John of Bohemia, the Blind King Who Charged Into Battle

We recount the epic tale of John of Bohemia, a 14th-century king who charged into the Battle of Crécy at age 50 - despite having been blind for the past ten years.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome

(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
tuning in. My name is Ben, my name is Noel uh.
I wanted to work in a Fred Durst reference in here,
some kind of limp biscuit nod because of what was
happening off my good I thought was delightful. Yes, super
producer Casey Pegram actually does most of our intros. They're

(00:48):
just off air and Casey you you you cued us
up when we asked if we were rolling with a
specific reference? Is that correct? That is true? And I
leave it to the list there to deduce what what
the connection there would have been with the concept of rolling.
But I will say that Fred Durst um back behind
the camera in the director's chair. She had a new

(01:11):
movie coming out. What is it? I don't know what
it's called. It's called The Obsesso. Yeah, and it's got
John Travolta in some very interesting He's making some interesting choices,
both hair wise, accessory wise, and um let's say what's that.
I don't I don't want to say it on the show,
but you might remember in the movie Tropic Thunder, Tom

(01:32):
Cruise plays a character makes a certain choice, and it
makes a certain choice, and it's recommended that you don't
go full that thing. Um In this film, John Travolta
seems to be making that choice. I agree. I agree.
So maybe something to catch like on video or something
curiosity that's not actually what it's called. It's it's just
it's called like the nut job kind of It sort

(01:55):
of looks like a rip off a big fan right,
that Patton Oswald movie. I think it might be called
the finn attic. Are you whoa? Whoa? Whoa? Are you Casey?
Are you accusing fred Durst of being unoriginal? Well, I
would never say that. I hope not having you know,
invented the irresistible blend of rap and rock music. I
saw a great meme where it said fred Durst explaining

(02:17):
rap metal to executives and it was that like always
sunny like conspiracy peg board, but with fred Durst's face
with the backwards red ball cap super imposed on it. Well,
just just back to the reference. This is something that
fred Durst would do in perpetuity. He rolls. It is true.
That's the philosophy of Durst. And while we are talking

(02:39):
about the philosophy of Durst. While we're talking about this film,
which none of us have seen to be fair, we
also find that Fred Durst has something in common with
the subject of today's story, which is the historically he,
like many other people in positions of power, has He's
done some dumb things, were ill advice things because there

(03:02):
was no one around to be anything less than a
syncophant or a yes man. Today's story takes place, uh,
not in the wild frontiers of rap Rock, but back
in the thirteen hundreds on August six, and English and

(03:22):
Welsh army met a French force. In case you can
help me out with this, when it's spelled c r
E c y, I'm gonna say clessy something like that
sounds so good when he says it, casey on the case,
on the absolute case. Yeah, Clessie, he's got it, he

(03:42):
got it. Yeah. No, I mean, it's definitely not on
the wilds of of rap Rock, that that undiscovered country,
but it is in something of of a of a
of a wild West kind of frontier because we had
the King of Bohemia, King John, who joined this conflict
when the English and the Welsh at the French forces
at Clacy. But here's the thing. Back in thirteen forty

(04:06):
John had been on a mission, a crusade where he
had lost his sight completely. Yeah, the conflict here in
thirteen forty six had some twists that no one saw coming,
especially not John. He had been a warrior for most
of his life and he did not let being blinded

(04:29):
slow his role. You see, John of Bohemia was born
in twelve ninety six, member of the Luxembourg dynasty, and
he became the Count of Luxembourg in thirteen ten, and
he married a woman named Elisa of the ruling dynasty
of Bohemia. Her father died without a male heir, and

(04:50):
so John inherited the kingdom and was crowned in thirteen eleven.
But he he had really close bonds with France, such
that he had sent his son to be raised in
the Parisian court rather than in Prague. And you know
Nol As you mentioned, he was on a crusade when
he lost his sight completely, but he wasn't blinded by

(05:11):
enemy forces. It turns out that he had a genetic condition.
This caused him to go blind on crusade in Lithuania.
But his reputation seemed to bear the hit just fine.
There were no challenges to his rule. He was still king,
he was still considered a night, he was still considered

