Fine sentiments

 #OTD in 1503 Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII, married James IV of Scotland. Via her line, the royal house of Stuart eventually acceded to the throne of England (good word, 'acceded', never used that before) and Ireland as well as Scotland. 

When Henry's advisers warned him against bringing the Stuarts into the line of English succession, he allegedly replied: 

"What then? Should anything of the kind happen (and God avert the omen), I foresee that our realm would suffer no harm, since England would not be absorbed by Scotland, but rather Scotland by England, being the noblest head of the entire island, since there is always less glory and honour in being joined to that which is far the greater, just as Normandy once came under the rule and power of our ancestors the English." 

Well. That's a fine sentiment coming from a Welshman.

One-Eyed Jan (3)

Recap: in the 1380s Jan Zizka, the famous Hussite commander, sold off his poor estate and moved to Prague. There he became a royal huntsman for the King of Bohemia, Wenceslaus IV, an idle drunken sot who was briefly imprisoned by his own nobility. Civil war followed. Zizka joined one of the many armed gangs tearing up Bohemia. 

As it happens, the archives of the Rosenberg estate contain plentiful information on the activities of his company, led by one Matthew the Leader. They targeted the lands of the lord of Rosenberg, head of the rebel faction in Bohemia. The details are grim. Zizka and his companions camped near farms and mills, so they could rob the locals, hold people for ransom and attack small towns. They remind me of the Border Reivers, who rampaged up and down the Anglo-Scots border in the 16th century, hitting soft targets. 

 Zizka is known to have committed at least one murder; a man belonging to the lord of Rosenberg’s household. He and his comrades used the money they extorted to pay local lords to give them refuge, and hire spies. Zizka took part in many raids, and was involved in the capture of the castle of Hus in southern Bohemia. Various nobles started to hire his services, asking for Zizka’s advice in conquering towns and strongholds. 

The one-eyed gangster was making a name for himself. Among those aristocrats who took notice of him was Jan Sokol of Lamberg, a Moravian nobleman. Sokol was a familiar face in the courts of Europe, and may have met Zizka while the latter was still a royal huntsman. The two men remained in contact when Zizka joined Matthew the Leader’s guerillas. Zizka also made connections with the Kunstats, a powerful family throughout Bohemia and Moravia. Two of them, Victorin and Hynek, became close friends of Zizka, while he is said to have become godfather to Victorin’s son George, destined to become the first and only Hussite king. 

Even so, Zizka was lucky to survive. The archives describe how Lord Rosenberg and his followers dealt with the guerrillas, if any of them were captured. It was straightforward: first they were horribly tortured for information, then executed after confessing their guilt. 

After several years of this mayhem, the civil war in Bohemia started to fragment. King Wenceslaus made peace with some of his enemies, including Lord Rosenberg, while the factions were distracted by a Turkish invasion of neighbouring Hungary and a civil war in Austria. 

For reasons that I don’t entirely understand, one of the Austrian factions started attacking Rosenberg’s lands in Bohemia. Whatever the political context, this was a disaster for everyone concerned: Lord Rosenberg’s already ravaged territory went up in flames, while Matthew the Leader’s gang was virtually wiped out. Matthew himself was captured in 1409, tortured and executed, while one of Zizka’s brothers was brutally killed at Budweis. 

Zizka himself might have gone the same way, but he was saved by his old master, Wenceslaus. In two letters dated April and July 1409, the king ordered the town of Budweis to make peace with Zizka. Part of the second letter reads: 

“We have received in grace our faithful, dear Jan Zizka of Trucnov, forgiving him all single excesses against the King and the Crown of the Bohemian Kingdom.” 

Thanks to friends in high places, Zizka breathed again.

The lands I ought to hold

 #OTD in 1274 Edward I paid homage to Philip III in Paris for the duchy of Gascony. He used this form of words: 

 "Lord king, I do you homage for all the lands which I ought to hold of you". The conditional statement is significant. Via the Treaty of Paris in 1259, the French kings were supposed to hand over the lands of Agenais, Quercy and Saintonge to the English, as well as the three dioceses of Limoges, Cahors and Périgeuex. When Philip came to the throne, he set aside his father's promises and ignored Henry III's repeated requests for the land to be handed over. 

The new king of England, Edward I, used more forceful methods. On 8 August, just two days after swearing homage, his seneschal of Gascony took an army into Limousin and attacked Philip's vassal in the region, the Viscomtesse of Limoges. The chronicle of Limoges describes what followed: 

"The king of England's seneschal, who had come to the aid of the citizens of Limoges against the viscountess of Limoges, had a great victory over her army, between Aixe and the town of Limoges. He wounded and captured many of them, killing a nobleman and many others, without loss to him or his allies, at which the townsfolk rejoiced greatly. Moreover, they captured the banner of Gilbert de Tamines." 

Edward had been invited in by the citizens of Limoges, who wished to throw off Philip and have the King of England for overlord instead. The Gascon army was nominally led by Edward's wife, Eleanor of Castile. However, the seneschal, Luke de Tany, commanded the army on the battlefield, while Eleanor stayed in the monastery at Limoges. 

The little-known war of Limoges dwindled away into a compromise, whereby Edward was allowed to retain the homage of those citizens who wished to be English subjects. However, he was obliged to pay war damages to Philip, his overlord. This was just one of many conflicts and disputes arising from the Paris agreement, which sowed the seeds of the Hundred Years War. 

