Battle of Taus

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The Battle of Taus (also Battle of Domažlice) in Western Bohemia on August 14, 1431 ended the fifth and last crusade against the reform movement of the Hussites in Bohemia .

After negotiations between the Roman Catholic Church and King Sigismund of Luxembourg for the submission of the Hussites had remained unsuccessful, an army of crusaders formed by Friedrich I (Brandenburg) von Hohenzollern , allegedly 130,000 mercenaries , gathered near Weiden in the Upper Palatinate in August 1431 . The army ban was under the direction of the papal legate, Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini, and advanced to Bohemia at the beginning of August, looking for quick booty. From August 8th, the town of Taus ( Domažlice ) in western Bohemia was besieged, which had been under the rule of the Hussites since the Battle of Mies .

When, on August 14, the approximately 50,000-strong Taborite army, under the command of the general Andreas Prokop the Great, approached to defend the city of Taus, a large part of the cross- army fled headlong. Allegedly the battle song of the attacking Hussites, the famous chorale “Ktoz jsu bozi bojovnici” (“Those who are God's fighters”), terrified the imperial Catholic mercenaries.

The battle of Taus ended with a slaughter of the crusaders of the imperial army fleeing to the Upper Palatinate . Cardinal Cesarini narrowly escaped, disguised as a simple soldier. His precious garment, his equipment and the papal bull that founded the crusade fell into the hands of the Hussites.

The defeat of the crusader army at Taus was regarded in Catholic Europe at that time as a disgrace that was difficult to cope with and led to renewed fears that the armies of the Hussites would continue to advance beyond the borders of Bohemia. The defeat in the battle was decisive for on the Council of Basel by Pope Martin V. a negotiated settlement with the reform movement of the Hussite desirable.

literature

  • Jan Durdik: Hussite army. German military publisher, Berlin 1961.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Johannes Urzidil : The Czechs and the Slovaks. In: Hans Kohn (ed.): The world of the Slavs. Volume 1: The West and South Slavs (= Fischer-Bücherei. 340, ISSN  0173-5438 ). Fischer, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1960, pp. 113-205.
  2. ↑ Lillian Schacherl (Ed.): Böhmen. Cultural image of a landscape. Prestel, Munich 1966, p. 106 ff. (Chapter In the Land of the Chods. ).

Coordinates: 49 ° 24 ′ 29.8 "  N , 12 ° 59 ′ 36.4"  E