(05:32):
a warrior. And so when the battle there At occurred,
John was dead set on going to the conflict. But
how how exactly did he wind up there? What? What
led to him joining the fray? Okay, so here's the thing,
Edward the Third's what team? Crew? Band and crew? Yeah, band,

(05:57):
band of Brethren, Knighted Brethren, uh, swordid gilded Knighted Brethren.
Had absolutely obliterated one of the most well equipped UM
armies in all of Europe, which belonged to King Philip
the sixth of France. Um and he did this remarkably effectively,

(06:19):
um without losing too many men. But the ones that
died on the French side of things were pretty well
regarded UM and and they kind of bore the brunt
of this, which is unfortunate. Yeah, there were the French
for the French, there were a lot of casualties on
that side, and the subject of today's story is probably

(06:40):
the most well known, most famous of those fatalities, that
is blind King John of Bohemia. And it's weird because
he's the King of Bohemia, so how has he involved
in this conflict between the French King Philip and between
Edward of England. Here's how it went down. So Philip

(07:01):
reaches out to blind John from Luxembourg and says, uh,
join me in this fight against this guy Edward in England.
And John at the time was hanging out with his
son Charles, who had just been uh just been crowned
as the king of Germany. So John goes to meet
Philip in Paris on the August, and you know, they

(07:26):
crew up their forces and they go after Edward and
they ride towards the coast. So he really is pulled
into the battle because of his friendship with the French
King Philip, who, as he said earlier, knowl his forces
are just getting waxed left and right. So he needs

(07:46):
all the help he can get. But historians only no
one popular tale about any of Bohemian involvement in this battle.
And that is what John of Bohemian did when he
finally got to the battlefield, because look, he's he's got experience,

(08:07):
he's a smart guy, he's got moxie more than a little.
He's got he's got what we would call hutzpah. But
he also literally cannot see, which is a you know,
for many people that would mean that they absolutely couldn't
participate in riding a horse, much less riding one into
a fight. But he would have none of that. He
would not be cow towed. Two, he would not be

(08:29):
treated with any kind of special consideration. Um, he wielded
his sword with a plum, often swinging wide and and
having his his men kind of have to duck and
cover u and again at the risk, not at the risk,
just just very very quickly and importantly, not to sound
ablest in any way. I mean, having no site is

(08:50):
is obviously a very serious condition that requires a lot
of life changes. The thing that's interesting about this is
that John refused to make those changes and operated in
the manner of sort of a megalomaniacal monarch, existing in
a bubble and refusing to do anything outside of what
he believes he should be doing. Right. And at this

(09:11):
point he's used to not having sight. He was, you know,
he was blinded years ago. By the time rolls around.
What I'm saying is he's expecting others to make concessions
to him, rather than you know, maybe thinking it wise
not to participate in certain activities that might be best,

(09:32):
you know, afforded to the sighted. Very I mean very
much so. And it leads to what is romanticized as
this um as this heroic battle field moment. The story
goes like this. Here's the story that we know from
a couple of different sources. Apparently King John had his

(09:55):
nights tie their horses, physically tie their horses to his
and ride forward toward the English altogether, so these guys
could kind of help him steer. And he said that
no Bohemian, even one who was blind, could be said
to have ever run from a fight. We have a
couple of medieval sources. One, the Chronicle of Prague, specifically

(10:19):
quotes John as saying, far be it that the king
of Bohemia should run away. Instead, take me to the
place where the noise of the battle is the loudest.
The Lord will be with us, nothing to fear. Just
take good care of my son. Beautiful oscar moment. So yeah,

(10:41):
I mean, you know, we've we've got this image of
of these uh, these nights riding alongside John kind of
helping steer his his his his steed. A bit We
have several different accounts. We have check sources that say
that there were only two that were tethered to to
this horse, and then we have English folks, uh, citing
many many more. What we can say for certain, and

