The Hussite wagon-fortress of ‘war-wagons’ (hradba vozova), usually a rectangular formation, wherever possible drawn up on high ground, was the key to their battlefield success. An enemy approaching the fortress was met with a withering hail of crossbow, sling, handgun and cannon fire from the defenders, and
Rarely managed to actually reach the line of wagons; if he did, he was likely to be unhorsed with grappling hooks and butchered by Hussite halberdiers, who defended the gaps between the wagons. A determined enemy might make several attempts at closing, as at Aussig, but eventually he would begin to fall back in disorder, which was the signal for the Hussite cavalry to emerge from either side of the wagon-fortress and sweep him from the field. In the first few battles of the Hussite wars their cavalry were admittedly few in number and mostly provided by those members of the Bohemian gentry sympathetic to their cause, but later troops of crossbow-armed scouts were raised, and eventually large enough bodies of cavalry existed to protect the army’s flanks both in battle and on the march. In a prepared position the wagon-fortress might be surrounded by a ditch, and movable wooden mantlets would be placed between the wagons for added protection. For further details of the wagons themselves see figures 130 and 131.
Occasionally the wagons were apparently used in an offensive capacity, punching a hole through the royalist lines as, for example, at Kutna Hora in 1421, despite the fact that it is hard to understand how these heavy, slow-moving wagons could maintain enough momentum, or keep in close enough array, to break through and then escape from a larger army well supplied with cavalry. Clearly, however, it must have somehow been possible; all one can assume is that the point of attack was carefully selected (probably being defended only by infantry, and perhaps not many of them), and the attack was launched whilst the enemy was unprepared, perhaps during a meal. The guns mounted on many of their wagons doubtless provided an extra element of surprise. It is likely too that the enemy would not have been flexible enough to cope with such an unconventional tactical innovation. For launching such an attack, the Hussites drew up in a column with cavalry on the flanks and their infantry and baggage between 2 columns of war-wagons.
Although the Germans never learnt to keep their distance when confronted by a Hussite wagon-fortress, they did at least make some attempt at emulating their enemy’s tactics, albeit unsuccessfully. Their first attempt was at Tachov in 1427, when an army led by Cardinal Henry of Winchester constructed a large number of Hussite-style wagons from information supplied by spies. However, this attempt — and others like it — came to grief when, on the morning of the proposed battle, the royalist commanders found that many of their men had fled in panic ‘on those wagons that should have been used to construct a wagenburg, such as had been planned and ordered; and so many had left and the army had become so small that the advice was given that no attempt ought to be made to engage the enemy without a wagenburg.’ Predictably, many Germans were killed in the ensuing rout.
World History
