Chapter I: The Ottoman Tide
To understand the kingdom of Bohemia after the fall of Constantinople, one must first look to its neighbours. The court at Praha at this stage was a moderate power on the eastern edges of the Holy Roman Empire. Unlike the western half of the Empire, where power was limited and diffuse, the eastern side was made up of a few powerful states. To the north, Brandenburg, and the emerging power of the Hohenzollerns; to the west, Saxony, with its learning and industry; to the east, the giant, cosmopolitan commonwealth of Lithuania-Poland; and to the south, powerful Austria and the imperial seat. Further in the distance lay the Ottoman Empire, the recent lords of Constantinople, and would-be scourges of Christian Eastern Europe.
Internally, Bohemia was a land troubled by schism, but ruled by those would seek accommodation rather than simply cry heresy and have done. The Hussites had been a presence for many years, and in the 1450s their influence spread north from Moravia to Lausitz, the region then least content with Bohemian rule. Yet the long-held tradition of tolerance kept troubles to a minimum.
In the mid-1450s, Vladislav I Pohrobek negotiated alliances with Austria and Silesia. When his successor, Fridrich I Falcky, came to the throne, these two bases of foreign policy would emerge as the dominant factors in his fourteen-year reign.
The Silesian question arose from a covertly voiced desire of the Silesian nobles to bring themselves within the yoke of Praha. Lands in Bohemia were granted in exchange for future oaths of fealty. The exercise was a dangerous one, as monies from these lands eventually landed in Breslau, slowly empowering the Silesian throne. Yet for the next seventeen years, Silesia remained a steadfast ally of Bohemia through several wars, and eventually the two monarchies were peaceably merged into the Bohemian state.
In 1463, the Bavarian king died, and Ansbach and Austria each made a claim of legitimate inheritance. The Bavarian aristocracy took the side of Austria, as did Bohemia, and battle was joined. Falcky was hardly an enthused supporter of the Viennese claim, and the Bohemian armies spent the first few months of the war staring from Plsen west, maintaining their own borders, but scarcely threatening to invade. Finally, arrangement was made with Wurzburg to transit troops to Ansbach, and the Bohemians joined the war proper.
The first siege of Ansbach was a disaster of international diplomacy. The Bohemians arrived with four thousand troops to find the Bavarian and Austrian contingents worn down by disease and starvation. The defending garrison threw more taunts than projectiles at the beleaguered attackers. After several months of aiding the siege, during which time Bohemians comprised three of every four soldiers, King Balcky opted out. The few remnants of the original sieging force were left to it, and the Bohemians marched north to Hesse, who had joined the war on the side of Ansbach. There, lands were unclaimed and largely undefended. By some subterfuge, the Bavarians managed in a few months to win their own siege in Ansbach, and the war continued in spite of the conquest of one of its original claimants. The intra-Imperial violence provided justification enough for all parties.
After defeating a small Hessian border force, the Bohemians laid siege to Kassel. Six months later, the garrison surrendered.
Hesse was both Imperial land, and cut off from the remainder of Bohemia. Balcky decided against conquest. The Hessian prince paid war remunerations totalling fifty ducats, and a peace was signed in June 1465. This money quickly found its way into Silesian coffers as efforts toward a peaceful Anschluss went forward.
A year later, the Ottomans concluded their own peace with the Balkan kingdoms. The war had been long and brutal, and the Ottoman winnings took them as far north as Ersekujvar, on the border with Bohemian Moravia. Hungary looked like an empty shell, as another buffer between the Empire and the Turks had been swept aside by the Janissaries.
Small-scale industrialisation throughout Bohemia in 1466 marked an increasingly modern economy, but would eventually facilitate an equally modern military. It is worth noting the continuing allegiance of economic and military concerns in Bohemia at this time. As we will see, this small beginning may be the creative spark which would lead in decades to come to a much more unified Greater Bohemia.
Ladislav I took the throne in 1468, an able king, but little match for his successor. That, and the fact that he only lasted three years on the throne, have done little to keep his name alive in modern times, but throughout the Renaissance, Ladislav I was an icon of late medieval chivalric virtue throughout the Christian world. From coronation to death, his focus was on the army, and he instituted reformed to focus energies around the study of land combat.
In July 1469, the Emperor, Joseph I, called upon his subjects to put down the menace of the Ottomans, and Bohemia was one of many states to heed that call. Her stake in the war was, of course, larger than most, as the Moravian border now abutted Ottoman lands. Throughout the Autumn, battle raged on the border. Ladislav raised another three thousand troops, but by year’s end, the Ottomans were wheeling their cannons into Moravia. The siege was over by March. Joseph pledged Austrian aid, but Wien itself was under siege, and his resources were needed elsewhere.