(11:02):
this comes from a fantastic article on historical Honey. Does
really say articles are fantastic? Does it mean some of
them aren't fantastic? I don't know why. I always say that,
you know, the ones that aren't fantastic shouldn't make it
to the air. That's probably a good point. Then that's
a very good point. This one is in fact fantastic,
coming from historical honey dot com and saying that what
we do know, despite the differences and accounts, is that
he did head directly into the fray. Yeah. You'll hear

(11:26):
some differences in an English source versus check source. Uh.
Those differences are primarily going to be about how many
nights were tethered to King John, Was it a bunch
or was it only two? And you will also hear
about when this famous charge occurred. The English sources say

(11:48):
that the charge came in the climactic moments of the fighting,
but the check chronicle says that he charged pretty much
after the French had run away. The thing here is
the English source for Starr got his information directly from
the English court, and the Czech chronicler got their information

(12:09):
directly from the check court, maybe even John's son Charles directly.
And so the big questionnaire is which side can we believe?
Does either source have kind of an ulterior motive? Did
the English writer want John O Bohemia's death to seem
like it was justified so that nobody on the English

(12:31):
side was charged with the unethical act of killing a
blind man? You know what I mean? I do know
what you mean. And it's not clear from the record
which which one of those is more accurate? And yeah,
and would would John have deliberately written to certain death?
It's weird because here's what we here's what we learned

(12:52):
that there were already a bunch of dead and dying
horses on the ground because they had practiced, you know,
early forms of trench ward. Here, there were pits dug
in the ground, there were people shooting arrows well beforehand. Still,
even with that kind of littering the battlefield, they probably
could have made the charge. So we know it actually

(13:13):
happened for sure, for sure. We do have a lot
of other fun historical accounts of this. Uh, this deed,
this charge. One of my personal favorites is by the
medieval chronicler. That's that's a great job title. It seems
much more important than the historian. Uh, Ben, you you
branced this earlier. I believe it's frost Are. Yeah, that's
what we were like. Yeah, that's right. And he wrote
around thirteen seventy um in great detail about this event,

(13:35):
and I don't know, it sounds pretty poetic and larger
than life. But I want to read another one. Ben,
you didn't want earlier and did a great job. So
here's my attempt. When he understood the order of the battle,
he said to them about him, where is the Lord
Charles my son? His men said, sir, we cannot tell.
We think he'd be fighting. Then he said, sirs, you

(13:57):
are my men companion, and said, friends, in this journey,
I require you to bring me so far forward that
I may strike one stroke with my sword. They said
they would do his commandment, and to the intent that
they should not lose him in the press. They tied
all their reins of their bridles around to other and

(14:19):
set the king before to accomplish his desire boom. And so,
as we can tell, both of these accounts are written,
you know, just a couple of decades after the actual charge,
so there still would have been living people around with
firsthand knowledge of this. And this is one of the
crowning achievements of this guy's life. This is the kind

(14:44):
of death at least the way it's depicted that many
warriors would envy absolutely and the way it's the scene
is set by Frostar. It sounds to me like the
men are acting in like pure solidarity and they respect
this kid. You know, I don't know. I hope I
didn't make him a sound buffoonish earlier. I mean, this
is absolutely not just the work of a of a

(15:07):
megalomaniacal madman who's totally out of touch. I think he
very much wants to go into battle with his with
his men, right. He didn't have to do that. He
could have stayed in like his in his tent, you know,
be carried around in a litter or something like that,
but instead he wanted to you know, dive in. Also,
we have to ask ourselves, could they have refused him,

(15:28):
because he is, after all, the king you know. It
reminds me of that scene in Lord of the Rings
in the film adaptation when Eric Gordon is giving that
speech at the Black Gate and he's like, a day
may come when the courage of men fails. Cedra etceed
tastes not this day, No, it is not. Makes me
think of the Brave Heart speech exactly exactly. It's like

(15:51):
its own genre of speech is and this this is
a real version of one. Uh. The weird thing about
John though, is that his story doesn't stop when he
physically passes away. His remains get moved around a lot.
He was first interred in the old Abbey in Luxembourg City,

