7 June 1424
The wagons of stones
When about half of the Prague column has crossed the brook and begins to climb towards him, Žižka has the stone wagons let go. They run down the slope into the head of the column. Men on foot cannot stand against them, and the narrow valley leaves no room to step aside, so the ranks break, and the guns fire into the confusion.
Žižka has the loaded wagons rolled towards the enemy at Malešov, a print of about 1862Wikimedia Commons, unknown author, Public domain (Žižka lets loaded wagons roll towards the enemy (Battle of Malešov).jpg)
Only the younger Old Czech Annals, written down long after, tell of the stone wagons, and Josef Pekař and later historians doubt the story. Aeneas Silvius and the Breslau manuscript speak only of a fight in the valley, and Petr Čornej reads the sources as a sudden blow against the head of the column, strung out by the fast march and the narrow ground. Jan Biederman of the Military History Institute in Prague suggests that the story grew from a picture in Konrad Kyeser’s Bellifortis of about 1405, where a soldier is about to push a wagon of stones down onto armed men marching through a ravine.
The battle of Malešov in Josef Vinohradský’s Prostonárodní obrázky z dějin národu českoslovanského, 1864Wikimedia Commons, unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Bitva u Malešova (Prostonárodní obrázky z dějin národu českoslovanského, 1864).png)
Sources
- Ze starých letopisů českých (1980), p. 139.
- Josef Pekař, Žižka a jeho doba III (1992), pp. 240 to 241.
- Petr Čornej and Pavel Bělina, Slavné bitvy naší historie (1993).
Prev: Žižka turns at MalešovNext: The charge and the pursuit