Heinz Rieder (1911–1995)

A highly readable account of the Hussite revolution that distinguishes itself from its peers by continuing the history of events until the advent of the Thirty Years War. The Hussite revolution was both a religious, a military, a social and a political movement. As an early reformation movement, the religious demands now sound rather quaint. Why the Catholic Church did not want to earnestly question their validity is a puzzle to me. The military revolution with the advent of mobile firepower and the reemergence of heavy infantry succumbed to its lack of an economic foundation. The Hussite armies could sustain themselves only in plundering their neighboring countries which provoked countermeasures and prevented them from productive work. The incomplete social revolution and the local nobility's reassertion of control doomed the proto-bourgeois citizen soldiers. Having acquired the former church possessions, the local nobility was unwilling to combine their forces with the people in order to attain national independence. Instead, they accepted foreign domination in exchange for social stability. This rift between the rulers and the ruled continued to vex and divide Bohemia. One wonders what might have happened if Jan Zizka had lived longer.… (mehr)