JOHN ZIZKA 1370-1424, BY RAY KEENE

Editor James O’Fee writes – I mentioned John Zizka briefly in a recent blog. Ray Keene has sent me a photocopy of this essay on Zizka, which appeared in Buzan’s Book of Genius (1994).

JOHN ZIZKA 1370-1424

Our account of the era of Divine Conflict closes with the Holy Wars in Bohemia, the modern Czech Republic, at the start of the 15th century.

NEW IDEAS

For some time, there had been stirrings of discontent against the prevailing dogma of the Roman Catholic Church. This dissatifaction centred on the sacrament of the eucharist. In this rite, only the celebrant priest was permitted to drink the holy wine, which represented Christ’s redeeming blood. But the lay Christian flock of Bohemia also aspired to taste this sacred draught. One brave man who had preached this new way, Jan Hus (born 1369), was burnt at the stake for heresy at the Council of Constance in 1415, when the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire joined forces to stamp out such dangerous new ideas.

However, this particular new idea stoutly resisted suppression. Within four years of the burning of Jan Hus, Hussite armies were raging across Bohemia, defying both the power of the Empire and the numerous crusades launched by the Pope to crush them.

LOVE OF THE TASK

The Hussite cohorts were led by a remarkable man, the general John Zizka. He was educated at court in aristocratic style before taking up a military career. Indeed, Zizka seemed irresistibly drawn to whichever corner of Europe was currently involved in the heaviest fighting. He fought for the Teutonic Knights against the Poles, for the Austrians against the Turks, and for the English, under Henry V, at the Battle of Agincourt against the French in 1415.

INTER-PERSONAL INTELLIGENCE

Zizka’s achievements, after the revolt broke out at Prague on 30 July 1419, were truly extraordinary. He consistently had to face better-armed professional troops, far superior in numbers to his own, with what amounted to little more than untrained peasant bands armed only with simple farming implements, and almost no cavalry. Yet, time after time, Zizka blasted the Imperial and Papal legios from the field. When the war started, Zizka was already blind in one eye. (Nelson suffered from the same handicap.) But Zizka’s handicap helped make him an inspiration to his men, for whom a wounded officer meant one who had proved himself willing to share in their own dangers.

In 1421, with just 400 men, Zizka defeated the 40,000 troops of the Emperor Sigismund and captured Prague. He established the stronghold of Mount Tabor as his base, and subsequently his forces became known as ‘Taborites’.

TURNING ADVERSITY TO ADVANTAGE

In 1421, at the siege of Raby, Zizka was blinded in his second eye. To most people, sudden blindness would become an overwhelming handicap, or a reason for early retirement! But Zizka persisted. Within one week, despite suffering from a heavy infection, he had recovered sufficiently to lead his army to further victories over the forces of the emperor and the Pope.

A MAP IN THE MIND

For Zizka to continue as a general when blind indicated both a colossal degree of mental organisation and a fantastic mental picture of terrain, as well as total recall of his battlefield layout. During this period, Zizka did not operate as commander-in-chief – he effectively ran the government. No human opponent could defeat him; in 1421, however, he died of the plague while besieging Przibislav.

INDOMITABLE SPIRITUAL INTELLIGENCE

Zizka was undoubtedly a military genius. During the course of his campaigns, he invented a primitive form of tank well before Leonardo. This was an armoured peasant wagon, mounted with an early form of light artillery, and it proved particularly effective against the medieval massed cavalry tactics of the imperial Knights.

His early tanks rolled forward en masse in groups of several hundred, virtually eliminating the armoured knight from central European battlefields. The accompanying noise and smoke were often sufficient of themselves to discourage and unverve the opposition. Even more impressive was the fact that Zizka was regularly outnumbered 10-1. His victories have become legends in Czech history.

INSPIRATION

Some of the geniuses in this book are relatively unknown. Zizka is one of them, a man whose achievements, in terms of persistence and determination, deserve to be heralded. To all who find themselves in a seemingly terminal negative spiral, Zizka should be an inspiration.

Ed-Thanks, Ray. What an amazing story! I knew of Zizka’s name but not of the details that Ray Keene has set before us. That Zizka, blind in one eye and then blind in both, should lead the Czech people, few in number, and attacked as a ‘nation of heretics’, to success against the combined forces of the Papacy and the Emperor, then at the height of their power, beggars belief.

You can find more information on John Zizka (Jan Žižka in Czech) here.

Curiously, BBC Radio 4 's Book of the Week, Brain Matters by Katrina Firlik, today alluded to the way that blind people can compensate for their disability. The rear lobes normally handle visual information from the eye nerves. When the stimulation is lacking, blind people start to use these areas of the brain to process other tasks, for example reading in Braille.