16 June 1426, late morning
The knights break the chain
The relief army attacks before noon, up the gentle slope from the brook valley in the north and north-east and from Chabařovice in the north-west. The Hussites open fire as soon as the attackers come within range. On the north side the knights overturn a row of wagons, cut the chains and get into the ring, where the second line of wagons stops them.
A handgun fired from a rest, in Konrad Kyeser’s Bellifortis, about 1405Wikimedia Commons, Konrad Kyeser, Public domain (Hand-cannon-being-fired-from-a-stand-belli-fortis-manuscript-by-konrad-kyeser-1400.jpg)
Between the two lines the knights are shot at from three sides. The Old Czech Annals write that the Hussites fire from the wagons, the howitzers and the field guns until they cut lanes through the attackers. The Thuringian chronicler Johannes Rothe writes that the Hussites pull the nobles from their horses with long hooks, and that the dust is so thick that one man can hardly see another.
Sources
- Petr Čornej and Pavel Bělina, Slavné bitvy naší historie (1993), pp. 68 to 74.
- František Šmahel, Husitská revoluce, vol. 3, Kronika válečných let (1996), pp. 178 to 181.
- Jan Durdík, Husitské vojenství (1953), pp. 153 to 156.
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