Jan Kolda from Žampach

Jan Kolda von Žampach (Czech: Jan Kolda ze Žampachu ; * after 1390 probably in Černíkovice ; † after 1462 probably at Rychmburk Castle ) was an East Bohemian nobleman and captain of the Hussite Taborites , mercenary of the Polish king as well as robber barons and adventurers.

Life

Jan Kolda came from an impoverished line of the East Bohemian noble family of Žampach . His father of the same name is documented as the owner of the Černikovice fortress in the Reichenau region for the years 1376-1406 , his sister Anna was married to Vaňek Kordul von Dubenec .

Jan Kolda the Elder J. is documented as the patron saint of the Černikovice church between 1407 and 1415. He completed a degree in the Seven Liberal Arts , which he completed with a bachelor's degree. At the beginning of the Hussite Wars he joined the Taborite movement and became their captain. In 1427 he took part in the battle of Tachau . In the spring of 1428 he joined the Hussite invasion of Silesia , in which the more radical orphans also took part. There he was involved in the siege and destruction of Reichenstein Castle and the conquest of the castle on the Zobtenberg , as its captain until it was captured by the Breslau and Schweidnitz armies. In the same year he signed the agreement on the Taborites ceasefire that for the other side of Ulrich von Rosenberg was signed. After an unsuccessful siege of Bautzen , in September 1429 he was one of the signatories of a ceasefire between the Taborites and orphans on the one hand and the Upper Lusatian estates on the other.

At Christmas 1433, Jan Kolda, together with Nikolaus Trčka from Lípa on Hummel ( Mikuláš Trčka z Lípy na Homoli ) and his companion Jan Holý from Nemošice ( Janek Holý z Nemošic ) and Jan Hlaváč from Dubá and the follower of the orphans Matěj Salava from Lípa ( Matěj Salava z Lípy ) made a move against Choceň , which ended with the killing of 70 Choceň. In 1434 he took part in the Battle of Lipan and remained loyal to the Taborites despite the defeat. After the execution of Jan Roháč of Dubá in 1434 in the Old Town Square , he was one of the despisers of King Sigismund .

After Sigismund's death in 1437 and the election of his son-in-law Albrecht II as King of Bohemia, Jan Kolda, together with Hynek Ptáček von Pirkstein and his protégé Georg von Podiebrad, sided with the election of the Polish prince Casimir , who, however, could not prevail against Albrecht.

On September 29, 1437 Jan Kolda took possession of the town of Náchod, which he was able to hold for almost twenty years, although it rightfully belonged to the not yet of legal age Georg of Podebrady. In 1440 Jan Kolda occupied Rychmberk Castle and Hummel Castle , which belonged to the lands that Hynek Kruschina von Lichtenburg had acquired from Anna von Kolditz in the same year. Although he admitted to the peaceful aims of the East Bohemian aristocratic union Landfrieds ( Landfrýd ), on June 15, 1440, between Glatz and Niedersteine, he and his cronies from Hummel Castle attacked the Glatz armies. 70 bald people were killed, others were taken prisoner, robbed and held captive in the Nachoder Schloss. Ten days later, Jan Kolda and his friends and fellow campaigners tried unsuccessfully to capture Prague. After this failure, which shattered his plans to acquire a prominent position in Bohemia, he turned to fortifying his East Bohemian possessions. At the end of 1440 he tried unsuccessfully to take the Nový hrad castle near Skuhrov .

In the spring of 1441 the East Bohemian peace alliance "Landfried" as well as other nobles and the Silesians formed a coalition against Jan Kolda. In June they besieged Černikovice and Rychmburk, then six weeks after the city of Nachod, which was finally taken. With the support of his followers, Jan Kolda managed to remain in possession of Nachod at a meeting on August 17th in Čáslav until the future King of Bohemia was appointed. Subsequently, he renewed the Nachoder Castle, in 1442 he put on the oldest Nachoder town book and appointed a city council.

1442–1443 Jan Kolda took part on behalf of the Polish king Władysław III. in his fighting in Hungary and after his return to the armed conflicts in Silesia. In 1444 he and his troops raided the city of Bolkenhain , but suffered a setback. The Silesians caught up with Kolda's team at Grüssau and killed some of his mercenaries. In 1445 he concluded a truce with the Moravian estates and then went to the service of the Teutonic Knights as a warlord ( condotier ) . Probably because he had learned that the Silesians had bought up the destroyed East Bohemian castles Vízmburk , Adersbach , Schatzlar , Skály and Belver, Jan Kolda returned to Bohemia in 1447. With the purchase of the castles, which were all owned by Jan Kolda's allies, further raids from these castles on Silesia should be prevented. In Bohemia, Jan Kolda fought against influential members of the Landfried 1448-1451, especially Georg von Podiebrad. Despite the truce that was shot in 1445, he defeated Moravian units at Mährisch Trübau in 1449 . On June 5, 1450, Kolda sacked the villages around Jaroměř , Smiřice and Holohlavy .

Although on November 20, 1453 King Ladislaus Postumus confirmed the claims to the reigns of Nachod and Hummel and the associated castles to the provincial administrator Georg von Podiebrad , Jan Kolda Nachod was still able to assert.

From 1454 to 1458 Jan Kolda stayed in Poland, where he fought with his own mercenaries on the side of the Polish king in the Thirteen Years' War against the Teutonic Knights . It was not until Kolda's absence, after a siege in April and May 1456, that Georg von Podiebrad succeeded in taking the town of Nachod and the castle, as well as the Rychmberk castle and the Černikovice fortress.

On May 12, 1456 Jan Kolda was declared an outlaw and thus an exile by the Bohemian district court. Nevertheless, he returned to Bohemia, presumably after a royal act of grace. At the end of January 1462 he is proven as a witness in a document of his ally Jan Pardus von Vratkov ( Jan Pardus z Vratkova ), who presumably gave him shelter at the Rychmburk Castle.

literature

• Lydia Baštecká, Ivana Ebelová: Náchod . Náchod 2004, ISBN 80-7106-674-5 , pp. 50–56
• Vladimír Wolf : Jan Kolda ze Žampachu . Hradec Králové Trutnov 2002, ISBN 80-238-5084-9

Web links

• Biography (czech)