21 December 1421
The wagon fort before the town
On 21 December 1421, the feast of St Thomas, the Hussites and the men of Kutná Hora march out of the Kouřim gate after a short breakfast and stop about 400 m from the walls. There they close themselves in with their wagons, with many guns on the wagons, by Laurence of Březová. The royal army comes on in several bodies. In the largest, many hundreds of oxen and cows are driven among the armed men, to frighten the Hussites and cover the horse against the guns.
Kutná Hora with the church of St James and the church of St BarbaraWikimedia Commons, Milan Nykodym from Kutna Hora, Czech Republic, CC BY-SA 2.0 (Czech panorama (4446984079).jpg)
The wagons stand chained in a ring. Each time a royal body charges them, the guns on the wagons drive it back with heavy losses, and the fighting goes on until night. Meanwhile exiles from Kutná Hora let many hundreds of royal troops into the town through the Kolín gate, and the Hussites in the town are killed, except those who know an agreed sign. The wagon fort is cut off from the town and its food.
A Hussite war wagon with its crew, handguns and a gun, from a manuscript on the art of war of about 1437Wikimedia Commons, Johannes Wienner, Public domain (War Wagon - Manuscript on the Art of War.jpg)
Sources
- Vavřinec z Březové, Husitská kronika, tr. František Heřmanský (1979).
- Ze starých letopisů českých (1980), p. 79.
- Frederick G. Heymann, John Žižka and the Hussite Revolution (1955).
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