The Utraquists would reunite with the Catholic Church afterwards. The Hussite wagon fort would meet its demise at the Battle of Lipany (1434), where the Utraquist faction of Hussites defeated the Taborite faction by getting the Taborites inside a wagon fort on a hill to charge at them by at first attacking, then retreating. However, the anti-Hussite German forces, being inexperienced at this type of strategy, were defeated. The wagon fort was later used by the crusading anti-Hussite armies at the Battle of Tachov (1427). At this point, the enemy would be eliminated or very nearly so. Together with the infantry, the cavalry in the square would come out and attack. Men with swords, flails, and polearms would come out and attack the weary enemy. Once the commander saw it fit, the second stage of battle would begin. The armies of the anti-Hussite crusaders were usually heavily armored knights, and Hussite tactics were to disable the knight's horses so that the dismounted (and slow) knights would be easier targets for the ranged men. After this huge barrage, the enemy would be demoralized. There would even be stones stored in a pouch inside the wagons for throwing whenever the soldiers were out of ammunition. When the enemy would come close to the wagon fort, crossbowmen and hand-gunners would come from inside the wagons and inflict more casualties on the enemy at close range. Also, they called their guns the Czech word píšťala ( hand cannon), meaning that they were shaped like a pipe or a fife, from which the English word pistol is possibly derived. The Hussite artillery was a primitive form of a howitzer, called in Czech a houfnice, from which the English word howitzer comes. The defensive part would be a pounding of the enemy with artillery. There were two principal stages of the battle using the wagon fort: defensive and counterattack. The wagons would normally form a square, and inside the square would usually be the cavalry. The crew of each wagon consisted of 18 to 21 soldiers: 4 to 8 crossbowmen, 2 handgunners, 6 to 8 soldiers equipped with pikes or flails, 2 shield carriers and 2 drivers. The etymology of the word tabor may come from the Hussite fortress and modern day Czech town of Tábor, which itself is a name derived from biblical Jezreel mountain Tabor (in Hebrew תבור). Such a camp was easy to establish and practically invulnerable to enemy cavalry. When the Hussite army faced a numerically superior opponent, the Bohemians usually formed a square of the armed wagons, joined them with iron chains, and defended the resulting fortification against charges of the enemy. In the 15th century, during the Hussite Wars, the Hussites developed tactics of using the tabors, called vozová hradba in Czech or Wagenburg by the Germans, as mobile fortifications. Czechs and Hussites "The Women of the Teutons Defend the Wagon Fort" (1882) by Heinrich Leutemann. Using armored heavy wagons known as "Wu Gang Wagon" ( Chinese: 武剛車) in ring formations as temporary defensive fortifications, Wei Qing neutralised the Xiongnu's initial cavalry charges, forcing a stalemate and buying time for his troops to recover strength, before using the cover of a sandstorm to launch a counteroffensive which overran the nomads. During the 119 BC Battle of Mobei of the Han–Xiongnu War, the famous Han general Wei Qing led his army through a fatiguing expeditionary march across the Gobi desert only to find Yizhixie chanyu's main force waiting to encircle them on the other side. One of the earliest written claims of using conjoined mobile shields as fortification is described in the Chinese historical record Book of Han. These were traditionally used by 19th century American settlers travelling to the West in convoys of Conestoga wagons. Similar, ad hoc, defensive formations used in the United States were called corrals. Notable historical examples include the Hussites, who called it vozová hradba ("wagon wall"), known under the German translation Wagenburg ("wagon fort/fortress"), tabors in the armies of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Cossacks, and the laager of settlers in South Africa. Historians interpret this as a wagon-fort. Overview Circled wagonsĪmmianus Marcellinus, a Roman army officer and historian of the 4th century, describes a Roman army approaching "ad carraginem" as they approach a Gothic camp. It is also known as a laager (from Afrikaans), especially in historical African contexts, and a tabor (from Polish/Ukrainian/Russian) among the Cossacks. The Hussite WagenburgĪ wagon fort, wagon fortress, wagenburg or corral, often referred to as circling the wagons, is a temporary fortification made of wagons arranged into a rectangle, circle, or other shape and possibly joined with each other to produce an improvised military camp.
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