In 15th-century Europe, there was a massive religious war on an enormous scale that shook the mighty Holy Roman Empire from the inside.
The Hussite Wars.
To understand the origin of that name, one cannot avoid explaining about Jan Hus, the revered theologian of the Kingdom of Bohemia.
At the time, Europe had reached the peak of church corruption, where even salvation after death was sold under the name of indulgences.
Unable to stand by any longer, Jan Hus cried out, and if we summarize his claims in a modern way, it went something like this.
"Screw the Pope! Screw the Emperor! Screw the Papal Court and the priests! We'll believe only in the words of the Bible and follow them, instead of this corrupt Catholicism!"
...Of course, a respected theologian wouldn't have used such vulgar language, but the social impact of his ideas was roughly equivalent.
In Europe back then, the Bible was a sacred realm accessible only through priests, who were God's proxies. For the masses who didn't know Latin, the priests' words were the truth itself.
And Jan Hus struck right at that point.
"How can we trust those corrupt popes and priests? Let's bypass them and hear the Lord's words directly ourselves!"
He translated the Latin Bible, which had been monopolized by a few priests, into Czech and insisted that everyone should be able to read the Scriptures.
In simple terms, it was a call to eliminate the middlemen like the Pope and priests and deal directly with God through the Bible alone.
Moreover, Jan Hus took it a step further, eventually making even more extreme claims.
"Those Catholic clerics are nothing but dung heaps hoarding wealth, guzzling wine, and fathering bastards, so we must seize all their property and return it to society!"
At this point, the Papal Court's patience ran out. Clutching their necks, they declared Jan Hus and his followers heretics.
But fortunately(?), the church at the time was embroiled in a bigger mess: the Western Schism.
Three cardinals, none of whom were qualified, rose up claiming they would elect a pope, creating a total three-ring circus.
With the three popes realizing the true Trinity pulling each other's hair out, the Papal Court had no time to worry about heretics in Bohemia.
As the masses watched this mudslinging brawl, their eyes grew colder, their distrust of Catholicism deepened, and Jan Hus's ideas spread like wildfire.
Eventually, when Hungary's King Sigismund and Cardinal Odo Colonna (later Pope Martin V) stepped in to unify the church and purge the heretics, all of Bohemia was already drunk on Jan Hus's ideology.
In the end, Sigismund sent a letter directly to Jan Hus saying this.
"You've got a lot to say, huh? We're all gathering to elect a pope anyway, so come and give a bold speech. I guarantee your safety on my name."
This was the invitation to the Council of Constance.
Jan Hus knew the Papal Court was itching to kill him, but thinking, "What could go wrong with the king's personal guarantee?" he headed to Constance anyway.
That "what could go wrong" was what killed him. Upon arriving in Constance, Jan Hus was immediately arrested and burned at the stake for heresy.
A king's promise should weigh heavier than gold. It was a cowardly lie that would make his great father, Charles IV, weep from the grave.
Enraged to the tips of their hair by this shabby betrayal, the Bohemian people rose up, calling themselves the Hussites.
This marked the beginning of the Hussite Wars.
To make matters worse, amid all this, Bohemia's king and Sigismund's older brother, the "Incompetent King" Wenceslaus IV, heard of the rebellion in his own lands and dropped dead from shock.
The bigger problem was that the Incompetent King had no heir.
The Bohemian throne automatically passed to his brother— the culprit who sent Jan Hus to his death, Emperor Sigismund of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Hussites' resistance grew fiercer, as they could not accept a lying king who had burned their martyr.
In response, Sigismund joined forces with Pope Martin V and organized crusaders from across the empire to crush the Hussites.
A ragtag peasant army risen purely on rage versus the empire's elite knights united by faith and loyalty.
It was a fight where the outcome seemed obvious. Bohemia's crown appeared poised to smoothly fall into Sigismund's hands.
But in chaotic times, heroes emerge.
A peerless strategist appeared like a comet, overturning what everyone thought was a done deal.
He was the war hero called the Czech Yi Sun-sin.
The one-eyed Jan Zizka.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
"Ura!"
"Ura! Jan Zizka!"
"Zizka! Zizka!"
The Hussite camp was boiling with the ecstasy of victory.
Around the bonfires, soldiers banged on stolen beer kegs and sang songs, while on one side, they greedily tore into meat they hadn't tasted in days.
Just recently, the glorious battle at Vysehrad where they smashed a crusader charge.
At its center, as always, was their great leader, Jan Zizka.
The soldiers sent ecstatic cheers toward the one-eyed general. But the man who should have been receiving those cheers was not among them.
Jan Zizka was quietly gazing at a map in his tent, a step away from the noisy camp.
"Hm..."
In Zizka's mind, even at this moment, countless variables of the war unfolded endlessly.
At that moment, a dust-covered scout entered the tent and knelt.
"General, news from Kuttenberg."
"Speak."
"Sigismund has finally moved. He's leading his remaining forces out of Kuttenberg, retreating through Moravia toward Hungary."
Zizka nodded silently. His single eye gleamed with a cold light.
'Sigismund has finally tucked tail and fled. But he won't give up this easily. Soon enough, he'll organize a second crusade and invade this land again.'
