Some men are known for the many things that they did. Some men are known for one thing, and that one thing only they did with all their heart, soul, and strength. Such a man was Jan Zizka, the one-eyed, single-minded, wholehearted defender of the Hussites, followers of the Bohemian religious reformer, Jan Hus.

Jan Zizka was born approximately A.D. 1360 in the village of Trocnov in what is now the Czech Republic. He was of a noble family that had fallen on hard times. Injustice and oppression by the House of Rosenberg had deprived his family of their ancestral lands. Zizka joined other like-minded patriots in a struggle to settle social injustice and religious oppression.

He lived as an outlaw for several years, leading a small band of warriors against their oppressors. Zizka was known as a fearless, brilliant leader of men, even having lost one of his eyes in battle.

With the rise of Jan Hus, the leader of the Czech Reformation, Zizka was converted to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He embraced Hus’s teachings and saw the truth of Scripture as a cause worth defending. The Gospel offered liberty instead of oppression, truth instead of superstition, and light instead of darkness.

Zizka gained military experience at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410 and gradually became a recognized leader of the Hussites. When Jan Hus was burned to death at the stake for refusing to recant, Zizka realized that the authorities in church and state hated the simplicity of the truth advocated and preached by Hus. Jan Hus was a meek and submissive servant of Christ. But God calls different men for different tasks. While some are called upon to submit and die, others are called upon to stand and fight. Zizka knew that if someone did not rise as the champion of the Hussites, they would all meet a similar fate as that of Hus.

Zizka was present in 1418 at the first “Defenestration of Prague,” where a band of Hussite believers realized that they were not receiving justice from the hands of the city officials. They marched upstairs and literally threw the corrupt, tyrannical officials out the window, hurling them to their deaths on the stone pavement below! While this killing without trial was certainly not a Biblical way of dealing with unjust government, it demonstrated decisively that Hus’s oppressed followers would no longer allow innocent believers, including women and children, to be slaughtered without due resistance.

After throwing their corrupt government literally out of the window, the Hussites took control of Prague. The king of Bohemia died several days later of a heart attack from the shock of the event! The new king, Sigismund, declared war against the Hussites and marched against them.

Jan Zizka took command of the Hussite soldiers and quickly disciplined and trained them for battle. He defeated King Sigismund and his Catholic forces at Sudomer in March 1420, and founded and fortified a stronghold at Tabor, which became his headquarters for the remainder of the Hussite wars.

The one-eyed commander proved himself to be a brilliant and victorious general. He was bold and innovative in his tactics, utilizing terrain to its most favorable advantage and then taking every opportunity to strike his enemies when and where they least expected it.

Zizka was skilled in the effective use of artillery, and he trained his peasants to operate their cannons with precision and surprising mobility. With foresight, he anticipated the armored tank by strengthening the walls of wagons and placing small cannons inside the wagons, improvising them into a mobile and portable form of artillery that would one day dominate the battlefield.

Jan Zizka never lost a single battle in which he was engaged. He taught his men how to form their fortified wagons into a circle to provide maximum defense when attacked by cavalry or infantry. The circle of fortified wagons was manned by soldiers who used their cannons with great effectiveness. Future generations would use this tactic of the circled wagons with great effectiveness.

His men were the first to give the Czech name pistala to “the handgonne,” resulting in the name pistol which is still used today. When gunpowder was exhausted, his men would fight to the death! They would bravely do so, armed only with the national Czech weapon, the flail, which was simply a striking head attached to a handle by a rope or chain. Although his men were mostly peasant farmers, they had implicit faith in their captain.

In battle after battle, Zizka led his men to victory after victory! He took the Biblical laws of war in Deuteronomy 20 as his guide. Merciful at heart, he would offer the inhabitants of a town the opportunity to surrender rather than face assault by storm. When surrender was rejected, he put the armed men to the sword, but spared women and children.

Zizka’s greatest victory was the defense of Prague in the summer of 1420, when the pope in Rome issued a papal bull against the Hussites and issued orders for a crusade to destroy the followers of Hus and Wycliffe in Bohemia. Under the command of King Sigismund, a conglomerate army of adventurers and passionate Papists from all over Europe advanced on the city of Prague. Zizka took his stand on a prominent hill outside the city known as Vitkov. He carefully positioned his artillery to have maximum range of fire. The attack was thrown back with vigor, and the Hussite defenders of Vitkov won a dramatic, decisive victory!

While following up on this victory, Jan Zizka was severely wounded in battle and lost the use of his one remaining eye. Now entirely blind, he continued to lead his men to victory. Their faith in their blind commander never wavered for a moment. When Sigismund gathered the shattered remnants of his crusade for a second attempt at destroying the Hussites in 1422, Zizka organized a brilliant operation at Tabor in which, although blind, he executed what military historians have called the “first mobile artillery maneuver in history.”

Zizka extricated his artillery when almost completely surrounded, broke through the enemy lines to a place of greater strength, and then launched a surprise attack of his own! The result of the battle was 12,000 casualties in the enemy’s forces and destroying the crusade of Sigismund decisively.

The blind general Zizka won peace and security for the Hussites and brought about a period of liberty and blessing for the people of Bohemia. He is honored today as one of the greatest heroes of Czechoslovakia with a magnificent equestrian statue (the third largest in the world) which stands today on the hill of Vitkov overlooking Prague.

Zizka died in October 1424 while leading his men on the Moravian frontier. It was said that the general’s dying wish was that his skin would be taken from his body and made into drums so that he could continue to lead his men on the battlefield, even after his death!

Zizka’s faith in God, his courage in battle, and his brilliant innovations on the battlefield have earned him a lasting place among Christian heroes. May God grant that more men of faith and courage would be raised up to serve God wholeheartedly as did this one-eyed Hussite champion!

Sources and Further Reference:

D’Aubigné, J. H. Merle. History of the Protestant Church in Hungary. Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 2001.