ZISKA AND THE WAR AGAINST ANTICHRIST

“We are collecting troops from all parts, in order to fight
against the enemies of truth, and the destroyers of our nation
… to make war on the Antichrist …”

Taken from “The History of Protestantism” by J.A. Wylie
Edited by Christian J. Pinto

***CJP Note: Wylie’s history of the remarkable Hussite general, John Ziska (c. 1378-1424) begins just after the death of John Huss, who was martyred for preaching the Gospel in Bohemia.  After him, his dear friend and brother in the faith, Jerome of Prague was also burned at the stake.  Huss had been condemned by the Council of Constance, which was the Papal authority that accursed John Wycliffe, ordering that his remains be disinterred, and thrown upon a dunghill.  History records that Wycliffe’s bones were later dug up, burned, and his ashes cast into the River Swift.   Yet Wycliffe’s teachings would continue to spread, and greatly influenced both Huss and the believers who bore his name.  Now to Wylie’s history:

Huss had been burned; his ashes, committed to the Rhine, had been borne away to their dark sepulcher in the ocean; but his stake had sent a thrill of indignation and horror through Bohemia.  His death moved the hearts of his countrymen more powerfully than even his living voice had been able to do.  The vindicator of his nation’s wrongs – the reformer of his nation’s religion – in short, the representative man of Bohemia, had been cruelly, treacherously immolated; and the nation took the humiliation and insult as done to itself.  All ranks, from the highest to the lowest, were stirred by what had occurred. 

When the tidings of Huss’s martyrdom arrived, the magnates and great nobles held a full council, and, speaking in the name of the Bohemian nation, they addressed an energetic protest to Constance against the crime there enacted.  They eulogized, in the highest terms, the man whom the Council had consigned to the flames as a heretic, calling him the “Apostle of Bohemia; a man innocent, pious, holy, and a faithful teacher of the truth.”  Holding the pen in one hand, while the other rested on their sword’s hilt, they said, “Whoever shall affirm that heresy is spread abroad in Bohemia, lies in his throat, and is a traitor to our kingdom; and, while we leave vengeance to God, to whom it belongs, we shall carry our complaints to the footstool of the indubitable apostolic Pontiff, when the Church shall again be ruled by such an one; declaring, at the same time, that no ordinance of man shall hinder our protecting the humble and faithful preachers of the words of our Lord Jesus, and our defending them fearlessly, even to the shedding of blood.”

But deeper feelings were at work among the Bohemian people than those of anger.  The faith which had produced so noble a martyr was compared with the faith which had immolated him, and the contrast was found to be in no wise to the advantage of the latter.  The doctrines which Huss had taught were recalled to memory now that he was dead.  The writings of Wycliffe, which had escaped the flames, were read, and compared with such portions of Holy Writ as were accessible to the people, and the consequence was a very general reception of the evangelical doctrines.  The new opinions struck their roots deeper every day, and their adherents, who now began to be called Hussites, multiplied one might say almost hourly. 

Within four years from the death of Huss, the bulk of the nation had embraced the faith for which he died.  His disciples included not a few of the higher nobility, many of the wealthy burghers of the towns, some of the inferior clergy, and the great majority of the peasantry. 

Taborites & the Chalice of Protestantism

A slight divergence of sentiment was already traceable among the Hussites.  One party entirely rejected the authority of the Church of Rome, and made the Scriptures their only standard.  These came to bear the name of Taborites, from the scene of one of their early encampments, which was a hill in the neighborhood of Prague bearing a resemblance, it was supposed, to the Scriptural Tabor. 

Their distinctive tenet was the cup or chalice, meaning thereby Communion … The cup became the national Protestant symbol.  It was blazoned on their standards and carried in the van of their armies; it was sculptured on the portals of their churches, and set up over the gates of their cities.  It was even placed in studied contrast to the Roman symbol, which was the cross.  The latter, the Hussites said, recalled scenes of suffering, and so was an emblem of gloom; the former, the cup, was the sign of an accomplished redemption, and so a symbol of gladness.