(16:14):
and then the monastery where he was interred was destroyed
in fifty three, and so they moved his body to
what they called the new Abbey, then dug up again
during the hellish time that was the French Revolution, and
given to the Book family, who I believe we're partners
in a in a in a pretty well known company
at the time called Villa Roy and Bok. What did

(16:34):
they do, Ben, I'm interested just for the sake of
our audience here, who wants to know things? They could
just google it. Um, let's see they sell flatwear. Uh,
they sell you know, plates, cutlery, dining collections, ceramics. Oh,
it's very much still around though. Yeah. Yeah, it's like
very fine, well maybe not fine, but it's it's certainly

(16:55):
you can buy it at Macy's. It's not like you know,
fine shina. But it ain't cheap. Let's see a set
of Villeroy and Bok French garden plates. Is it was
a hundred and sixty bucks. That's you know, the middle,
middle of the road. But I bet back in the
day it was it was more pricey. But they hid
these remains in their attic, the Bok family family did,

(17:16):
and uh there they stayed in the attic or in
the area until eighteen thirty three, when the Prussian King
Frederick William the third visited the Rhineland and a member
of the Bouk family, Jean Francois, gave him the relics.
And this this wasn't just like a weird gift. There

(17:37):
was a reason that Frederick William would be interested in these,
and that's because he claimed that he was descended from
John of Bohemia, so this felt personal to him and
he took them. Uh, he took them back to Germany.
Was he cremated or like, I'm sorry I pronounced that
like a like a real jerk. Fine, I'm fine with

(17:57):
it though, lean into it. Um so if if you
you know, presumably he was cremated, because they would have
had to store his his remains and some easy, easily
transportable form. I guess it could have been his decomposed bones,
but that doesn't that would have taken time. I think
maybe they put his bones in a container, you know,

(18:18):
because so much time has past eighteen thirty three, there's
not gonna be any flesh left. That's true. They must
have just dug him up. You're right, he was buried properly,
and then they dug him up and then just try,
you know, put his bones in a pile and and
and just carter to them around side. Note, I have
to say, uh, we've been we've been doing this show
for a couple of years now, and uh, actually it's

(18:40):
our anniversary. Is it today? I don't know if it's today,
but we're very close. Christopher Hasciotis pointed it out to
us earlier, so off air, we we just looked it
up because Christopher is uh way more on top of
it than the three of us. And it is actually
the two year anniversary of this show sometime this week,
so you believe it. Happy anniversary, man, Happy anniversary too.

(19:01):
Would you give me? I you know, I got you
a hat the last time I always travel the last
two times. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm making it a thing.
I love it. I love I love hats. H Speaking
of which, just the hat that I'm wearing right now
from Fort mount Hood the uh timber Line Lodge. That's
where the Overlook Hotel. That's where she saw that that

(19:23):
shining shirt. I was right the other day, case he
got that there too, at the timber Line Lodge gift
shop at the Portland Airport, which is one of the
best airports for gift shopping I've ever been to in
my life. Thanks. Man. That's the one that used for
the exterior shot in the movie, I think so. Yeah. Yeah,
it does not have the hedgemads. That's right. The interior
is different the Stanley Hotel. Also, Happy anniversary to you, Casey. Yes,

(19:46):
I'm just spread spreading the cheers for the show. For
the show, he was like, I have no personal anniversaries
of which to speak, No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't call
you out on the air like that. It's a show versary.
Uh So, Also thanks to every one who has been
lending us an ear these past two years. Here's what happened.

(20:10):
They took John's bones, his remains, and they built a
chapel just the house those bones, and everything seemed fine
and seem to have found his final resting place. Until
that is nineteen five. The Nazi party in Germany is
just about to lose the war. Uh The government of Luxembourg.

