Battle Tactics of the Hussites
The Hussites, also known as the Taborites, became a formidable fighting force in the early
fifteenth-century under the leadership of Jan Ziska (d.1424). In the following two accounts,
the first by Enea Silvio Piccolomini (later to be Pope Pius II), from his Historia Bohemorum,
and the second found in the Commentarii od Alponsum regum, show how the Hussites used
wagons to gain victory.
They camped in the field with their women and children, who accompanied the army, as they
had a large number of wagons with which they drew up a wall-like fortification. When they
moved out for battle, they formed two lines of these wagons, which enclosed for foot troops,
while the horsemen remained outside without moving off to any distance. If the battle was
about to begin, the drivers, at the signal from their captain, quickly encircled part of the
enemy army and formed an enclosure with their vehicles. Then their enemies, squeezed
between the wagons and cut off from their comrades, fell victim to the swords of the foot
troops or the missiles of the men and women who attacked them from above, from the
wagons. The mounted troops fought outside the wagon stronghold but moved back in
whenever the enemy threatened to overpower them, and they then fought dismounted as if
from the walls of a fortified city. In this way they won many battles and gained victory. For
the neighbouring peoples were not familiar with such combat methods, and Bohemia, with its
broad and level fields, offers good opportunities to align carts and wagons, to spread them
apart, and to bring them together again.
Piccolomini makes further comments in the following passage:
As soon as the battle signal was given, the drivers developed their movements against the
enemy, according to certain figures or letters that had previosuly been indicated to them, and
formed alleys which , well known to the Taborites, became a hopeless labyrinth to the enemy,
from which he could find no exit and in which he was caught as in a net. if the enemies were
broken up, cut off, and isolated in this manner, the foot troops easily completed their full
defeat with their swords and flails, or the enemy was overcome by the marksmen standing on
the wagons. Ziska's army was like a many-armed monster which unexpectedly and quickly
seizes its prey, squeezes it to death, and swallows up its pieces. If individuals succeeded in
escaping from the wagon maze, they fell into the hands of the horsemen drawn up outside and
were killed there.
The Commentarii od Alponsum regum, also describes Hussite military practice (from Book 4,
ch.44):
The Bohemians, among who you would find much level ground and few ditches, enclose their
cavalry and infantry within wagons. Indeed, they assemble their armed men in these wagons
as if on walls to keep off the enemy with missiles. When they begin battle, they make two
flanks of these wagons and deploy them in proportion to the number of fighters and the
requirements of locale. Covered in rear and on the flanks, they fight in front. Meanwhile, the
wagon drivers gradually advance, and they attempt to surround and enclose the battle line of
the enemy. After this has been done, they certainly gain the victory, since they strike the
enemy from all sides. Also, the joining of the wagons is arranged with this craft - to be
