The Heretic

by David Pilling

  The convoy lumbered on, covering eight to ten miles a day. In my role as scout, I was the first to catch a glimpse of the turrets and spires of Prague, rising above the hills to the east.

  We came within sight of the city on the fourth day after leaving Graz. A troop of outriders came galloping down the highway to meet us, fifteen sergeants in kettle hats and quilted jacks. While Tomislav and the headman went forward to meet them, I ran a cool professional eye over their gear and horses. Neither was of the best. The men were slovenly peasants who rode badly, their equipment cheap, and their mounts looked like farm horses pressed into service: ugly, raw-boned creatures, strong enough, but ungainly and slow to handle. If these were a typical example of Hussite cavalry, I could only hope the infantry were excellent.

  Their officer, who had a youthful face under his oversized helmet, spoke gruffly to Tomislav. Their speech was too quick for me to follow, but we didn’t seem to be in any danger. The officer’s eyes widened as Tomislav pointed at me, doubtless explaining the presence of an Englishman among his flock.

  I gave the soldiers a cheerful wave. One of the brutes tried to stare me down, so I winked at him and tapped the hilt of my sword. He looked away.

  Tomislav walked back to us. “It is well,” he said to me after addressing the villagers, “we are just another band of refugees. Hundreds have come streaming into Prague in recent months, driven by the tides of war.”

  “Are we welcome?” I asked. I didn’t like the look of the ruffians on horseback. They weren’t proper soldiers, not to my eyes, and I doubted the young officer had much control over them.

  “Yes,” said Tomislav, “all those prepared to fight are welcome. The situation is urgent. Another enemy host gathers on the border.”

  The news startled me. “Sigismund again? His war-chest must be bottomless.”

  Tomislav shook his head. “No. The Dragon is still licking his wounds. This new threat comes from Silesia, the kingdom to the north. Some of our frontier towns remain true to the false church, and have appealed to the Silesians for military aid.”

  His lean face coloured. “Traitors! They mean to sacrifice their own countrymen, like so many Judases. Now a great horde of Silesians, the scum of Breslau and Schweidnitz, along with hundreds of knights and their lackeys, stand ready to invade Bohemian soil.”

  The news was daunting enough, but this was why I had come to Bohemia. To fight. What else was I good for?

  8.

  I had little time to savour the glories of Prague. An army was already being assembled when our convoy, tired and foot-sore, shambled through the gates. Parts of the city still bore the scars of Sigismund’s failed assault in the previous summer. Tomislav took me through one of the war-torn districts on the west bank of the river called Vltava.

  “This was the Malá Strana,” he said, looking sadly about him at the empty streets, “Prague’s German citizens lived here, before they were driven out two years ago. Their homes were burned. Sigismund’s guns did the rest during the siege.”

  The Malá Strana, or Lesser Town, was certainly a ruin, though not quite abandoned. We passed a team of labourers, laying new tiles on the shattered roof of a church. Here and there families of squatters peered out at us from the windows of a derelict house. Beggars and stray dogs wandered among the rubble.

  The district was gutted by fire. Many of the buildings had been completely flattened, churches as well as shops and houses. A tall statue of some bishop or other lay on its side in the middle of a plaza, toppled from its plinth. The bishop’s head had broken off and rolled away across the cobbles. His stone eyes gazed up at heaven, doubtless outraged by these indignities.

  “Our people knocked him over,” said Tomislav. “Prague is littered with such broken idols. When the false priests were also driven out of Prague, we plundered their churches, stripping them of vestments and other such rubbish. No true house of God has need of such things.”

  When Tomislav spoke of 'we', I assumed he meant the Hussites. I had yet to learn how the Hussite cause was already split into factions. The fanatical peasants who burned down churches and smashed holy monuments in Prague - and murdered Catholic priests, if they caught them - belonged to the more extremist sects.

  The rest of the city was split into two main districts, the Old and New Town. Looming over all, south of the Vltava, was Vitkov Hill.

