The Heretic

by David Pilling

  On Sunday morning, Zizka sent out heralds in the streets and marketplaces. “Every one of us should be ready to meet King Sigismund and his marauders,” they bellowed, “keep the faith, trust in Christ, and do not fear these foreign murderers, rapists, cowards and child-killers who have come to destroy our country, take away our religion and make us their slaves. Take up arms, dear comrades, princes, lords, knights, squires, townsmen, craftsmen, peasants, villeins, men of all estates and faithful Bohemians. And remember, God is our Lord!”

  The speech worked, and filled the citizens with courage. Swollen by volunteers, the army marched out of Kutna Hora and formed up into a gigantic square, shielded and buttressed by the war-wagons.

  Shortly after midday, Sigismund's banners appeared.

  15.

  Our army's first action, upon sighting the enemy, was to kneel in prayer. I watched, scarcely able to believe my eyes, as thousands of soldiers dropped to their knees. The more devout souls wrung their hands and mumbled silent prayers, tears coursing down their faces.

  “Pray, soldiers,” cried the priests, “pray that the Almighty God may deign to grant us His aid, that we may carry on His holy fight to His holy glory, for the increase of all that is good, for the salvation and aid of the faithful.”

  “Amen,” chanted hundreds of voices as one.

  “Kneel, Englis” grunted an officer to my right. Feeling no end of a fool, I slowly knelt on the frosty ground and clasped my hands.

  Zizka himself knelt in the middle of his staff, silently mouthing a prayer. I wanted to show off my lancers, but the general insisted I stay close to him. We were on a small hillock, near the centre of the wagon-square, with an ideal view of the enemy.

  When the prayer was finished, our troops rushed back to their positions. By now the royalist vanguard had marched within range of our guns. Within moments the holy atmosphere was shattered by the crash of gunfire. I clapped my hands over my ears and watched the roundshot streak towards the royalist pikemen and halberdiers. They advanced in neat squares, banners to the fore, led by dismounted knights in gleaming steel.

  The Hussite gunners were experts. Their shot tore through the squares, knocked men over like skittles, tore off limbs and shattered fragile cages of flesh and bone. Our men shouted for joy as the nearest battalions faltered. The general remained silent. He could see nothing, of course, and relied on an esquire talking in his ear.

  The royalist trumpets screeched. Brave men stepped forward to fill the gaps torn by our guns. The enemy resumed their advance, stepping over the bodies of their comrades. Our artillery continued to pound them, crewmen labouring like ants to keep up a swift rate of fire, dousing the barrels of their weapons with pails of cold water to prevent overheating.

  In battle the Hussites used a smaller type of gun, called a tarasnice. At Kutna Hora we had three hundred of the things. They were all of similar design, long iron barrels mounted on a two-legged plank trestle. Elevation of the barrels was controlled and fixed by a pin through an arc of pierced holes in the stock. To change the direction of fire, one of the gunners picked up the rear of the trestle and moved it from side to side.

  Our guns were protected by movable timber palisades and pavises, placed in the gaps between our armoured wagons. The wagons themselves were stuffed full of crossbowmen and pipe-gunners, waiting to loose a hail of missiles when the royalist troops marched within range. Zizka's army was essentially a fortress of timber and iron, upon which he invited the enemy to break their strength.

  Even Hussite guns couldn't fire quickly enough to destroy Sigismund's host. More and more enemy troops came into view, slowly filling the barren landscape to the west.

  “The Devil sowed dragon's teeth,” murmured an esquire to my left, “and lo, a hundred thousand swordsmen sprung from the ground.”

  “Not dragon's teeth,” I replied, “gold. An ocean of gold.”

  Sigismund must have emptied his treasury to hire such a multitude. Endless files tramped over the stark white hills, thousands of spears and lances and banners silhouetted against the sky like the spines of a gigantic beast. I cursed as the inevitable clouds of gunsmoke started to drift across our position, obscuring the enemy from view.

  I could still hear them over the bark of our guns: drums, marching feet, trumpets and bugles and tocsins. Closer. Ever closer.

  “Englis,” cried Zizka, “is Lord Cenek in position yet?”