(20:32):
The way history Naked dot Com, in a fantastic article
describes it, is that Luxembourg quietly liberated John of Bohemia.
I love quiet liberation the best kind. They robbed his grave,
that's what they did. They they they took his remains,
and they brought him back to Luxembourg cities, Notre Dame Cathedral,

(20:54):
and that's where they are now. But how did he
actually die? I have a question for you. Do you
think it were choirs religious belief to be at all
concerned with how people's remains are treated? No, not at all.
You don't think so? No? So you so so you
think you would be concerned for how someone else's remains
are treated based on respect for their religious beliefs. Is

(21:17):
that kind of what you're getting out, That's part of it.
But also if they have any living relatives, I would
I would want to avoid that. Oh and that's the
that's the threat I almost lost. Thanks for bringing that
horse got lost. Got sidetracked a little in the in
the anniversary thing. Uh. Over the course of this show,
we've run into several cases where people just keep playing

(21:39):
with or attempting to possess the physical remains of famous folks,
like that one guy whose head disappeared, What was it,
Lord Nelson, Lord Nelson, Horatio Nelson, Yeah, forgetting He was
a sea captain and what happened? His head disappeared? You know, man,
I just remember he was pickled in brandy. That's right.
They transported his body. He died in a in a

(22:01):
very very similar fashion to uh, to our our hero today.
Only he he could see and he um was shot
on the deck of his shop. But he was their
neck and neck with his men in the fray of battle,
knowing full well that he he might well take a bullet,
and he did and he died, and then they pickled
his body in a keg of It was rum. Actually

(22:22):
it wasn't very rum, but then there were all these
spooky tails about maybe they drank the rum. Yeah, yeah,
I leave a drink is named after a rum based
drink is named after him or something like that. But
it's you know, it's is it really that different from
drinking the tequila with the worm and it, I mean,
other than it's a human body. This is getting dark,

(22:43):
never mind of getting the Halloween effect. As we can
rightly assume, back in the thirteen hundreds, there wasn't too
much in the way of what we would call forensic science,
So it wasn't until nineteen that someone examined the skeleton
of the Blind King of Bohemia and they were able

(23:03):
to discern more details about how he died on that
day in August. And the details, they gotta tell you,
they're they're pretty graphic. If you are a person who
is averse two descriptions of violence or blood and gore
and so on, you may want to skip the next
couple of seconds. Okay, here's what happened. The examination found

(23:29):
that someone had stabbed him in one of his eyes,
someone had pushed some kind of weapon directly into his skull.
They could see a kind of a triangular cross section.
So there was this void, this triangle shape void in
his skull. Jesus, and that wasn't he he had other
stabs as well, right, Yeah, no, he very much did

(23:52):
get get dog piled on. Um. He had one to
his left shoulder blade that went into his chest. Probably
had some sear his uh important guts in their uh
of vital organs. Um. But that might have been the
killed shot. Right. It wouldn't have been a super protracted death,

(24:13):
but probably wouldn't have been instant either. Um. And then
we've got uh the final insult to injury kind of wound,
don't we Yeah. It turns out his right hand had
been severed and they could see three different blows from
a blade. Somebody completely cut off his right hand, most

(24:35):
likely to make it more convenient to steal his rings,
so instead of working them off the finger, they just
cut off his hands. He kept going, and this could
probably be this sort of practice could probably be an
episode all its own, because wartime scavenging, up to and
including the looting of cadavers was very common at this time.

(25:00):
Oh yeah, I mean it continues to be continue to
be common, and like you know, world War One and
World War Two, bodies were often looted. We even did
a story about dental work that was done exclusively with
looted teeth and fillings and things like that from from
falling soldiers during the Civil War. During the Civil War

(25:21):
and from other countries during that time. It's where we
originated that world famous, ridiculous historian phrase straight sea horse teeth. Yeah,
that's true. That episode was absolutely straight seahorse teeth. And
I love seeing that one catch on, if even in
a small way on the internet. Um so, yeah, I'm
picturing this scene, Ben, I'd like to see this dramatize, uh,

(25:43):
full guts and glory and all. I mean it's you know,
because there's that moment where he topples off his horse
and then the horde swarms him. You know, I mean
it would a melee, you know, that would be an
absolute uh horror show. Slow motion as the music swells
and then maybe we hear this so common in action films,
historical action films. Maybe we're here in the distance, uh