  I stopped to gaze up at the mighty ridge, its steep flanks covered in vineyards, where Sigismund’s army had come to grief. It was easy to see why the crusaders failed. The crest of the hill was defended by wooden fortifications, ringed by a series of moats and buttressed with clay and stone ramparts. The upper slopes of the hill were defended by a line of squat block-houses. Sunlight gleamed on the barrels of light cannon protruding from the square weapon ports.

  At the southern end there was a square tower, again made of timber, its northern flank guarded by a steep cliff overlooking the banks of the Vltava.

  “That was where Zizka had his vantage point,” said Tomislav, pointing at the tower, “from there he watched the crusaders swarm up the flanks of the Vitkov, only to be routed and driven down the cliff. Hundreds of the misguided swine drowned in the river.”

  I had already heard the story from the English mercenary, Hugh Venables, in the brothel at Nuremberg. As a soldier, I could not help but feel a twinge of pity for the thousands of men who fled headlong down that terrible precipice. Venables had cursed King Sigismund for a fool, and so he was. No halfway competent general would have flung his troops in a head-on assault against the Vitkov. The only sane course was to stand back and pound the crude defences to rubble with gunfire.

  In stark contrast to the desolation of the Malá Strana, the streets of the New Town were full of life. Bands of armed men (and women) roamed about, led by wild-eyed priests chanting Latin dirges and holding aloft images of Christ and the Apostles. Peasants and citizens crowded around the priests, kneeling or stretching out their dirty hands for blessing. Everywhere was the sound of plainchant, the doleful clanging of church bells, Bohemian voices roaring hymns. The city was gripped by a potent mix of fear and anger and religious zeal.

  It was impossible not to be affected. My blood pumped a little faster as I listened to the hymns, thousands of voices raised as one. There was passion here, raw passion. The pulse of it, the vibrancy, quickened my heart. Here, in the middle of Prague, it was possible to believe a new spirit had entered the world. The true and divine spirit of Christ, come to wash away the sins of mankind.

  Our convoy had struggled through the busy streets, across a bridge over the Vltava, into a plaza just inside the Old Town. Here there were fewer people, and the plaza was wide enough to accommodate the wagons and horses. To the north, the twin spires of an enormous cathedral thrust into the sky. Near the cathedral stood a castle, somewhat dwarfed by comparison.

  “I will leave you now,” I said to Tomislav, “my thanks. I am in your debt. Someday I hope to repay it.”

  “Someday,” he said, with a knowing grin. We shook hands. I glanced one last time at the survivors of Graz, huddled together in a corner of the plaza, staring wide-eyed at the magnificence of Prague. I suspected Tomislav had visited the city before, but it was all new to those poor country mice. God knows how the priest meant to feed and lodge his flock. It wasn’t my concern.

  One or two of the youths waved and called out good wishes as I turned my horse to go. Jana, as ever, stood apart from the others. I half-hoped she would say farewell, but instead she stood with her arms folded, staring mutely at the cathedral.

  Despite my poor grasp of Bohemian, it was not difficult to find an officer willing to accept my sword. He and his fellow officers were drilling the city garrison, joined by a noisy complement of volunteers, on the square outside the castle. The Hussites were always desperate for cavalry, so a volunteer who came with his own horse was especially welcome.

  I had hoped to offer my services to Zizka in person, but the great man was absent, laying siege to Cath
olic-held fortresses in the south of Bohemia. The commander he left in his absence, whose name escapes me, was busily scraping together troops to march north and repel the Silesians.

  The Hussites didn't waste time. Shortly after noon I found myself among a body of three hundred light horse, riding out of the eastern gates. The militia, a willing rabble of commoners, were sent after us. A pitiful sight. If it came to open battle against the Silesian knights, these poor serfs would would have been cut to pieces in no time.

  My sense of dread grew as our company neared the border. The men around me said little, and kept their eyes fixed on the skyline. I was reminded of the tension in the English army prior to Baugé. Soldiers can sense disaster, especially if they're likely to be on the wrong end of it.

  I still had Schiller’s map. When we halted for the night, to pitch camp on the edge of a wood near a river, I took out the tattered rag of parchment and squinted at it. Judging from the distance we had covered since Prague, the Silesian border still lay some thirty miles away. A number of towns with barely pronounceable names lay between us and the border.

