Bohemian Mercenary - Battle of Sudomer - 1420

The Czech theologian Jan Hus was an early church reformer and a precursor to Protestantism. His teachings inspired a huge movement in the XV century Bohemia, the Hussites, which initially had a religious nature but evolved into a full-fledged political faction.

The two main events that marked that evolution were the execution of Jan Hus in 1415, accused of heresy, and the death of the Catholic King Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia a few years later in 1419. There was already unrest among the Hussites when Wenceslas successor, his brother Sigismund of Luxembourg, received permission from the Pope to launch a crusade against them.

The Hussites were mainly an army composed of militia, and many of them were equipped with farming tools, but they made a really imaginative use of their scarce resources to fight against the Bohemian troops. In the early engagements of the battles of the Hussite Wars, they developed their famous defensive technique for fighting in wagons, combining that protection with the power of the earlier firearms that were gradually appearing on the European battlefields of the era. In the Battle of Sudom??, they managed to repulse a decisive surprise assault by the enemys heavy cavalry using that technique.

Our miniature represents one of the many Central European mercenaries that fought during that troubled period, and can be painted to represent a member of any of the factions of the conflict.