By late spring, Wien was once again safe, and the Emperor sent his elite cavalry to Moravia to help Ladislav, who was leading the relief himself. By September, the battle was won. The Austrian cavalry sped to repel another Ottoman assault at Wien, while the Bohemains laid siege to their own fortress. The Ottomans had yet to make good the many repairs needed, and within a month, the meagre garrison capitulated.
While some considered this the turning of the tide, the Ottomans simply marched more Janissaries north. Again, Moravia was the scene of battle, with the Bohemians outnumbered almost two-to-one. Ali Melek led the Turks against Ladislav, and the two great generals fought a pitched battle. It was in a daring cavalry charge on Christmas Day 1471 that Ladislav died, lost in the whirling melee, his body never recovered. His men, now further outnumbered, and without a leader, nevertheless managed to hold the field. The carnage was horrendous. The Battle of Moravia would take its place as one of the great episodes which turned the tide of Islamic aggression, and Ladislav I would etch his name in the annals of Christian military lore alongside Charles Martel.
The new king, Boczek I, received his coronation in Moravia, where he immediately made provisions for rapid reinforcement of his armies. By now, the Ottomans were at war with much of the Christian world, from Trebizond to England, Mazovia to Castille. The first task was to hunt down and eliminate the remnants of Melek’s armies in Bohemia, who had taken to ranging the countryside in marauding packs.
It was a savvy king who turned the avalanche of Bohemian sympathy into tangible reward as Boczek used the Morvian victory as the impetus for the final merger of the Bohemian and Silesian crowns. In July of 1471, the king made a brief sojourn to Silesia to accept his new lands.
The atmosphere in the country was ecstatic, as all across Bohemia, Prussian anthems became subsumed within the national polity. Even the pope, anxious to be part of the crusading revelry, canonised Hedwig, an almost forgotten twelfth-century Silesian duchess. Like a priest at the altar, the Holy See was blessing the new union.
Boczek returned to Moravia and with great pomp, launched his armies down through the Balkans and the recently won Ottoman lands, settling eventually at the new frontier of Hum. There, in May 1473, he laid siege to Mostar, five thousand men far from home in the rugged terrain of Bosnia. Abdul Cerkes arrived a few months later with six thousand horse and three thousand infantry. The battle was short, and Boczek encouraged his men that God had not wanted them there. Retreating tactically, he arrived in Dalmatia, where the Venetians had been trying to relieve a siege. With Bohemian aid, the work was made short, and in two months, Boczek was speeding into Transylvania and from there to Wallachia, where his army made preparations for the conquest of the Ottoman’s European partner.
Morale plummeted when messenger arrived from Wien with news of peace. In spite of everything, the borders would revert to their places in 1469. Not only were the Bohemians denied their victory, but they would have to linger with the Turks on their doorstep. It took months for Boczek’s army to make its way back to Moravia. In Bohemia, blame was ascribed to every source imaginable, from eastern Slavs to Catholic conspirators, from the Emperor to the Pope. Joseph I died soon afterward, and his title passed by election to Hermann IV Ludwig of the Palatinate, a man with few military ambitions and problems enough at home.
In the next few years, the rumours about the origins of ‘The Grey Peace’ began to take shape in the Bohemian consciousness. The Bishop of Plsen, a grandee of the worst sort, began to make more overt his lack of concern for his flock. These protests made their way to the king, who very publicly passed them to Rome, adding both authoritative distance between Praha and Rome, and also fuelling notions of Papal betrayal.
In 1478, Poland was overwhelmed briefly by a revolt in the northwest of the country. The rebellion even briefly spilled over into Silesia and Ratibor, where it was brutally put down. Boczek was quick once again to capitalise on his subjects’ mood, playing the disturbances off as proof of the chaotic nature of the Polish commonwealth, and inciting fears that Poland would soon be gripped by Islamic fervour, of the kind that was serpenting its way up the Balkans.
‘Poland,’ the king sent in an angry missive to Krakow, ‘may soon be unsafe for Poles. Should this unfortunate state result, it is within the prerogative of the Bohemian prince to safeguard the eastern reaches of his majesty’s lands.’ By ‘His Majesty’ was of course meant Emperor Hermann, not Boczek, but it is most likely that the Emperor had no knowledge of Bohemian intentions prior to the embassy.
Praha was steering a dangerous course – to the west, an emperor who had little interest in the ambitions of local princes, and to the east, a commonwealth comprising almost all of Eastern Europe. Should one become a foe, it would be necessary for survival that the other remain neutral. Boczek gave his court a simple task: justify the forthcoming war with Poland.