  One of the Bohemian soldiers squatted next to me. “Hradec Králové,” he said, tapping one of the places on the map.

  I glanced up at him. A burly, thickset fellow, quite young, with a dimpled chin and golden hair, cut brutally short. He wore a brigandine, and had loosened the strap of his kettle-hat so it dangled over the back of his head.

  “Hradec Králové,” he repeated, adding in broken German, “we go there. More men wait for us.”

  I thanked him, and he gave me a friendly nod before turning to rejoin his comrades by the fire. The gesture wasn’t much, but it was something. I flattered myself that at least I might die among friends instead of wary strangers.

  Shortly after dawn we set off again. About mid-morning we reached the town of Hradec Králove, where reinforcements were supposed to be waiting for us. A group of richly-dressed citizens waddled out of the gates to gabble at our captain, plump faces white with terror as they waved their arms and tugged at their beards.

  My spirits sank into my boots. There were no troops here, only these scared, fat old men. Desperate for an explanation, I turned to the fair-haired lad who had spoken to me the previous evening. He jabbed his spear at the far hills beyond Hradec Králove.

  “Our men have gone,” he told me, “gone to fight.”

  My heart started to thump. The invasion had started. Without waiting for us, the militia had tramped out to face twenty thousand Silesians, including armoured knights and men-at-arms. I could only pray the numbers of the enemy host were exaggerated.

  To his credit, our captain didn’t hesitate. We skirted the town and raced northeast, pushing at a gallop across the rough road that plunged into the hill country. The first trails of smoke soon became visible, drifting across the landscape directly ahead.

  The speed of the invasion had caught the Bohemians off-guard. Even as news reached Prague of the Silesian host mustering over the border, the invasion was already in progress. By the time our cavalry were despatched, the worst of the damage was done. I had seen a fair amount of bloody work in Normandy, and reckoned I was grown immune to the horrors of war. Nothing prepared me for the carnage wreaked by the Silesians.

  Just south of the border was a town named Police, defended by a handful of militia, a ditch and a flimsy wall of logs. A peaceful place, of little importance in strategic terms. The Silesians might easily have passed it by to strike at more valuable targets. Instead their commanders chose to make an example of Police. An example against heresy.

  We swiftly caught up with long columns of infantry, spearmen and pikes, slingers, crossbows and flail-men, jogging towards the smoke. Many were barefoot, and only one in five wore a mail coat. These were the reserves of the militia from Hradec Králove. If they didn't look like soldiers, they behaved like them, force-marching in disciplined silence, every man in his place.

  Our cavalry were first to reach Police, only to find the Silesians had retreated. Not, however, without leaving a few mementoes of their visit.

  The town had been sacked, no quarter given to the inhabitants. Grim-faced Bohemian soldiers picked through the reeking devastation, looking for survivors. The Silesian cavalry had leaped the shallow ditch and set about butchering every man, woman and child they could find. Meanwhile their infantry forced the gate. A pile of Bohemian militiamen lay dead just inside the gateway, overwhelmed as they tried to stem the tide of bodies. At least they had died fighting, in the heat of battle. Far worse was in store for their kin.

  A kind of madness had gripped the Silesians. Raging bloodlust, as often happens when a town is given over to the sack. There was something else here, though. Something inhuman. Even the atrocities I witnessed at Caen and Rouen paled next to it.

  The naked bodies of forty boys, none older than twelve, were piled in the town square. They had been stripped and horribly mutilated before the Silesians murdered them. Their legs and arms lay in a separate pile, their noses in another. The task was done with calculated fury. Cold, methodical sadism, committed by men who apparently thought God would approve their actions. Those white bodies, glistening like slugs in the bright spring sunshine, still haunt my nightmares.

  This was not the only horror. Some of the people of Police had fled to a fortified refuge on the summit of Ostas, an isolated mountain not far from the town. The merciless Silesians tracked them like ravening wolves, stormed the refuge, and put every one of the fugitives to the sword.

