But the method of the Taborites was different. If the Kingdom of
God was to come at all, it must come, they held, by force, by fire,
by the sword, by pillage and by famine. What need to tell here the
blood-curdling story of the Hussite Wars? What need to tell here
how Pope Martin V. summoned the whole Catholic world to a grand
crusade against the Bohemian people? What need to tell how the
people of Prague attacked the Town Hall, and pitched the burgomaster
and several aldermen out of the windows? For twenty years the whole
land was one boiling welter of confusion; and John Ziska, the famous
blind general, took the lead of the Taborite army, and, standing on
a wagon, with the banner above him emblazoned with the Hussite Cup,
he swept the country from end to end like a devouring prairie fire.
It is held now by military experts that Ziska was the greatest
military genius of the age. If military genius could have saved
Bohemia, Bohemia would now have been saved. For some years he
managed to hold at bay the finest chivalry of Europe; and he
certainly saved the Hussite cause from being crushed in its birth.
For faith and freedom he fought--the faith of Hus and the freedom
of Bohemia. He formed the rough Bohemian peasantry into a
disciplined army. He armed his men with lances, slings,
iron-pointed flails and clubs. He formed his barricades of
iron-clad wagons, and whirled them in murderous mazes round the
field. He made a special study of gunpowder, and taught his men the
art of shooting straight. He has often been compared to Oliver
Cromwell, and like our Oliver he was in many ways. He was stern in
dealing with his enemies, and once had fifty Adamites burned to
death. He was sure that God was on his side in the war. "Be it
known," he wrote to his supporters, "that we are collecting men from
all parts of the country against these enemies of God and
devastators of our Bohemian land." He composed a stirring battle