page_title: Hussite Wars
section_title: Glorious rides (Chevauchée)
hierarchical_section_title: Hussite Wars / Glorious rides (Chevauchée)
context_page_description: The Hussite Wars, also called the Bohemian Wars or the Hussite Revolution, were a series of wars fought between the Christian Hussites and the combined Christian Catholic forces of Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, the Papacy, European monarchs loyal to the Catholic Church, as well as various Hussite factions. After initial clashes, the Utraquists changed sides in 1432 to fight alongside Roman Catholics and opposed the Taborites and other Hussite spinoffs. These wars lasted from 1419 to approximately 1434.
  The unrest began after pre-Protestant Christian reformer Jan Hus was executed by the Catholic church in 1415 for heresy. Since the King of Bohemia, King Wenceslaus IV, had plans to be crowned the Holy Roman Emperor, he suppressed the religion of the Hussites, yet it continued to spread. When King Wenceslaus IV died of natural causes a few years later, the tension stemming from the Hussites grew stronger. In Prague and various other parts of Bohemia, the Catholic Germans living there were forced out.
  Wenceslaus's brother, Sigismund, who had inherited the throne, was outraged by the spread of Hussitism. He got permission from the Pope to launch a crusade against the Hussites.
context_section_description: During the Hussite Wars, the Hussites launched raids against many bordering countries. The Hussites called them Spanilé jízdy ("glorious rides"). Especially under the leadership of Prokop the Great, Hussites invaded Silesia, Saxony, Hungary, Lusatia, and Meissen. These raids were against countries that had supplied the Germans with men during the anti-Hussite crusades, to deter further participation. However, the raids did not have the desired effect; these countries kept supplying soldiers for the crusades against the Hussites.
  During a war between Poland and the Teutonic Order, some Hussite troops helped the Poles. In 1433, a Hussite army of 7,000  men marched through Neumark into Prussia and captured Dirschau on the Vistula River. They eventually reached the mouth of the Vistula where it enters the Baltic Sea near Danzig. There, they performed a great victory celebration to show that nothing but the ocean could stop the Hussites. The Prussian historian Heinrich von Treitschke later wrote that they had "greeted the sea with a wild Czech song about God's warriors, and filled their water bottles with brine in token that the Baltic once more obeyed the Slavs."
caption: Recreation of Hussite pavise from an original in the Museum of Prague
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