The New Pope & His Political Puppets

We must bestow a glance on what meanwhile was transacting at Constance.  The Council knew that a fire was smoldering in Bohemia, and it did its best to fan it into a conflagration.  The sentence of utter extermination, pronounced by old Rome against Carthage, was renewed by Papal Rome against Bohemia, a land yet more accursed than Carthage, overrun by heresy, and peopled by men not worthy to enjoy the light of day.  But first the Council must select a new Pope.  The conclave met; and being put on “a thin diet,” the cardinals came to an early decision.  In their haste they forced a hole in the wall, and shouted out, “We have a Pope, and Otho de Colonna is he!” (November 14th, 1417). 

Acclamations of voices and the pealing of bells followed this announcement, in the midst of which the Emperor Sigismund entered the conclave, and, in the first burst of his joy or superstition, falling down before the newly elected Pope, he kissed the feet of the Roman Father.

***CJP Note: It was Emperor Sigismund who betrayed John Huss, promising him safe conduct, and then allowing him to be burnt at the stake.

The French and Spanish members of the conclave contended for a Pope of their own nation, but the matter was cut short by the German deputies, who united their votes in favour of the Italian candidate, and so the affair issued in the election of Otho, of the most noble and ancient house of Colonna.  His election falling on the fete of St. Martin of Tours, he took the title of Martin V.   Windneck, one of Sigismund’s privy counsillors, says, in his history of the emperor, that the Cardinal de Colonna was poor and modest, but that Pope Martin was very covetous and extremely rich.

A few hours after the election, through the same streets along which Huss and Jerome had been led in chains to the stake, there swept another and very different procession.  The Pope was going in state to be enthroned.  He rode on a white horse, covered with rich scarlet housings.  The abbots and bishops, in robes of white silk, and mounted on horses, followed in his train.  The Pontiff’s bridle-rein was held on the right by the emperor, and on the left by the Elector of Brandenburg, these august personages walking on foot.  In this fashion was he conducted to the cathedral, where seated on the high altar he was incensed and received homage under the title of Martin V.

Papal invasion of Bohemia

Bohemia was one of the first cares of the newly anointed Pope.  The great movement which had Wycliffe for its preacher, and Huss and Jerome for its martyrs, was rapidly advancing.  The Pope hurled excommunication against it, but he knew that he must employ other and more forcible weapons besides spiritual ones before he could hope to crush it.  He summoned the emperor to give to the Papal See worthier and more substantial proofs of devotion than the gala service of holding his horse’s bridle-rein. 

Pope Martin V, addressing himself to Sigismund, with all the kings, princes, dukes, barons, knights, states, and commonwealths of Christendom, adjured them, by “the wounds of Christ,” to unite their arms and exterminate that “sacrilegious and accursed nation.” A liberal distribution was promised of the customary rewards – crowns and high places in Paradise – to those who should display the most zeal against the obnoxious heresy by shedding the greatest amount of Bohemian blood.  Thus exhorted, the Emperor Sigismund and several of the neighboring German states made ready to engage in the crusade.

Enter Ziska, the one-eyed warrior

Alas, the poor land of Bohemia!  Woe and woe seemed coming upon it.  Its two most illustrious sons had expired at the stake; the Pope had hurled excommunication against it; the emperor was collecting his forces to invade it; and the craven Wenceslaus had neither heart to feel nor spirit to resent the affront that had been done his kingdom.  The citizens were distracted, for though on fire with indignation they had neither counselor nor captain.  At that crisis a remarkable man arose to organize the nation and lead its armies.  His name was John Trocznowski, but he is better known by the sobriquet of Ziska – that is, the one-eyed.

The circumstances attending his birth were believed to foreshadow his extraordinary destiny.  His mother went one harvest day to visit the reapers on the paternal estates, and being suddenly taken with the pains of labor, she was delivered of a son beneath an oak-tree in the field.  The child grew to manhood, adopted the profession of arms, distinguished himself in the wars of Poland, and returning to his native country, became chamberlain to King Wenceslaus.

