July 1433 – May 1434
The siege of Plzeň, 1433–1434
Plzeň is the strongest Catholic town in western Bohemia and the centre of the Plzeň landfrýd, the league of the royalist lords and towns of the region. From 14 July 1433 the Taborites, the Orphans, Prague and the towns of Žatec and Louny lay siege to it, and historians put the besiegers at up to 15,000 by October. The walls are too strong to storm, so the besiegers set out to starve the town. After the failed harvest of 1432 they are short of food themselves and send foragers abroad.
On 16 September about 1,400 foot and 400 to 500 horse under Jan Pardus and Jan Řitka of Bezdědice cross into the Upper Palatinate and plunder the villages round Furth im Wald and Waldmünchen. Hynčík Pflug of Rabštejn, a Bohemian noble in the service of Count Palatine John of Neumarkt, gathers about 300 horse and 600 foot with local peasants and catches them at Hiltersried on 21 September. By the written sources a driver turns the leading wagon the wrong way, the wagon fort stays open, and the Palatine men break in through the gap. The Old Czech Annals count 1,200 Hussites killed, and by Bartošek of Drahonice only about 30 horsemen and 100 foot return to Plzeň with Pardus and Řitka.
The battle of Hiltersried, an engraving by the Master of the Death of Mary from about 1435, in the LouvreWikimedia Commons, Master of the Death of Mary, Public domain (Kupferstich - Zeitgenössische Darstellung der Schlacht von Hiltersried - um 1435.png)
The defeat turns the camp against its leaders. On 28 or 29 September the under-captain Tvaroh strikes Prokop the Great on the head with a stool for taking Pardus’s side, and both are held prisoner for some days. Prokop then leaves for Prague, and Prokop the Lesser commands the Taborites before Plzeň. The Orphans join the siege at the end of October on their return from the Baltic, but on the night of 5 May 1434 Přibík of Klenová, once an ally of Tábor, breaks through the siege lines with about 70,000 litres of grain.
Soldiers of the field army turn on Prokop the Great in the camp before Plzeň in 1433, illustration by Věnceslav Černý, 1924Wikimedia Commons, Věnceslav Černý, Public domain (Věnceslav Černý - Výstup proti Prokopu Holému před Plzní (Velikáni našich dějin, 1924) retouched.jpg)
Sources
- František Šmahel, Die Hussitische Revolution (2002), vol. 3.
- Petr Čornej, Lipanská křižovatka (1992).
- Stephen Turnbull, The Hussite Wars 1419–36 (2004).
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