Ep. 176: Hussite Revolt (1419-1434) -A Great Idiot of History?
History of the Germans
Dirk Hoffmann-Becking
4.9 • 550 Ratings
🗓️ 9 January 2025
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Revolutions are exceedingly rare in world history. And they are so rare because they require a whole host of things going wrong and going wrong all at the same time. In 1419/1420 a whole host of things are going wrong in the kingdom of Bohemia.
We did already hear about the defenestration, the first in Czech history. As dramatic an event that was, there was no reason to believe that death and destruction was inevitable at that point. After all there had been dozens, if not hundreds of bloody revolts that did not end up with a revolution.
Amongst Mike Duncan’s very many achievements, the concept of the great idiot theory of history is my absolute favorite. A great idiot of history is someone who out of incompetence, stubbornness, narcissism or other impediments created a situation where historical time accelerates and change occurs. It is the counterpart to the great man theory of history that is presumably a bit better known.
Which gets us to what we will discuss in this episode. Looking at my gradually swelling library of books about the Hussite revolt, it appears as if Sigismund, the king of the Romans and heir to the Bohemian crown was one of these great idiots of history. Many an author, not only Czechs, has blamed him for turning a simple revolt into a revolution out of bigotry, incompetence or even malice. But is that fair? That is what we will investigate in this episode, along a spot of street fighting on Europe’s top 3 backpacker destination.
The music for the show is Flute Sonata in E-flat major, H.545 by Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach (or some claim it as BWV 1031 Johann Sebastian Bach) performed and arranged by Michel Rondeau under Common Creative Licence 3.0.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the history of the Germans. |
| 0:10.1 | Episode 176, a great idiot of history question mark, which is also episode 13 of season |
| 0:16.9 | 9, the Reformation before the Reformation. |
| 0:20.4 | Now, revolutions are exceedingly rare in world history, and they are so rare because |
| 0:25.3 | they require a whole host of things going wrong and going wrong all at the same time. |
| 0:30.6 | In 1419, 1420, a whole host of things were going wrong in the Kingdom of Bohemia. |
| 0:36.4 | We did already hear about the de-fenestration, the first in Czech history. |
| 0:41.7 | But as dramatic an event as that was, there is no reason to believe that death and destruction |
| 0:47.3 | was inevitable from that point forward. |
| 0:50.5 | After all, there had been dozens, if not hundreds, of revolts before, that did not end up with a revolution. |
| 0:59.4 | Amongst the great podcaster Mike Duncan's very many achievements, the concept of the great idiot theory of history is my absolute favorite. |
| 1:08.7 | A great idiot of history is someone who whom out of incompetence, stubbornness, |
| 1:12.9 | narcissism or any other impediment created a situation where historical time accelerates |
| 1:19.3 | and change occurs. It is essentially the counterpoint to the great man theory of history |
| 1:26.0 | that is presumably a bit better known. |
| 1:28.9 | Which gets us to what we will discuss in this episode. |
| 1:32.0 | Looking at my gradually swelling library of books about the Hussite Revolt, it appears as if |
| 1:37.1 | Sigismund, the king of the Romans, an heir to the Bohemian crown, was one of these great |
| 1:42.3 | idiots of history. Many an author, and not all of them checks, |
| 1:46.7 | has blamed him for turning a simple revolt into a revolution out of bigotry, incompetence, |
| 1:53.0 | or even sheer malice. But is that fair? That is what we will investigate in this episode, |
| 2:02.6 | along a spot of street fighting on Europe's top three backpacker destination. Before we get down to the soon blood-soaked |
... |
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