  I looked over my shoulder. To the rear of the square, gaps had been left open between the wagons for horsemen to ride through. Our pitifully small number of cavalry, two hundred light horse and a few knights, waited nearby. Their task was to act as a mounted reserve and ride out, if need be, to attack the enemy in flank.

  Their commander was Lord Cenek. His was a position of honour, fighting on horseback instead of on foot, as befitted a man of noble blood. I suspect he demanded it as the price of his loyalty. He was stuck up on a white destrier, idly twirling his jewelled broadsword, a splendid knightly figure in silver plate and a halved surcoat of black and gold.

  Our infantry were drawn up in front of him. To look at, they were the worst raw material on earth, beggarly rascals with little armour and armed with converted farm tools. Yet I knew how they could fight, and shivered at the sight of those terrible flails and spiked war-clubs.

  “Lord Cenek is ready, my lord,” I said, turning back to Zizka.

  The breath caught in my throat. To the west, visible through a gap in the smoke, the plain was filled with horsemen. Long lines of cavalry, armed with bow and sabre, racing at a hard gallop towards our position.

  “Magyars!” shouted one of Zizka's officers, “Hungarian rabble. Our guns will drive them off.”

  Rabble, the fool called them. I saw a brave and disciplined body of light horse, thousands strong, riding in practised skirmish order. They wore loose, brightly patterned tunics decorated with swirling patterns, and sang as they advanced, a low, keening noise, like the buzzing of a great host of bees.

  The Magyars, I quickly discovered, were superb horse-archers. Sigismund recruited them from the steppes of Hungary, where men are virtually born in the saddle. Our guns knocked them over by the score, blowing away horses and riders. The rest came on regardless. Those on the wings divided into groups and started to ride in circles, aiming their short bows high and darkening the sky with arrows.

  Their shafts plunged down onto the exposed heads of our soldiers. Men started to fall, others scrambled under pavises and mantlets for shelter or crawled underneath the wagons.

  “Shoot! Shoot them down!”

  Our crossbowmen and gunners sweated over their weapons, feverishly shooting, loading and re-loading. The arrows continued to fall like poison rain. One thumped into the turf barely a yard in front of me. I dismounted, snatched up the evil-looking dart and snapped it in two. My comrades laughed, and the legend of Jan Englis was born.

  The Magyar casualties were horrific. Few wore any type of armour, save perhaps a leather jack or scraps of ringmail. Half an hour passed, and the ground west of the square was littered with their bodies, men and horses, piled high like autumn leaves. They retreated, gathered fresh quivers of arrows, re-formed and came again. It was impossible not to respect such careless courage in the face of bullets and bolts and gunstones.

  Sigismund brought his own guns into play. They were bombards, slow to load and hopelessly inaccurate compared to the Hussite guns, but still dangerous. The plain, blanketed in white smoke, was lit up by stabs of orange flame as the bombards roared, peppering us with balls of stone and iron larger than a man's head.

  The wails of the Magyars and thunder of cannon were joined by something else. A tremendous war-shout, accompanied by drums, fifes and trumpets. The noise rose and rose to an unbearable crescendo. Below me the earth shuddered. Around me the world dissolved in smoke and flame. Hussites died by the score, shot down or blown apart. Blood pooled under the hoofs of our horses. Our wagons rocked under the impact of gunstones. A cannonball ripped up the
ground to my left, spraying me with pebbles and clods of earth.

  “Englis!” bawled Zizka, “go forward! See what is happening!”

  I spurred down the flank of the hillock. Our horses had been trained during the long weeks in camp at Caslav to endure the noise of battle, else they might have bolted long ago.

  The line of wagons, wreathed in smoke, was just about visible below. I could hear the soldiers inside them singing their battle-hymn:

  “Ye who are God's warriors and of his law,

  Pray to God for help and have faith in Him,

  That always with Him you will be victorious,

  Christ is worth all your sacrifices, He will pay you back an hundredfold...”

  All the while Magyar arrows rattled against the armoured sides of the wagons. Cries of pain indicated when they found their mark.

  I reined in sharply. Our gunfire had slackened, drowned by enemy war-shouts and the clatter of steel.

