Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans, episode 180, nude dissenters and blind inventors, which is also episode 17 of season 9, The Reformation before the Reformation.

The Czech language has been a severe impediment to my storytelling this season,

and you may have noticed that I often avoid to name places and people.

Instead, I talk about a major baron or a medium-sized city.

There are however two Czech words I have no difficulty pronouncing,

Howitzer and Pistol, which may tell you what we will be talking about today, the Battle of Kutnahorah,

when a blind general saw an escape route that changed the world irrevocably.

But on the way there we will hear about an accelerating spiral of brutality and attempts

at reconciliation.

We'll hear about austere dress and debauched dancing in the woods.

This is another one of these episodes that has it all and some.

And now is your opportunity to frantically

press the 45 second forward button, just be sure you do not get too far. Because I can be

brief, it need be like today. So here we go. The history of the Germans after all these years

and for all the years yet to come appears on your doorstep every Thursday morning.

Fresh and advertising free, thanks to the generosity of our patrons

who have signed up on Historyof the Germans.com slash support.

I'm talking specifically about Philip T., Waverly, Christopher M., Alexander K., Andrew, Matthew L. and Andreas B.H. And with that, back to the show.

Last week, we looked at the period 1420 to 1423 from the perspective of imperial politics and Sigismund's

role as the head of this almost collapsing political entity.

This week we'll talk at what happened inside Bohemia and for that we'll go back to the aftermath

of the Battle of the Wicharat in the summer of 1420. Sigismund was comprehensively defeated and

...