The rumble of hooves intensified. The earth shook. The chains connecting the wagons jingled. The blades of gisarmes and halberds clanked and rang as they banged against each other. The hands tightly gripping the shafts trembled more and more. The nervous coughing intensified.

“Two hundred paces!” yelled Vilém Jeník from the wagons.

“Ready yourselves!”

“Ready yourselves!” repeated Jan Kolda. “Right, lads, arse cheeks together!”

“A hundred paces! Theeey’re in view!”

“Fire!”

The wagenburg flared up as fire shot from a thousand barrels. A thousand shots rang out.

Amid the squealing of horses, in the yelling, in the tumult and clanking, the darkness was suddenly lit up by fire. At first listless, barely giving off light, it was fanned by a wind that blew up in the dawn and finally exploded with strength and fury. The thatched roofs of the cottages of Schwedeldorf and Stary Wielisław blazed with huge, bright flames, the ricks outside Czerwona Góra and the barns, sheds and shacks on the Wielisławka stream glowed red. Some fires were lit on Královec’s order; others Duke Jan ordered his men to light at the moment of attack. The aim was the same: for there to be light. Enough light to make killing possible.

The wagon fort’s salvo was deadly. The first line of the charge fell as though flattened by a gale under a hail of balls and bolts thudding against armour; the second line rushed into the swarm of tumbling horses and men trampling them, the charging steeds tripping and falling over the dead and wounded steeds, panicking, throwing their riders in a macabre squealing and whinnying. The cries of horses joined the screaming of men rising up into the night sky.

Only the third line reached the wagons, and although the impetus of its attack was largely slowed, the wagenburg still shuddered and shook under the impact of the armoured cavalry. But it withstood the onslaught. And iron rained down on the knights pressed against them. Pushed by their comrades from behind, they couldn’t fall back or run away, so they defended themselves as best they could from the blows striking them. Hussite flails, battleaxes and morning stars shattered helmets; halberds destroyed spaulders; battleaxes hacked off arms; and clubs and poleaxes, voulges and awl pikes pierced armour. Hidden under the wagons, the crossbowmen fired bolt after bolt into the horses’ bellies, while others slashed their legs with scythes set upright on shafts. Squealing and the thudding of iron and yelling rose above the battlefield, fire reflected red on blades.

The bishop’s regiment was the first to withdraw and then flee in confusion. Decimated by a salvo in the charge, they ground to a halt in front of the wagenburg and became impaled on the thicket of fixed pikes, gisarmes and bear spears like leaves on a hedgehog.