  A Hussite esquire careered towards me through the smoke, his horse bleeding from the neck, one hand pressed to the side of his face. His sword was gone. A sabre-cut had slashed open his cheek, exposing teeth and tongue.

  “Their infantry!” he yelled, spitting pinkish phlegm, “they're trying to storm the wagons!”

  I hesitated. Sigismund's guns were still firing. They risked hitting his own men, but he obviously cared little for that.

  “Find the general,” I said to the esquire, “report to him, and get that wound dressed. I will be along shortly.”

  I rode on. It was foolish, riding into danger for no reason, but I wanted to see the battle for myself. I also craved action. So far I had done nothing but stand on a hill and watch. Now it was time to get my sword wet.

  Something flitted over my head. I ducked instinctively and spotted a savage melee in progress, just yards ahead. Before me was a gun emplacement, set up in a space between two wagons. Two of the crewmen lay dead, hacked up by sabres. Another was wounded. He sat propped against a pavise, his face grey as death, an arrow stuck in his breast. He had broken the shaft trying to pull it out, leaving just an inch or so protruding from his flesh.

  The two remaining gunners fought with desperate courage against five Hungarian soldiers, tall bearded men in tunics of boiled leather, wielding double-handed axes. Our gunners, who only had daggers to defend themselves, stood little chance.

  I spurred forward and cut at the nearest axeman, who had his back to me. The sabre I had looted at Zatec cut easily through his woollen hood and split his head like a ripe apple. He dropped without a sound, brains leaking over the snow.

  Another Hungarian swung his axe at my horse. I wrenched her head aside and hacked downward. The blade sliced through one eye and the bridge of his nose. He dropped the axe to clap his hands over the wound, and was stabbed from behind by a gunner.

  Dismayed, the rest of the soldiers ran like hares. One was tackled to the ground by the gunners. They held him down and made hard work of cutting his throat while he screamed and tried to wriggle free.

  I took stock of the battle, or what I could see of it. The Magyars had retreated again, but our wagons were still hard-pressed. Royalist infantry crawled like ants over and under them, struggling to dislodge the Hussites inside. Our soldiers resisted furiously, striking with the butts of their crossbows and pipe-guns, hurling rocks down on the heads of the enemy.

  “Help us!” one of the gunners shouted at me. I rammed my sword back into its sheath and dismounted. My horse, faithless brute, instantly bolted. At least she had the sense to gallop back to the Hussite lines, and quickly vanished beyond the wagons.

  The crewmen, eyes white in their sweating, powder-stained faces, struggled to lift the tail of their gun. It was a wheeled houfnice or howitzer (as we English now call them), of the type I had seen used at Rabi. These squat weapons were used to fire at short distances into crowds of infantry, or frighten away horses with their terrific noise.

  I lent a hand to shift the gun. Meanwhile the din of battle rose and fell around us, like the crash of waves in a storm. Arrows zipped overhead. After much straining we managed to angle the howitzer a few inches to the left, so its muzzle pointed directly at the mass of royalist infantry swarming about the wagons.

  “Stand clear,” a gunner rasped. I hurriedly stepped backwards. His mate fetched a long strip of match and worked frantically to light one end with flint and tinder. After a few anxious seconds he got the match lit, and hurriedly pressed it against the touch-hole at the rear of the gunbarrel.

  There was an almighty bang. A gout of white smoke spat from the barrel. The howitzer bucked like a frightened horse. I flinched and covered my eyes, convinced the damned thing had exploded.

  The hoarse cheers of the gunners persuaded me to lower my hands. Some fifteen yards away, at least a dozen enemy soldiers lay dead or dying, torn apart by the hail of spiked balls our gun had fired into their bodies at point-blank range. A few of the wounded tried to crawl away, leaving red trails in the snow. Their comrades, terrified by the sudden explosion and its gory consequences, turned and fled.

  Their flight precipitated a general rout. All down the line the enemy retreated, leaving the bodies of their dead strewn in heaps before the wagons. Shouts of triumph burst from the Hussites, psalms and battle-hymns. Our own casualties were light, while the enemy had suffered terribly.