(First pic is of the remains of the Viscountess's castle at Aixe, near Limoges; second is of a psalter believed to have been commissioned by Eleanor for her favourite son, Alphonso).

One-eyed Jan (2)

Recap: Jan Zizka, the famous Bohemian general, was born c.1360 to a poor estate in Trocnov, which he gradually sold off. He moved to Prague and at some point married a woman named Catherine, about whom little is known except she probably died young. 

Now Zizka started to rise in the world. An entry in royal accounts dated 1392 records a payment to ‘Siska, venitor domini regus’, which means that Zizka had become a royal huntsman. The payment, of one year’s salary, was made in a small town 65 kilometres south of Prague near the royal castle of Orlik.  

Unless I have my kings mixed up, this means that Zizka had entered the service of Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia, nicknamed ‘the Idle’. The king was a drunken, pleasure-loving lout (sounds good) noted for his cruelty (not so good), and for holding grand hunting parties (better). We don’t know Zizka got the job of huntsman, although he and Wenceslaus were close in age, and the king liked to mix with the lower orders. Perhaps he caught Wenceslaus’s eye at some boozy revel or other. 

 After a year or so of this jolly life, Bohemia collapsed into civil war. The final straw was the murder of John of Nepomuk, a high-ranking clergyman, whom Wenceslaus had drowned in a river. A group of Bohemian nobles, wishing to regain the independence they had lost under Wenceslaus’s father Charles IV, went into revolt. They were led by Henry of Rosenberg and several of the king’s relatives, including his younger half-brother Sigismund and cousin Jobst. 

Although Wenceslaus was arrested and imprisoned, several powerful nobles supported him. The Czech nobility split into factions, and soon a murderous war was in progress. Both sides recruited mercenaries, led by knights and squires of the lesser nobility. 

 These bands of freebooters were little more than thugs, roving about the countryside, killing and robbing at will. Sometimes they remembered to attack the enemy, more often they simply went for soft targets - crops, livestock, isolated castles and villages. They were protected by powerful lords, so could pretty much do as they liked. 

 This was Zizka’s training in warfare. He left his comfortable post as royal huntsman and joined one of the armed gangs that supported the king. His company was led by a man named - appropriately enough - Matthew the Leader, and sponsored by the royalist lords of Lichtenburg. They targeted the lands of Henry of Rosenberg, leader of the rebel faction. 

We have lots of information on Matthew the Leader and his gang, thanks to detailed records kept in the Rosenberg archives and the town of Jihlava in western Moravia. Zizka is frequently mentioned in the ominous-sounding ‘Black Book’ of the Rosenberg estate, so we shall look at that next. 

First pic is the Martyrdom of St. John Nepomuk by Szymon Czechowicz.

One-eyed Jan (1)

We're back!

To freshen things up a bit, let’s take a look at the blind genius general of Bohemia, Jan Zizka. I had a bit of a Hussite phase several years ago and wrote a novel about them (plug, plug). Most of the information on these posts comes from Victor Verney’s book on Zizka, a couple of old textbooks I have lying around and the bargain bucket of my memory. Also, I am typing Zizka’s name without accents because I don’t know how to do them on a Mac. So there. 

We don’t know much about Zizka’s early life. He may (or may not) have been born circa 1360 in Trocnov, now part of the town of Borovany in the Czech Republic. I used to live in CZ, incidentally, teaching English. This may (or may not) explain the poor standard of English.* A document dated 3 April 1378 mentions one ‘Johannes dictus Zizka de Trocnov; (Jan called Zizka of Trocnov) as a witness on a marriage contract. Another, dated 10 July of that year, confirms a loan incurred by the same man and two friends. 

There is, apparently, no direct evidence that this Jan Zizka is identical to the famous general. However, it seems very likely: ‘Zizka’ means ‘one-eyed’ in Czech, and it defies belief that there were two one-eyed men named Jan Zizka from Trocnov at the same time. According to legend, Zizka lost his first eye during the Battle of Grunnenberg-Tannenberg in 1410. That is probably a later myth, one of the many that swirl about his name. He could just as easily have lost it in a pub brawl when he was young, or any one of a thousand reasons. Furthermore, ‘Zizka’ was not a family name, but a nickname applied to a specific individual. 

In order to secure loans, Zizka must have held property. The family estate in Trocnov was small, with poor quality soil, and its prosperity depended on crops and livestock. Either Zizka was unlucky, or a bad estate manager, but by 1384 he had sold off the last of his ancestral estate. He was in Prague in 1381, perhaps inspiring a later tale that he was educated at the Prague royal court. A document from 1384 mentions one Catherine, wife of Johannes dictus Zizka, who seems to have died young. 

As you can tell, it is very difficult to piece together Zizka’s early life. The evidence, such as it is, indicates that he was the heir to an impoverished country estate, which he gradually sold off. Zizka then moved to Prague and got married at some point in the 1380s. 

He wasn’t a particularly good catch. In this era, property defined a man’s status. After selling off his inheritance, poor as it was, Zizka was reduced to a mere squire, and a landless one at that. Oh, and he was half-blind. Not a very promising start, then. *I’m joking, of course. I expect the standard is very good.