To understand the kingdom of Bohemia after the fall of Constantinople, one must first look to its neighbours. The court at Praha at this stage was a moderate power on the eastern edges of the Holy Roman Empire. Unlike the western half of the Empire, where power was limited and diffuse, the eastern side was made up of a few powerful states. To the north, Brandenburg, and the emerging power of the Hohenzollerns; to the west, Saxony, with its learning and industry; to the east, the giant, cosmopolitan commonwealth of Lithuania-Poland; and to the south, powerful Austria and the imperial seat. Further in the distance lay the Ottoman Empire, the recent lords of Constantinople, and would-be scourges of Christian Eastern Europe.
Internally, Bohemia was a land troubled by schism, but ruled by those would seek accommodation rather than simply cry heresy and have done. The Hussites had been a presence for many years, and in the 1450s their influence spread north from Moravia to Lausitz, the region then least content with Bohemian rule. Yet the long-held tradition of tolerance kept troubles to a minimum.
In the mid-1450s, Vladislav I Pohrobek negotiated alliances with Austria and Silesia. When his successor, Fridrich I Falcky, came to the throne, these two bases of foreign policy would emerge as the dominant factors in his fourteen-year reign.
The Silesian question arose from a covertly voiced desire of the Silesian nobles to bring themselves within the yoke of Praha. Lands in Bohemia were granted in exchange for future oaths of fealty. The exercise was a dangerous one, as monies from these lands eventually landed in Breslau, slowly empowering the Silesian throne. Yet for the next seventeen years, Silesia remained a steadfast ally of Bohemia through several wars, and eventually the two monarchies were peaceably merged into the Bohemian state.
In 1463, the Bavarian king died, and Ansbach and Austria each made a claim of legitimate inheritance. The Bavarian aristocracy took the side of Austria, as did Bohemia, and battle was joined. Falcky was hardly an enthused supporter of the Viennese claim, and the Bohemian armies spent the first few months of the war staring from Plsen west, maintaining their own borders, but scarcely threatening to invade. Finally, arrangement was made with Wurzburg to transit troops to Ansbach, and the Bohemians joined the war proper.
The first siege of Ansbach was a disaster of international diplomacy. The Bohemians arrived with four thousand troops to find the Bavarian and Austrian contingents worn down by disease and starvation. The defending garrison threw more taunts than projectiles at the beleaguered attackers. After several months of aiding the siege, during which time Bohemians comprised three of every four soldiers, King Balcky opted out. The few remnants of the original sieging force were left to it, and the Bohemians marched north to Hesse, who had joined the war on the side of Ansbach. There, lands were unclaimed and largely undefended. By some subterfuge, the Bavarians managed in a few months to win their own siege in Ansbach, and the war continued in spite of the conquest of one of its original claimants. The intra-Imperial violence provided justification enough for all parties.
After defeating a small Hessian border force, the Bohemians laid siege to Kassel. Six months later, the garrison surrendered.
Hesse was both Imperial land, and cut off from the remainder of Bohemia. Balcky decided against conquest. The Hessian prince paid war remunerations totalling fifty ducats, and a peace was signed in June 1465. This money quickly found its way into Silesian coffers as efforts toward a peaceful Anschluss went forward.
A year later, the Ottomans concluded their own peace with the Balkan kingdoms. The war had been long and brutal, and the Ottoman winnings took them as far north as Ersekujvar, on the border with Bohemian Moravia. Hungary looked like an empty shell, as another buffer between the Empire and the Turks had been swept aside by the Janissaries.
Small-scale industrialisation throughout Bohemia in 1466 marked an increasingly modern economy, but would eventually facilitate an equally modern military. It is worth noting the continuing allegiance of economic and military concerns in Bohemia at this time. As we will see, this small beginning may be the creative spark which would lead in decades to come to a much more unified Greater Bohemia.
Ladislav I took the throne in 1468, an able king, but little match for his successor. That, and the fact that he only lasted three years on the throne, have done little to keep his name alive in modern times, but throughout the Renaissance, Ladislav I was an icon of late medieval chivalric virtue throughout the Christian world. From coronation to death, his focus was on the army, and he instituted reformed to focus energies around the study of land combat.
In July 1469, the Emperor, Joseph I, called upon his subjects to put down the menace of the Ottomans, and Bohemia was one of many states to heed that call. Her stake in the war was, of course, larger than most, as the Moravian border now abutted Ottoman lands. Throughout the Autumn, battle raged on the border. Ladislav raised another three thousand troops, but by year’s end, the Ottomans were wheeling their cannons into Moravia. The siege was over by March. Joseph pledged Austrian aid, but Wien itself was under siege, and his resources were needed elsewhere.
