22 – 30 May 1434
The armies meet at Lipany
On 30 May 1434 about 10,700 men of the Taborite and Orphan field armies with 360 to 480 wagons meet about 13,500 to 14,000 men of the lords’ league with 660 to 720 wagons, by Petr Čornej’s estimates. František Šmahel puts the field armies at no more than 6,000 to 8,000. Both sides fight from wagon forts in the Hussite way, and the battle turns on a feigned retreat that draws the field armies out of theirs.
Prokop the Great, Prokop the Lesser and Jan Roháč of Dubá among the wagons, a detail of Luděk Marold’s panorama of the battle of Lipany, 1898Wikimedia Commons, Luděk Marold, Public domain (Skupina bratrských vojevůdců.jpg)
The league chooses Diviš Bořek of Miletínek as its commander and lays siege to the Orphan town of Český Brod on 27 May. The next day it learns that the field armies are coming from Kouřim to relieve the town, and marches out to meet them. The field armies draw up their wagons at the foot of Lipská hora near the village of Lipany, and the league on the plain north-east of the village of Hřiby.
For two days the sides negotiate. The field armies ask for things to return to how they stood before 5 May, which would give them back the New Town of Prague and the siege of Plzeň. The league answers that the brotherhoods must first give up everything they have taken in the war. On Sunday 30 May the talks end.
The entry on the siege of Český Brod and the battle of Lipany in the town book of Český Brod, 15th centuryWikimedia Commons, unknown author, Public domain (Českobrodská kronika - Lipany.jpg)
Sources
- Petr Čornej, Lipanská křižovatka (1992).
- Bartošek of Drahonice, Chronicle, and the letter of the Plzeň men of 1 June 1434, in František Šmahel, Die Hussitische Revolution (2002), vol. 3.
- Stephen Turnbull, The Hussite Wars 1419–36 (2004).
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