The shock which the martyrdom of Huss gave the whole nation was not unfelt by Ziska in the palace.  He might be seen traversing, with pensive brow and folded arms, the long corridors of the palace, the windows of which look down on the broad stream of the Moldau, on the towers of Prague, and the plains beyond, which stretch out towards that quarter of the horizon where the pile of Huss had been kindled.  One day the monarch surprised him in this thoughtful mood.  “What is this?” said Wenceslaus, somewhat astonished to see one with a sad countenance in his palace.  “I cannot brook the insult offered to Bohemia at Constance by the murder of John Huss,” replied the chamberlain.  “Where is the use,” said the king, “of vexing one’s self about it?  Neither you nor I have the means of avenging it.  But,” continued the king, thinking doubtless that Ziska’s fit would soon pass off, “if you are able to call the emperor and Council to account, you have my permission.”  “Very good, my gracious master,” rejoined Ziska, “will you be pleased to give me your permission in writing?”  Wenceslaus, who liked a joke, and deeming that such a document would be perfectly harmless in the hands of one who had neither friends, nor money, nor soldiers, gave Ziska what he asked under the royal seal.

Ziska, who had accepted the authorization not in jest but in earnest, watched his opportunity.  It soon came.  The Pope fulminated his bull of crusade against the Hussites.  There followed great excitement throughout Bohemia, and especially in its capital, Prague.  The burghers assembled to deliberate on the measures to be adopted for avenging the nation’s insulted honor, and defending its threatened independence.  Ziska, armed with the royal authorization, suddenly appeared in the midst of them.  The citizens were emboldened when they saw one who stood so high, as they believed, in the favor of the king, putting himself at their head; they concluded that Wenceslaus also was with them, and would further their enterprise.  In this, however, they were mistaken.

The factions became more embittered every day.  Tumult and massacre broke out in Prague.  The senators took refuge in the townhouse; they were pursued thither, thrown out of the window, and received on the pikes of the insurgents.  The king, on receiving news of the outrage, was so excited, whether from fear or anger is not known, that he had a fit of apoplexy, and died in a few days.

Sigismund: traitorous heir to the throne

Wenceslaus being dead, and the queen espousing the side of the Catholics, the tumults burst out afresh.  There was a whole week’s fighting, night and day, between the Romanists and the Hussites, on the bridge of the Moldau, leading to the royal castle.  No little blood was shed; the churches and convents were pillaged, the monks driven away, and in some cases massacred.  But it was likely to have fared ill with the insurgent Bohemians. 

The Emperor Sigismund, brother of the deceased Wenceslaus, now claimed the crown of Bohemia.  A bitter partisan of Rome, for whose sake he had incurred the eternal disgrace of burning the man to whom he had given his solemn promise of safety, was not likely to stand on scruples or fear to strike.  He was marching on Prague to quell the insurrection and take possession of the crown.  Perish that crown, said the Bohemians, rather than that it shall sit on the head of one who has incurred the double odium of tyrant and traitor.  The Bohemians resolved on resistance; and now it was that the tempest burst.  But the party to strike the first blow was Sigismund.

***CJP Note: The Hussites met first on Michaelmas Day, 1419, to celebrate Communion together, but without conflict.  They met again, a second time, and were ambushed by the troops of the Emperor Sigismund.  We read:

Several hundreds were already on their way, bearing, as before, not arms but walking-staves, when they were met by the intelligence that the troops of the emperor, lying in ambuscade, were waiting their approach.  They halted on the road, and sent messengers to the towns in their rear begging assistance.  A small body of soldiers was dispatched to their aid, and in the conflict which followed, the imperial cavalry, though in superior force, were put to flight.  The first battle had been fought with the troops of the emperor, and the victory remained with the Bohemians.

