Hussite Wars - The Outbreak of Fighting

The Outbreak of Fighting

The death of the king resulted in renewed troubles in Prague and in almost all parts of Bohemia. Many Catholics, mostly Germans — mostly still faithful to the pope — were expelled from the Bohemian cities. In Prague, in November 1419, severe fighting took place between the Hussites and the mercenaries whom Queen Sophia (widow of Wenceslaus and regent after the death of her husband) had hurriedly collected. After a considerable part of the city had been damaged or destroyed, the parties declared a truce on 13 November. The nobles, sympathetic to the Hussite cause, but supporting the regent, promised to act as mediators with Sigismund, while the citizens of Prague consented to restore to the royal forces the castle of Vyšehrad, which had fallen into their hands. Žižka, who disapproved of this compromise, left Prague and retired to Plzeň. Unable to maintain himself there he marched to southern Bohemia, and after defeating the Catholics at the battle of Sudoměř (25 March 1420) in the first pitched battle of the Hussite wars, he arrived at Ústí, one of the earliest meeting-places of the Hussites. Not considering its situation sufficiently strong, he moved to the neighbouring new settlement of the Hussites, called by the biblical name of Tábor.

Tabor soon became the centre of the extreme, militant Hussites, who differed from the Utraquists by recognizing only two sacraments - Baptism and Communion - and by rejecting most of the ceremony of the Roman Catholic Church. The ecclesiastical organization of Tabor had a somewhat puritanical character, and the government was established on a thoroughly democratic basis. Four captains of the people (hejtmané) were elected, one of whom was Žižka; and a very strictly military discipline was instituted.