14.7. 1420 Battle of Vitkov

The first clash of the Hussite wars was the battle on Prague's Vítkov (the former Gallows Hill) on 14 July 1420. After about an hour of fighting, the first Crusader expedition was driven to flight.

The Hussites, reinforced by the troops of Jan Žižka of Trocnov, took up a defensive position on the hill. The defence was strengthened by the construction of a palisade and two wooden log cabins. The Crusader troops under Sigismund of Luxembourg attacked in three directions. Thanks to the tenacity of the defenders, they were unable to take advantage of their numerical superiority.

The Battle of Vitkov turned into a massacre from which the Crusaders had no escape unless they wanted to risk a fall down the hillside, which also threatened death, or at best mutilation. From the other side of the Vltava, Sigismund's army only watched the disaster that befell their comrades at Vitkov.

After about an hour of fighting, this first crusading expedition was driven to flight and then disbanded by Sigismund. By this time, the Crusader army was already decimated by disease, heat and an apparent unwillingness to engage in further fighting, and the outcome of Sigismund's campaign was decided. "The hired mercenaries decided to retreat and left the Crusader army's encampment piecemeal. The army of the Roman king Sigismund disintegrated," writes Vladimír Liška in his book Crimes and Tragedies in Czech History.

The victorious battle meant a temporary consolidation of Jan Želivský's power in Prague, but after the crusaders' final defeat at Vyšehrad in the autumn of 1420, the Prague radicals lost important allies. Jan Žižka returned to the South Bohemian camp to his fighters, who belonged to the Hussite warrior elite. Thanks to his further battle successes, Jan Žižka came to be regarded by his opponentsas an invincible warrior, and the Catholic clergy spread rumours that the devil himself was helping him.

Although Želivský stood at the height of his power after the battle of Vitkov, once the Crusader danger had passed, the Prague townspeople, who no longer had to fearfor their properties acquired during the previous Hussite revolution, began to criticize the revolutionary terror of the Hussite radicals as unnecessary.

"The defeat of the Crusaders in Prague resulted in the more conciliatory part of the supporters of the Hussite Reformation began to raise their heads, and the departure of Žižka and his camp followers marked the first relaxation of Hussite terror," Liška writes.

Sources.