So, with the greatest external threat gone, now was the perfect opportunity—the only one—to pull out the thorns embedded within Bohemia.
The parasites still wriggling in the snake's body. The Catholic loyalists to the king could not be left alone.
He scanned the markers on the Bohemia map one by one.
Plzeň. Kuttenberg. Český Krumlov...
His rough finger paused at one point as he reviewed the emperor's holdouts that hadn't been finished off yet.
"Sternberg..."
As Zizka murmured softly, his adjutant immediately reported.
"Sternberg can be considered completely empty right now. The family head fell in the Vysehrad battle, and the main family forces were wiped out with him."
"Who's defending the castle now?"
"He has a young son named Ulrich... but he's just a green boy with no battle experience. Even the remaining garrison would be at most a few dozen stragglers."
A cruel smile curled on Zizka's lips.
"A rundown castle with just one green boy. Perfect as an example to show those corrupt Catholics."
He flicked the Sternberg marker off the map with his finger, as if swatting away an annoying insect.
"Tell the Hussite brothers. Take a thousand troops and clean up that castle. Hang the young lord's head from the walls and turn it into our forward base."
"Yes! General Zizka!"
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
For days now, Sternberg Castle had been abuzz with strange work.
The potters baked jars day and night at the young lord's command, and the kitchen servants squeezed every last drop of oil from the salted preserved meat.
Everyone groaned in anxiety, fearing they were ruining their only emergency rations for the impending siege, but the lord's will was firm.
And in one corner of the inner courtyard.
"Cough, cough! Kek!"
Janos coughed repeatedly from the acrid alcohol fumes rising from the still.
'What on earth does the lord plan to use all this for? This much strong liquor... He can't possibly intend to drink it. Disinfect soldiers' wounds? No, there's way too much for that.'
His lord had become a completely different person in just a few days.
His memory being incomplete after the fall from the horse was one thing, but his behavior since hearing of his father's death could only be described as bizarre.
Mobilizing the castle's entire manpower to make fragile jars, ruin precious meat for oil, boil good wine into harsh spirits—what madness was this?
Because of it, all sorts of ominous rumors swirled through the castle. From tales that the new lord had gone mad, to whispers that he'd made a pact with the devil for forbidden sorcery.
Even after Steward Konrad and Knight Captain Kuno rooted out and punished the rumor-spreaders, the seeds of unease once sown did not settle easily.
Finally, Janos finished distilling the last drop of wine. He loaded the barrel of distilled spirits onto a cart and headed to Ulrich's private workshop.
The place, once an old stable, was now the lord's research lab filled with all sorts of bizarre materials.
"My lord, I've brought the distilled spirits as you asked."
"Good work. Set it down there."
Ulrich was silently stirring rosin and animal fat in a large cauldron. Inside, a black, sticky liquid bubbled ominously.
The sight was far from lordly dignity. It resembled an old alchemist or wizard brewing forbidden potions.
"..."
Janos was confused. The Ulrich he knew had never shown the slightest interest in alchemy.
In the end, Janos cautiously spoke up.
"My lord, that unquenchable fire you mentioned before... how exactly do you plan to make it?"
Ulrich's hand, stirring with the ladle, stopped.
"Why? Curious?"
"Honestly, I'm dying of curiosity. Everything you've been doing is beyond my common sense."
As Janos confessed his inner thoughts, a thick smile appeared on Ulrich's lips.
"Perfect timing. Seeing it with your own eyes is faster than explaining it a hundred times."
"Pardon? With my own eyes?"
Ulrich nodded. He pointed to the materials beside the cauldron.
A huge sack of rosin powder, a barrel full of oil, and the freshly brought barrel of strong distilled spirits.
"Watch closely. This is delicate work. Even a slight miscalculation in the ratios means failure."
Ulrich first eyeballed the amounts of the melted rosin and pig fat boiling in the cauldron.
"Pig fat is the fuel. Once lit, it burns at high temperature for a long time. But plain oil is too runny and doesn't stick well to walls or armor. That's why we mix in rosin. Combining oil and rosin increases viscosity, turning it into a sticky gel."
His gaze turned to the distilled spirits barrel Janos had brought.
"And the distilled spirits you brought. With its low flash point, it acts as an igniter to easily start the fire and as a catalyst to explosively boost the combustion rate of the whole mixture."
"Uh... what?"
Unfortunately, Janos didn't understand a word his lord said.
Ulrich chuckled lightly.
"Well, just watch."
Soon, Ulrich began carefully mixing the rosin, pig fat, and alcohol in a 2:2:1 ratio into the large cauldron.
Bubble bubble...
As the three substances blended, the liquid in the cauldron turned a nauseating black and thickened like jelly.
"Urk!"
Janos pinched his nose without thinking. A foul stench permeated the entire stable.
Regardless, Ulrich picked up one of the thin porcelain jars piled nearby. Using a funnel, he carefully filled it with the black liquid.
When it was about seventy percent full, he firmly plugged the mouth with a thick cloth soaked in oil.
"There. It's complete."
Ulrich held up the finished jar. It looked like an ordinary jar, but its contents were anything but.
"What is that, my lord?"
"Napalm."
"Na... what?"
Ulrich grinned and said,
"Something that'll turn their wagons into coffins."
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