslas in Bohemia, whilst losing the crowns of both Hungary and the empire.
Speaker AAnd sitting on the radzin and being bullied by barons, university masters, archbishops and radical preachers wasn't really such an appealing prospect.
Speaker ASo from Sigismund's perspective, the only viable political position to take was to turn back time and, if necessary, by brute force.
Speaker AThat does not make it a good decision, but a rational one.
Speaker ASo he was not one of the great idiots of history, but he was certainly also not one of the great men either.
Speaker AJust a man standing before a kingdom and asking it to kneel before him.
Speaker AHis next step was to send the magistrates back to Prague, where they did as they had been ordered.
Speaker AThey removed the fortifications and readmitted the Catholic clergy and the rich merchants who had fled the city during the uprising.
Speaker AThe garrison of the castle, seeing the enemy ramparts being torn down, laughed and called.
Speaker ANow the heretics and the Wycliffites will perish and will be finished.
Speaker AEnd quote.
Speaker AWhy did the moderate Hussites comply with Sigismund's orders?
Speaker ASimple.
Speaker AOnce their deal was rejected by Sigismund, they had neither the backing of the committed royalists nor could they call on the radical forces to support them.
Speaker ATheir power was simply stripped from them.
Speaker AFor now, all they could do was obey the king.
Speaker AThe most eminent American scholar of the period, Howard Kaminski, believed that had Sigismund gone directly to Prague, after the knee fall of the magistrate at Brun, he would have successfully suppressed the Hussites for good.
Speaker ANow this I very much doubt.
Speaker ABy 1420, Hussaitism had taken deep roots in the country, both in Prague and in the provinces, amongst peasants and laborers as well as barons and patricians.
Speaker AIt would have required, and did require, a massive military and political presence to keep them down.
Speaker AAnd this massive military and political presence was now deployed both from within Bohemia and from without.
Speaker AThe backlash against the Hussites, moderates and radicals alike inside Bohemia had already begun in November.
Speaker AThe chronicler Lawrence of Brezova reports.
Speaker AEnemies of the truth inflicted on the Hussite checks the theft of property, cruel manners of captivity, hunger, thirst and bodily slaughter.
Speaker AThey turned them over to the miners of Kutna Hora, and some were indeed sold to them.
Speaker AThese people of Kutna Hora, being Germans, cruel persecutors of the Czechs, inflicted various blasphemies and different manners of torture on them, inhumanly threw them down into very deep pits or mine shafts, primarily at night.
Speaker ASome were still alive when they were thrown down.
Speaker AOthers were beheaded first.
Speaker AThe chronicler goes on to say that a total of 1600 Hussites were killed in that way in a short period of time.
Speaker ANow I'll leave this standing here.
Speaker AAs the chronicler reported it.
Speaker AI have tried to find corroborating evidence about the scale of these atrocities and the role of the German citizens of Cotna Hora, but have not been able to find anything in English or German.
Speaker AIf any of you Czech listeners have more information, I would be very interested.
Speaker AModest fact, though, is that the miners of Kutna Hora were largely German speaking.
Speaker AGermans had developed mining expertise when the first European silver mines opened in goslar in the 10th century and and German miners were active from the enormous copper pit of Falun in Sweden to the great mines of Hungary.
Speaker AAs we discussed in episode 153, Nuremberg had become the European centre for mining and in particular smelting technology.
Speaker AHence it is very likely, if not certain, that the miners of Gutena Hora had been German speaking.
Speaker AIt is also true that Sigismund had issued orders to all his recently installed chamberlains, but burgrafs, burgomasters and city councillors, than they should by any means possible arrest, persecute and to the extent possible wipe out the Wycliffites and Hussites and those practicing communion with the lay chalice.
Speaker AThis order was, however, issued after the date the chronicler gives for the massacres at Kutna Hora.
Speaker AAs for the exertion of military might from abroad.
Speaker AThis came to fruition three months later.
Speaker ASigismund had called an Imperial Diet in Breslau Wroclaw in Silesia for early January.
Speaker ATwo items had originally been proposed for this diet.
Speaker AThe first was the resolution of the conflict between the Teutonic Knights in the Kingdom of Poland.
Speaker AAnd the second one, the organization of another crusade against the Ottomans.
Speaker AWe will leave the Teutonic Knights to one side.
Speaker AIf you want to refresh your memory on this less successful intervention, check out episode 103.
Speaker AAs for the crusade against the Ottomans, Sigismund convinced Pope Martin V to give him a sort of carte blanche to repurpose it as a crusade against the Hussite heresy if needed.
Speaker AThe crusade was first to go to Bohemia.
Speaker AAnd should the Bohemians give up their Eutrac and exceptionalism, well, then the Crusaders would just simply march on to the Ottomans.
Speaker ABut if the Bohemians persisted in their beliefs, then the forces of the Lord would be unleashed against them.
Speaker AThese three events, the sudden collapse of the Hussite front after the victory in Prague, the brutal Catholic repression, and the call for a crusade against them left the Bohemians not just distressed, but also wondering what could have brought all of these calamities about.
Speaker AAnd many looked for answers in the New Testament and in particular the Book of Revelation fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.
Speaker AFor the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it?
Speaker AAnd what do you do when the Antichrist is about to take the throne?
Speaker AWhere do you go?
Speaker AShall you arm yourself and defend the faithful?
Speaker AOr shall you hide in the dens and rocks of the mountains as the kings of the earth and the great men, the rich man, the wise man, and every free man will do when the seventh seal of the Apocalypse is opened?
Speaker AThis is what we will talk about next time, and I hope you will join us again.
Speaker AAnd in the meantime, as we were talking about a revolution, you may want to look at our first revolution, the one that kicked off with a letter sent to Pope Gregory VII calling him Hildebrand.
Speaker ANot Pope, but false monk episodes 3242 and do not forget that if you want to support the show, you can do so@historyofthegermans.com support SA.