December 1429 – February 1430
Saxony and Franconia, 1429–1430
Prokop now gathers the largest ride so far, men of all the Hussite unions and lords of Bohemia and Moravia, perhaps 20,000 to 30,000. They cross the northern border in four columns on 20 or 21 December 1429 and march down the left bank of the Elbe past Pirna, Dresden and Meissen to Grimma. There the vanguards meet, and the Lower Lusatian governor Hans of Polenz is beaten. Elector Frederick II of Saxony disbands most of his army and holds only the walled towns, and the Hussites pass Leipzig without a siege.
Prokop splits the army into five columns 8 to 10 km apart and sends them south-west through Saxony into the lands of the bishop of Bamberg and the burgrave of Nuremberg. Altenburg is taken between 12 and 16 January 1430, and Plauen is stormed late in January. The Hussites burn Hof, and Kulmbach and Bayreuth open their gates. On 2 February Prokop writes to Bamberg that it must accept the Four Articles or pay 50,000 Rhenish guilders.
The castle of the Vögte at Plauen, stormed by the Hussites in January 1430Wikimedia Commons, N8eule78, CC BY-SA 3.0 (Plauen, Schloss der Vögte von Westen.jpg)
Frederick of Brandenburg, burgrave of Nuremberg and Sigismund’s deputy in the Empire, meets the Hussite captains at Zwernitz castle near Bayreuth on 6 February and again at Beheimstein castle at Pegnitz about 10 February. They agree on ransom from Frederick, Nuremberg and other princes, over 30,000 guilders by Heymann, on a truce to 25 July and on a public hearing of the Four Articles at Nuremberg on 23 April. The army goes home by Cheb, which buys a truce for 900 guilders, and the ride ends in Prague on 21 February. The pope and Sigismund forbid the hearing, and Frederick calls it off.
Frederick I of Brandenburg, burgrave of Nuremberg, a portrait of the 15th centuryWikimedia Commons, unknown author, Public domain (Friedrich I. von Brandenburg.jpg)
Sources
- Frederick G. Heymann, “The Crusades against the Hussites”, in Harry W. Hazard (ed.), A History of the Crusades, vol. 3 (1975), pp. 624 to 626.
- Franz Machilek, “Die hussitische Forderung nach öffentlichem Gehör und der Beheimsteiner Vertrag von 1430” (1994).
- Count Lützow, The Hussite Wars (1914), ch. 6.
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