(26:04):
the song like his wife softly singing a love song.
I'm a big fan of the slow motion scream that
has the audios almost in the slow motion too. It's
like and in the background, there's something right exactly back
to Lord of the Rings. It reminds me of that

(26:26):
one where Pipping the singing that delightful song and are
being slaughtered and the weird kings eating his gross chicken
and grapes or yeah, god, and as the missophonia that
I have just drives me insane watching him suck on
those tiny tomatoes. So they were grapes, they were grape tomatoes,

(26:46):
oh man. And then do you remember, also in Game
of Thrones when Padrick starts singing that weird song about
Jenny dancing with her ghosts. Yeah, see, it's kind of
It's got that vibe very right. There's this could be
uh and this could be excellent fodder for an historical drama.
And you know what, if there already is one, go ahead,

(27:09):
feel free to hit us to it. And so pending
messages from studio producers the world over. This concludes our
episode on the Strange, heroic, larger than life and of
Blind John, the King of Bohemia, But it does not

(27:30):
mean the end of the show. We will be back
very soon with more you guessed it, ridiculous people, places,
and events from the span of human history. In the meantime,
we'd like to hear your stories about these larger than
life deaths. You know, you know what I've been really into.
I think maybe we talked about it earlier. I have

(27:50):
always been fascinated with the stories of someone's famous last words.
Often I feel like they're made up, you know, Like
there's with Oscar Wilde where this one I always thought
it was true where he says either the wallpaper goes
or I do, because he hated the wall paper when
he was expiring and then he died. Chega Vena said, uh,

(28:11):
shoot full your only killing a man. My personal favorite
is Ronald Reagan's deathbed uh final words, which is when
one for the kipper. Remember when Reagan said that when
he died. I'm sure you know. I feel like most
people's famous last words are probably so I feel like

(28:35):
we should just count the thing before they had that
death rattle. Uh. There was another one. I can't remember
who said it, but someone said I should have never
switched from Scotch to Martini's. That sounds like something someone
would say in a voice like this, It does. Whoever
has got that voice? It was him ripped torn. Yeah.
Probably so if you want to let us know some

(28:58):
of your favorite noble death, some of you were favorite
famous last words, reach out. We're all over the internet.
You can find us on Facebook, you can find us
on Twitter. You can find us on Instagram. Not just
as a show, but as a as people are ourselves. Yeah,
we're actually human people that do things outside of this
podcast shipping container that we find ourselves in so often.

(29:18):
You can find me on Instagram exclusively. I occupy no
other social media real estate on the Internet. Accept occasional
Facebook feed trolling for for fake news. Um. You can
find me on Instagram at how Now Noel Brown, and
you can find me on Various Adventures and Misadventures here
and abroad on Instagram at ben Bowland. You can also

(29:38):
find me on Twitter where I am at ben Bowling,
hs W. My office hours are weird. They're pretty much seven.
Always feel free to drop by and say hello. I
can't wait to hear what people said. They can't wait
to hear what kind of famous last words people said?
And you know what, you guys, casey, No, we should

(29:59):
have a party at some point, you know, like a
little little sare kind of thing. I'm gonna go grab
a beer after work today if you guys want to
come and we can pour one out for the gipperh
I have to have to catch a flight. Boo next time,
Next time. Big Thanks to super producer Casey Pegroom, Christopher
Haciots here in Spirit Out. It's Williams who composed our theme.
Also thanks of course to Gabe Lozier. Thanks to Eve's

(30:22):
Jeff Coat. Thanks to Jonathan Strickland, the quister who isn't
here for the anniversary. I know, and he's he's been
hot taken on Facebook, though, I feel like he's still here.
Have you seen ridiculous historians? He says some things, some
very choice things about you and your vocal warm up
regiment and you as well. Yeah, yeah, he's uh, he

(30:44):
went off. He feels ways about things he does feel
ways about. I think he's getting a little punchy. Since
we haven't been including him, he might be feeling a
little left out. So I think we should bring him
back into the fold. Absolutely, We'll see you next time,
folx H. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

(31:07):
listen to your favorite shows.