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When the Hussites rose up against the Holy Roman Emperor and the Roman Catholic Church in the 15th century, they faced a problem. Their fighters were mostly peasants and city dwellers, most of whom had no military training and were only armed with simple tools such as pitchforks or flails. Their opponents, on the other hand, were heavily armed, thickly armored and well-trained knights. How were the Hussite peasant armies supposed to deal with this overwhelming enemy? The answer that the Hussites found to this question was by no means the only one, but probably one of the most spectacular. They made a virtue out of necessity and combined their peasants' wagons with simple handguns and cannons to form their famous wagon forts. Thanks to these mobile fortresses, they were able to successfully fight the knightly armies of Europe. In this video, we look at this Hussite military innovation as portrayed by modern historians. Bibliography: Durdik, Jan, Hussite Army, Berlin (East) 1961. Schmidtchen, Volker, Warfare in the late Middle Ages. Technology, tactics, theory, Weinheim 1990. Delbrück, H., The Middle Ages. From Charlemagne to the late Middle Ages (History of the Art of War, Volume 1). Volker Schmidtchen: Warfare in the late Middle Ages. Technology, tactics, theory. VCH Acta humaniora, Weinheim 1990, ISBN 3-527-17580-6 (also habilitation thesis at the University of Bochum 1984). Urbanek, R., Jan Zizka, the Hussite, in: Slavonic Revue, 3 (1924), pp. 272-284. Schmidtche, V., Warfare in the late Middle Ages. Technology, tactics, theory. VCH Acta humaniora, (habilitation dissertation at the University of Bochum1984), Weinheim 1990. #history #education #hussites