Wagons in Warfare
The Military Use of Wagons by the Hussites and Voortrekkers
Mar 26, 2009 Grant Sebastian Nell
This enclosure was impervious to cavalry assault and provided a base from which the defenders could sally out to pursue a retreating foe.
The Hussite War Wagon
The Hussites were a group of religious reformers from Bohemia who followed the teachings of their martyred leader, Jan Hus. As most Hussites were drawn from the peasantry and townsfolk, they lacked cavalry. Under the guidance of their most able commander, Jan Zizka, they used the wagon fort to offset the superiority in mounted knights enjoyed by their foes, the Ultraquists.
The Hussites were amongst the first in Europe to use gunpowder weapons in large quantities. They mounted guns on their wagons and drew them up in enclosures. Livestock, women and children were kept safely in the centre. The gaps between the wagons were covered with large pavise shields, and when royalist forces mounted an assault, the Hussites delivered a lethal barrage of hand-cannons, artillery and crossbow bolts.
Any who attempted to scale the wagons were repulsed with an assortment of weaponry derived from agricultural tools - one particularly popular weapon was the spiked flail. Once the enemy retreated, the Hussites would pursue them with infantry and whatever cavalry they possessed. Using wagon forts and crude weaponry, the Hussites managed to win outstanding victories against the forces of the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope for almost twenty years.
So effective were Hussite tactics that many Imperial armies fled at first sight of the foe. Jan Zizka also demonstrated that the war wagon could be used offensively - at the Battle of Kutna Hora on December 21, 1421, a vastly outnumbered Hussite army, fighting on two fronts, managed to blow a gap in the Imperial lines with their wagon-mounted artillery and regrouped at the village of Kolin, 15 kilometres away.
The Voortrekker Laager
The Voortrekkers were South African settlers of Dutch descent who left the British-ruled Cape Colony for lands free of British control. They loaded their belongings into wagons and journeyed into the Southern African interior. They drew their wagons up in laager formation (taken from the Dutch Leger, camp) to protect themselves and their livestock from the depredations of wild animals and tribesmen.
The Voortrekkers usually plugged the gaps between their wagons with bundles of thorn-brush, but at the Battle of Blood River, fought against the Zulus on 16 December, 1838, they formed their wagons into a D-shaped enclosure and covered the gaps with wooden fences. They also had two small cannon, which they loaded with musket balls.
The Zulus, numbering over 12,000, surrounded the laager and attacked. The Trekkers, some 700 strong including servants, maintained a steady and withering fire of musketry. Most Trekkers owned more than one muzzle-loading musket or sanna, and women, children and servants reloaded whilst the men fired. They also made incisions in their musket balls so the projectile split after leaving the barrel, thus potentially killing or wounding two victims instead of one. The lethal close-range fire, coupled with the tremendous bank of smoke it generated, steadily weakened and demoralised the Zulus.
After several hours of weathering sustained assaults, the Trekkers made a mounted sally from their laager, driving the Zulus back across the Ncome River. There were so many dead and dying Zulus in the river that the water apparently turned reddish-brown in hue, giving the battle it’s name. Total casualties for both sides included 4 Trekker wounded and over 3,000 Zulu dead.
It can be seen that there were two phases to a wagon fort battle: the opening, defensive phase, followed by the counterattack or pursuit against an exhausted and disheartened foe.
Sources:
The Washing of the Spears The Rise and Fall of the Zulu Nation, Donald R. Morris, Pimlico Edition, 1994
The Hussite Wars 1419 - 36, Stephen Turnbull, Illustrated by Angus McBride, Osprey, 2004
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