Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/48

 superior enemy, and his tactics were, therefore, generally defensive. It has often been stated, on the always doubtful authority of Æneas Sylvius, that Žižka’s columns of wagons were sometimes used to attack the enemy. This would have been practically impossible, and the statement may be considered as untrue. Žižka’s wagon-drivers soon became very experienced in this manner of warfare, which was favoured by the topographical condition of Bohemia, whose vast plains then, as now, were little intersected by fences and ditches. The “lager,” in more recent times a feature in South African warfare, was adopted under similar topographical conditions.

One of the strongest proofs of Žižka’s military talents consists in the manner in which he succeeded in forming an almost invincible army out of the peasants and townsmen, almost all unused to warfare, who flocked to his standards. A flail mounted with iron, a club or a short spear, were the only arms with which Žižka’s men were acquainted, and these rough arms, under Žižka’s skilful guidance, and carried away by their religious and national enthusiasm, they used most valiantly. It was for Žižka, perhaps, an even more difficult task to train his men to use skilfully the hand-guns and field-guns, whose superiority to the fire-arms of the enemies so greatly contributed to his victories. It is at the present moment a somewhat unfashionable theory that a people can, under the influence of extreme national or religious enthusiasm, defeat skilled soldiers after having received only a brief training. Yet this proved true during the Hussite wars, as it did during the wars of the French Revolution three and a half centuries later. There is also another analogy between the two cases. Žižka—differing herein from Julius Cæsar and Oliver Cromwell—had been a warrior from his earliest youth; according to some accounts he is stated to have been present at skirmishes which took place when he was only sixteen years old. Similarly,