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.