Hussite Revolution

From 1419 to 1434 followers of the executed reformer Jan Hus in Bohemia rose against the church and the Holy Roman Emperor and defeated several crusades.

Overview

Jan Hus, a Prague preacher who criticized church corruption, was burned at the stake at the Council of Constance in 1415. His followers demanded communion in both kinds for lay people and church reform, and in 1419 a crowd threw city councillors from a window of the New Town Hall in Prague. Under the blind general Jan Zizka, Hussite armies using armored wagon forts and early firearms defeated five crusades launched against them. Radical Taborites and moderate Utraquists later split, and the moderates defeated the radicals at Lipany in 1434. The Compacts of Basel allowed Utraquist practice, and the movement is often seen as a forerunner of the Protestant Reformation.