  The cowards who worked all this evil fled before the approach of our soldiers, scrambling back to their own country with only one burned town and some butchered peasants to boast of. Such was war in Bohemia. Often senseless, cruel to the point of insanity, waged by vicious fanatics whose chief aim was to cause as much suffering as possible. I cannot pretend the Hussites were guiltless: they exacted every drop of bloody revenge against the Catholic armies that laid waste to their country.

  Why did it happen? Because the men on all sides were frightened. The worst hatreds are always driven by fear. Without meaning to, the gentle preacher Jan Hus had triggered a war like no other.

  A war, not for honest profit, but for the possession of God.

  9.

  After the Silesians had retreated, we immediately returned to Prague, where I enlisted as a soldier in the Hussite army. In the presence of the commander of the city garrison and his under-officers, I signed my name to an indenture and took the oath, swearing to uphold the Four Articles of Prague and obey the Regulations of War drawn up by Jan Zizka.

  For my benefit, the commander read out the list of regulations in German before I signed. There were twelve in all, mostly concerned with the behaviour of troops on the march. They were harsh, and gave me a glimpse into Zizka’s iron soul. Most are still burned into my brain. Let me quote Rule Eleven, which dealt with gambling and other offences:

  “We will not suffer among us infidels, disobedient men, liars, thieves, gamblers, robbers, plunderers, drunkards, revilers, lewd men, adulterers, prostitutes, adulteresses, or any other sinners, male of female; all these we will banish and drive away, or execute them with the help of the Holy Trinity and in accordance with God’s Law.”

  Rule Twelve described, with painful clarity, the penalties reserved for those soldiers who broke the commandments:

  “All disorders will be punished by banishment, by flogging, slaying, decapitating, hanging, whipping, burning, drowning and by all other punishments which are befitting according to God’s law, with exceptions of no one, whether of male or female sex...”

  Zizka’s army was not the merriest I ever served in. It was, however, the most disciplined, and this severe discipline was vital to its success. Even King Harry of England, who hanged men for plundering churches on the road to Agincourt, did not expect his soldiers to behave like saints. Zizka, on the other hand, was fighting both to defend his country and his God against the awesome might of the Pope. The rules he invented were meant t
o turn his soldiers, a rag-bag of rough, untutored peasants, tradesmen and citizen militia, into holy warriors, capable of besting the finest armies in Christendom.

  After I had signed the indenture and sworn the oath, I enjoyed several weeks of leisure. Having driven off the crusaders and the Silesians, the Hussites now decided to fall out among themselves. An assembly was held at Caslav, where the high nobles and churchmen argued over how Bohemia should be governed. The land no longer had a king, since the last one, Wenceslav, perished of a fit of apoplexy after hearing of a riot in Prague. They say he died roaring like a lion, tearing at his clothes and chewing the rushes on the floor, even as blood gushed from his nostrils.

  Wenceslav was the elder brother of Sigismund, who claimed Bohemia as his rightful inheritance. For reasons already described, there was more chance of the Hussite leaders converting to Islam – no disrespect intended, O Sultan – than accepting Sigismund as King. Thus they argued, and wrangled, and drew up lengthy proclamations, and tore them up again, and generally behaved like a pack of quarrelling old washerwomen.

  None of this concerned me, much. I used my free time to explore Prague and taste the pleasures on offer. At first I went in search of my old companions from Graz, particularly Tomislav and Jana. The priest was a friend of sorts, and I was in great need of friends in that harsh, strange land, where I knew so few people and could barely speak the language. Jana was much in my thoughts. Something about her appealed to me. Perhaps it was merely the ancient lure of forbidden fruit, which proved the downfall of Adam.

  Tomislav had said the nature of soldiers does not change. He was right. After half a day I gave up and found my way to the poorest quarter of the Old Town. There, among the cheap taverns, wine-shops and fleshpots, I took my ease for a while. At Police I had quietly helped myself to some coin I found in a chest inside one of the deserted houses. It was enough to hire the company of a wiry, black-haired whore, with whom I spent the rest of the afternoon on a narrow couch, breaking Rule Eleven of the Regulations of War.