  I didn't share in the jubilation. Sigismund was far from done. The footmen he had sent against us were his worst troops: lowly spear-fodder, woodsmen and peasant levies. Much like our own rascals, they fought in woollen smocks, leather jerkins and the like, with barely a helm or coat of ringmail between them.

  To the east, drawn up in steel ranks, Sigismund's legions waited in reserve. His Magyars continued to pepper us. His cannons roared. With numbers and time on his side, the King of Hungary could pound us to death at leisure before sending in his crack troops to cut up the remains.

  I left the gunners and started to make way back to Zizka’s position. With luck, my horse would be somewhere nearby, unless she had lost her head completely and galloped away in a random direction.

  Before I could find her the psalms died away, replaced by a babble of excited voices. I heard a man's voice, shrill with terror:

  “Kutna Hora – Kutna Hora is lost!”

  16.

  I started to run. The evil rumour swept before me. Panic, the death of even the most disciplined host, threatened to sweep through our army.

  Zizka's banners still flew at the top of the hillock. The general's squat figure, mounted on his destrier, was surrounded by a knot of worried-looking officers. Gallopers hurried to and fro.

  I reached the summit to find an esquire waiting for me, holding the reins of my horse. “She came straight back here, Englis,” he explained, “we thought you were dead.”

  “What's happening?” I demanded, snatching the reins from him, “is the city lost?”

  His beardless face was pale. “Yes. We think the enemy worked around our flank and got in through a postern gate. Listen.”

  I cocked my head. From the east, carried on the wind, I heard faint voices raised in anguish.

  “The enemy are in the streets,” he said, “like a fox in a chicken coop. God help the citizens.”

  The fortified gates of Kutna Hora, from which we had marched out to face Sigismund, lay two hons away. The space between our wagon-fortress and the walls was filled with crossbowmen and gun emplacements, making the city itself part of our defences.

  Kutna Hora was well guarded, surrounded by high walls and towers, and crammed with soldiers. The citizens were divided between native Bohemians, most of them Hussites, and the colony of German miners loyal to Sigismund and the Pope. Zizka was unconcerned by the presence of the Germans. The militia he had left inside to guard the city were loyal Hussites, their ranks stiffened by a few hundred of his veterans.

  Kutna Hora should have been impregnable. Yet I heard screams, the unmistakable sound of defenceless innocents being put to the swo
rd.

  One of Zizka's gallopers came racing towards us. He brought his pony skidding to a halt, saluted Zizka and gulped out his news.

  “It's the Italian, my lord,” he said breathlessly. “Pippo Spano led some of his mercenaries around our right flank. They were allowed into the city through a side-gate. A traitor inside must have left it open.”

  Zizka's face might have been carved from stone. “How many got in?” he growled.

  “Perhaps a thousand. Italian sell-swords and some five hundred German exiles.”

  Later I was able to piece together what happened. While Sigismund's infantry and horse-archers distracted us, Pippo had led a division of his troops around our flank. Some were Germans who had once worked the silver mines under Kutna Hora, and exiled for their refusal to accept the teachings of Hus.

  A certain gate had been left unbarred, probably by a German loyalist. Pippo and his men poured into the city and immediately set about butchering the Hussites inside. The exiled miners committed the worst atrocities, slaying women, children and priests in an orgy of bloodlust.

  The city militia, even strengthened by Zizka's veterans, stood little chance against the miners and Pippo’s mercenaries. With the city lost, our army was trapped, surrounded on all sides.

  “Nightfall is our saviour,” I heard Zizka say, “we must pray for darkness.”

  I left them to their devotions. My belly rumbled with hunger, so I made for the nearest campfire. A group of Hussite soldiers sat around it in miserable silence, eating broth from wooden bowls. An iron pot was set up on a griddle over the fire. The contents smelled rank, but I was too famished to care.

  The soldiers sat with their heads bowed while one of them muttered a prayer. When the prayer was finished, I took one of the empty bowls heaped beside the fire and helped myself to stew from the pot. There were no objections. Everything was held in common among the Hussites. No man, whatever his degree, was permitted to deny food and shelter to his comrades.