The Rubicon had been crossed.  The Bohemians must now go forward into the heart of the conflict, which was destined to assume dimensions that were not dreamed of by either party.  The Turk, without intending it, came to their help.  He attacked the Empire of Sigismund on the side opposite to that of Bohemia.  This divided the emperor’s forces, and weakened his front against Ziska.

Ziska of the Chalice

The prompt and patriotic Hussite leader saw his advantage, and made haste to rally the whole of Bohemia, before the emperor should have got the Moslem off his hands, and before the armed bands of Germany, now mustering in obedience to the Papal summons, should have had time to bear down upon the little country.

He issued a manifesto, signed “Ziska of the Chalice,” in which he invoked at once the religion and the patriotism of his countrymen.  “Imitate,” said he, “your ancestors the ancient Bohemians, who were always able to defend the cause of God and their own … We are collecting troops from all parts, in order to fight against the enemies of truth, and the destroyers of our nation, and I beseech you to inform your preacher that he should exhort, in his sermons, the people to make war on the Antichrist, and that every one, old and young, should prepare himself for it.  The hand of God has not been shortened.  Have courage, and be ready.  May God strengthen you! – Ziska of the Chalice: in the hope of God, Chief of the Taborites.

***CJP Note: The teaching of John Wycliffe, along with John Huss and Jerome of Prague was that the Pope (or Papal system) was the very Antichrist and Man of Sin prophesied in the Scriptures.

This appeal was responded to by a burst of enthusiasm.  From all parts of Bohemia, from its towns and villages and rural plains, the inhabitants rallied to the standard of Ziska, now planted on Mount Tabor.  These hastily assembled masses were but poorly disciplined, and still more poorly armed; but the latter defect was about to be supplied in a way they little dreamed of.

They had scarce begun their march towards the capital when they encountered a body of imperial cavalry.  They routed, captured, and disarmed them.  The spoils of the enemy furnished them with the weapons they so greatly needed, and they now saw themselves armed.  Flushed with his second victory, Ziska, at the head of his now numerous host, a following rather than an army, entered Prague, where the righteousness of the Hussite cause, and the glory of the success that had so far attended it, were tarnished by the violence committed on their opponents.  Many of the Roman Catholics lost their lives, and the number of churches and convents taken possession of, according to both Protestant and Catholic historians, was about 500.  The monks were specially obnoxious from their opposition to Huss.  Their establishments in Prague and throughout Bohemia were pillaged.  These were of great magnificence.  A very short while saw them utterly wrecked, and their treasure, which was immense, and which consisted in gold and silver and precious stones, went a long way to defray the expenses of the war.

It began to be apparent that the Hussites were not the contemptible opponents Sigismund had taken them for.  He deemed it prudent to come to terms with the Turk that he might be at liberty to deal with Ziska.

Assembling an army, contemporary historians say of 100,000 men, of various nationalities, he marched on Prague, now in possession of the Hussites, and laid siege to it.  Under the emperor, who held of course the supreme command, were five electors, two dukes, two landgraves, and more than fifty German princes.  But this great host, so proudly officered, was destined to be ignominiously beaten.  The citizens of Prague, under the brave Ziska, drove them with disgrace from before their walls.  The imperialists avenged themselves for their defeat by the atrocities they inflicted in their retreat.  Burning, rapine, and slaughter marked their track, seeing as they fancied in every Bohemian a Hussite and enemy. 

A second attempt did the emperor make on Prague the same year (1420), only to subject himself and the arms of the Empire to the disgrace of a second repulse.  Outrages again marked the retreating steps of the invaders.  These repeated successes invested the name of Ziska with great renown, and raised the expectations and courage of his followers to the highest pitch.  Mount Tabor, where the standard of Ziska continued to float, was to become, so they thought, the head of the earth, more holy than Zion, more invulnerable than the Capitol.