By late spring, Wien was once again safe, and the Emperor sent his elite cavalry to Moravia to help Ladislav, who was leading the relief himself. By September, the battle was won. The Austrian cavalry sped to repel another Ottoman assault at Wien, while the Bohemains laid siege to their own fortress. The Ottomans had yet to make good the many repairs needed, and within a month, the meagre garrison capitulated.
While some considered this the turning of the tide, the Ottomans simply marched more Janissaries north. Again, Moravia was the scene of battle, with the Bohemians outnumbered almost two-to-one. Ali Melek led the Turks against Ladislav, and the two great generals fought a pitched battle. It was in a daring cavalry charge on Christmas Day 1471 that Ladislav died, lost in the whirling melee, his body never recovered. His men, now further outnumbered, and without a leader, nevertheless managed to hold the field. The carnage was horrendous. The Battle of Moravia would take its place as one of the great episodes which turned the tide of Islamic aggression, and Ladislav I would etch his name in the annals of Christian military lore alongside Charles Martel.
The new king, Boczek I, received his coronation in Moravia, where he immediately made provisions for rapid reinforcement of his armies. By now, the Ottomans were at war with much of the Christian world, from Trebizond to England, Mazovia to Castille. The first task was to hunt down and eliminate the remnants of Melek’s armies in Bohemia, who had taken to ranging the countryside in marauding packs.
It was a savvy king who turned the avalanche of Bohemian sympathy into tangible reward as Boczek used the Morvian victory as the impetus for the final merger of the Bohemian and Silesian crowns. In July of 1471, the king made a brief sojourn to Silesia to accept his new lands.
The atmosphere in the country was ecstatic, as all across Bohemia, Prussian anthems became subsumed within the national polity. Even the pope, anxious to be part of the crusading revelry, canonised Hedwig, an almost forgotten twelfth-century Silesian duchess. Like a priest at the altar, the Holy See was blessing the new union.
Boczek returned to Moravia and with great pomp, launched his armies down through the Balkans and the recently won Ottoman lands, settling eventually at the new frontier of Hum. There, in May 1473, he laid siege to Mostar, five thousand men far from home in the rugged terrain of Bosnia. Abdul Cerkes arrived a few months later with six thousand horse and three thousand infantry. The battle was short, and Boczek encouraged his men that God had not wanted them there. Retreating tactically, he arrived in Dalmatia, where the Venetians had been trying to relieve a siege. With Bohemian aid, the work was made short, and in two months, Boczek was speeding into Transylvania and from there to Wallachia, where his army made preparations for the conquest of the Ottoman’s European partner.
Morale plummeted when messenger arrived from Wien with news of peace. In spite of everything, the borders would revert to their places in 1469. Not only were the Bohemians denied their victory, but they would have to linger with the Turks on their doorstep. It took months for Boczek’s army to make its way back to Moravia. In Bohemia, blame was ascribed to every source imaginable, from eastern Slavs to Catholic conspirators, from the Emperor to the Pope. Joseph I died soon afterward, and his title passed by election to Hermann IV Ludwig of the Palatinate, a man with few military ambitions and problems enough at home.
In the next few years, the rumours about the origins of ‘The Grey Peace’ began to take shape in the Bohemian consciousness. The Bishop of Plsen, a grandee of the worst sort, began to make more overt his lack of concern for his flock. These protests made their way to the king, who very publicly passed them to Rome, adding both authoritative distance between Praha and Rome, and also fuelling notions of Papal betrayal.
In 1478, Poland was overwhelmed briefly by a revolt in the northwest of the country. The rebellion even briefly spilled over into Silesia and Ratibor, where it was brutally put down. Boczek was quick once again to capitalise on his subjects’ mood, playing the disturbances off as proof of the chaotic nature of the Polish commonwealth, and inciting fears that Poland would soon be gripped by Islamic fervour, of the kind that was serpenting its way up the Balkans.
‘Poland,’ the king sent in an angry missive to Krakow, ‘may soon be unsafe for Poles. Should this unfortunate state result, it is within the prerogative of the Bohemian prince to safeguard the eastern reaches of his majesty’s lands.’ By ‘His Majesty’ was of course meant Emperor Hermann, not Boczek, but it is most likely that the Emperor had no knowledge of Bohemian intentions prior to the embassy.
Praha was steering a dangerous course – to the west, an emperor who had little interest in the ambitions of local princes, and to the east, a commonwealth comprising almost all of Eastern Europe. Should one become a foe, it would be necessary for survival that the other remain neutral. Boczek gave his court a simple task: justify the forthcoming war with Poland.
