1425 – spring 1426
Prokop and the field armies, 1425–1426
After Žižka’s death in October 1424 his Orebites call themselves the Orphans. Jan Hvězda of Vícemilice and then Bohuslav of Švamberk command the Taborite field army. Hvězda is wounded at the siege of Mladá Vožice in 1425 and dies of the wound in October. In autumn 1425 the Taborites and the Orphans march into southern Moravia and Lower Austria, destroy the abbey of Klosterbruck near Znojmo on 12 November and take Retz on 25 November. Bohuslav of Švamberk is wounded at Retz and dies at Moravský Krumlov.
The town walls of Retz in Lower Austria, taken by the Taborites and Orphans on 25 November 1425Wikimedia Commons, C.Stadler/Bwag, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Retz - Stadtmauer.JPG)
Prokop takes his place at the head of the Taborite field army. He is a Prague priest, brought up by a rich merchant uncle in the Old Town, and is called Holý, in Latin Rasus, the Shaven. The Taborites make him their spiritual administrator: he holds no captain’s rank but leads the army with its captains, and from 1426 he is the leading man of the Hussites. Later writers call him Prokop the Great.
Prokop the Great as an engraver of about 1700 imagined him, labelled “Procopius Rasus, Bohemus, Ziscae cognatus, dux Bohemorum in bello Hussitico”Wikimedia Commons, unknown engraver, Public domain (Prokop Holý (Procopius Rasus) (cropped).jpg)
Each union holds towns with their garrisons and the lords allied to it. Tábor leads the towns of the south and west, the Orphans hold Hradec Králové, Čáslav, Kolín and the towns of the east, and in 1425 Žatec and Louny form a union of their own under Jakoubek of Vřesovice. The towns feed and pay the field armies of foot, horse and wagons, which become standing armies with several captains under a chief captain. Prague under Sigismund Korybut fights the Orphans and the Taborites until a settlement in October 1425, and in spring 1426 the Taborites take Břeclav in southern Moravia as a base.
Sources
- Petr Čornej, Velké dějiny zemí Koruny české V, 1402–1437 (2000).
- František Šmahel, Husitská revoluce, vol. 3, Kronika válečných let (1996).
- Frederick G. Heymann, “The Crusades against the Hussites”, in Harry W. Hazard (ed.), A History of the Crusades, vol. 3 (1975), pp. 606 to 608.
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