The Diet at Czaslau

At this stage of the affair the Bohemians held a Diet at Czaslau (1521) to deliberate on their course for the future.  The first matter that occupied them was the disposal of their crown.  They declared Sigismund unworthy to wear it, and resolved to offer it to the King of Poland or to a prince of his dynasty.  The second question was, on what basis should they accept a peace?  The four following articles they declared indispensable:

1.  The free preaching of the Gospel.
2.  The celebration of the Sacrament of the Supper in both kinds.
3.  The secularization of the ecclesiastical property, reserving only so much of it as might yield a comfortable subsistence to the clergy.
4.  The execution of the laws against all crimes, by whomsoever committed, whether laics or clerics.

Further, the Diet established a regency for the government of the kingdom, composed of magnates, nobles, and burghers, with Ziska as its president.

Sigismund Responds

The Emperor Sigismund sent proposals to the Diet, offering to confirm their liberties and redress all their just wrongs, provided they would accept him as their king, and threatening them with war in case of refusal.  They returned for answer an indignant rejection of his propositions, reminding Sigismund that he had broken his word in the matter of the safe-conduct, that he had inculpated himself by participating in the murder of Huss and Jerome, and that he had assumed the attitude of an enemy of Bohemia by publishing the bull of excommunication which the Pope had fulminated against their native land, and by stirring up the German nationalities to invade it.

The war now resumed its course.  It was marked by the usual concomitants of military strife, rapine and siege, fields wasted, cities burned, and the arts and industries suspended.  Such a conflict the Bohemians never could have sustained but for their faith in God, whose aid would not be wanting, they believed, to their righteous cause.  Nor can any one who surveys the wonderful course of the campaign fail to see that this aid was indeed vouchsafed.  Victory invariably declared on the side of the Hussites.   

Ziska against the armies of the Papal Antichrist

Ziska won battle after battle, and apart from the character of the cause of which he was the champion, he may be said to have deserved the success that attended him, by the feats of valor which he performed in the field, and the consummate ability which he displayed as a general.  He completely outmaneuvered the armies of the emperor; he overwhelmed them by surprises, and baffled them by new and masterly tactics.  His name had now become a tower of strength to his friends, and a terror to his enemies.  Every day his renown extended, and in the same proportion did the confidence of his soldiers in him and in themselves increase.   They forgot the odds arrayed against them, and with every new day they went forth with redoubled courage to meet their enemies in the field, and to achieve new and more glorious victories. 

Our space does not permit us to narrate in detail the many battles, in all of which Ziska bore himself so gallantly.  He was one of the most remarkable generals that ever led an army.  Cochleus, who bore him no good-will, says, taking all things into account, his blindness, the peasants he had to transform into soldiers, and the odds he had to meet, Ziska was the greatest general that ever lived.  Accident deprived him in his boyhood of one of his eyes.  At the siege of Raby he lost the other, and was now entirely blind.  But his marvelous genius for arranging an army and directing its movements, for foreseeing every emergency and coping with every difficulty, instead of being impaired by his untoward accident, seemed to be strengthened and enlarged, for it was only now that his great abilities as a military leader fully revealed themselves.  When an action was about to take place, he called a few officers around him, and made them describe the nature of the ground and the position of the enemy.  His arrangement was instantly made as if by intuition.  He saw the course the battle must run and the succession of maneuvers by which victory was to be grasped. 

While the armies were fighting in the light of day, the great chief who moved them stood apart in a pavilion of darkness.  But his inner eye surveyed the whole field, and watched its every movement.  That blind giant, like Samson his eyes put out, but unlike Samson his hands not bound, smote his enemies with swift, terrible, and unerring blows, and having overwhelmed them in ruin, himself retired from the field victorious. 

