The Hussite Wars
1419-1434

Jan Zizka as a
Military Leader

by Michael W. McGuire

Jan Zizka was one of the most uniquely successful generals of all time. Infused with a religious zeal that occasionally expressed itseff in violent outbursts of rage, Zizka was transformed from a competent mercenary soldier into an inspiring national military leader of strategic and tactical brilliance. Nearly sixty and blind in one eye when the Hussite wars began, there was nothing aged in his thinking or wrong with his military vision. Accurately assessing awilable resources, he set about welding a small, motley herd of peasants into a force capable of defeating the best armies of the day.

A giant of a man, through sheer physical presence, courage, charisma, and professional skill {in contemporary terms, a combination of Moses, Rommel, and John Wayne) he gave the Hussites a military organization, discipline, training, and a tactical system unknown to medieval warfare. He set rigid standards; each man was assigned a permanent place in ranks with a specific tactical mission. Straggling, disobedience and disorderly conduct were severly punished Promotion was based on ability rather than social status and the serf was considered the equal of the noble.

The majority of his training program was conducted on the battlefield; his troops learned their lessons in combat. By initially never overmatching his force and setting a dynamic example of personal leadership, he forged a raw peasant mob into a deadly, veteran army so well trained that his lieutenants continued ruc cessfully for ten years after his death. Legend has it that after his death Zizka's skin was made into a drum, the beating of which would frighten his enemies, who regarded him as in league with the Devil, unable to explain their failures in more natural terms.

Although totally blind in his final years, he saw that the principles of firepower and mobility, when employed by a small, well-disciplined, highly motivated force, could overcome an enemy's supenonty of numbers and weight of weapons, a lesson not lost on some armies in the world today.

More Hussite Wars

Back to Conflict Historical Study 1 Table of Contents
Back to Conflict List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1974 by Dana Lombardy
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com