What contributed not a little to his remarkable success were the novel methods of defense which Ziska employed in the field.  He conferred on his soldiers the advantages of men who contend behind walls and ramparts, while their enemy is all the time exposed.  It is a mode of warfare in use among Eastern and nomadic tribes, from whom it is probable the Poles borrowed it, and Ziska in his turn may have learned it from them when he served in their wars.  It consisted of the following contrivance: -- The wagons of the commissariat, linked one to another by strong iron chains, and ranged in line, were placed in front of the host.  This fortification was termed Wagenberg; ranged in the form of a circle, this wooden wall sometimes enclosed the whole army.  Behind this first rampart rose a second, formed of the long wooden shields of the soldiers, stuck in the ground.  These movable walls were formidable obstructions to the German cavalry.  Mounted on heavy horses, and armed with pikes and battle-axes, they had to force their way through this double fortification before they could close with the Bohemians.  All the while that they were hewing at the wagons, the Bohemian archers were plying them with their arrows, and it was with thinned ranks and exhausted strength that the Germans at length were able to join the battle with the foe.

Even after forcing their way, with great effort and loss, through this double defense, they still found themselves at a disadvantage; for their armor scarce enabled them to contend on equal terms with the uncouth but formidable weapons of their adversaries.  The Bohemians were armed with long iron flails, which they swung with prodigious force.  The seldom failed to hit, and when they did so, the flail crashed through the brazen helmet, skull and all.  Moreover, they carried long spears which had hooks attached, and with which, clutching the German horsemen, they speedily brought him to the ground and dispatched him.  The invaders found that they had penetrated the double rampart of their foes only to be dragged from their horses and helplessly slaughtered. 

Besides numerous skirmishes and many sieges, Ziska fought sixteen pitched battles, from all of which he returned a conqueror. 

The death of Ziska

The career of this remarkable man terminated suddenly.  He did not fall by the sword, nor did he breathe his last on the field of battle; he was attacked by the plague while occupied in the siege of Prysbislav, and died on October 11th, 1424.

The grief of his soldiers was great, and for a moment they despaired of their cause, thinking that with the death of their leader all was lost.  Bohemia laid her great warrior in the tomb with a sorrow more universal and profound than that with which she had ever buried any of her kings. 

Ziska had made the little country great; he had filled Europe with the renown of its arms; he had combatted for the faith which was now that of a majority of the Bohemian nation, and by his hand God had humbled the haughtiness of that power which had sought to trample their convictions and consciences into the dust.  He was buried in the Cathedral of Czaslau, in fulfillment of his own wish.  His countrymen erected a monument of marble over his ashes, with his effigies sculptured on it, and an inscription recording his great qualities and the exploits he had performed.  Perhaps the most touching memorial of all was his strong iron mace, which hung suspended above his tomb.

The Bohemian Jesuit Balbinus, who had seen numerous portraits of Ziska, speaks of him as a man of middle size, strong chest, broad shoulders, large round head, and aquiline nose.  He dressed in the Polish fashion, wore a moustache, and shaved his head, leaving only a tuft of brown hair, as was the manner in Poland.

The Hussites & the Protestant Reformation

To this day the Hussites have never had justice done them.  Their cause was branded with every epithet of condemnation and abhorrence by their contemporaries.  At this we do not wonder.  But succeeding ages even have been slow to perceive the sublimity of their struggle, and reluctant to acknowledge the great benefits that flowed from it to Christendom.  It is time to remove the odium under which it has long lain. 

The Hussites present the first instance in history of a nation voluntarily associating in a holy bond to maintain the right to worship God according to the dictates of conscience.  True, they maintained that right with the sword; but for this they are not to blame.  It was not left them to choose the weapons with which to fight their sacred battle.  The fulmination of the Pope, and the invasion of their country by the armies of the emperor, left them no alternative but to arms.  But, having reluctantly unsheathed the sword, the Hussites used it to such good purpose that their enemies long remembered the lesson that had been taught them.  Their struggle paved the way for the quiet entrance of the Reformation upon the stage of the sixteenth century.  Had not the Hussites fought and bled, the men of that era would have had a harder struggle before they could have launched their great movement.  Charles V long stood with his hand upon his sword before he found courage to draw it, remembering the terrible recoil of the Hussite war on those who had commenced it.