John of Bohemia, the Blind King
(1296 – 1346 CE)
The blind king who charged into legend and never saw the arrows coming.
“It is not the eyes that make a man see—only the will.”
— attributed to John of Bohemia, possibly while missing both the point and the point of the sword
It’s Crécy, 1346. Rain, mud, and English arrows thicker than the lies of French chroniclers.
Somewhere amid the chaos—past the disemboweled horses and the half-drowned knights still trying to curse through their visors—a man who can’t see a goddamn thing is asking to be led into battle.
That’s John of Bohemia, the Blind King.
King of Bohemia, Count of Luxembourg, Duke of a dozen headaches. Sixty years old, blind as justice, and absolutely determined to die in the dumbest, most glorious way imaginable.
“By God,” he tells his attendants, “lead me to the front. I have heard enough of this war.”
They try to talk him out of it.
He doesn’t hear them.
Or rather, he does—but what’s a little reason against the symphony of chivalric death?
They tie his horse’s reins to those of two squires. The old king grips his sword.
Some say he prays.
Some say he laughs.
Everyone agrees it was spectacularly stupid.
The King Who Wouldn’t Stay Home
Long before the blind charge, John of Luxembourg had been one of Europe’s best-equipped overachievers. Born in 1296 to the Count of Luxembourg and married off into Bohemian royalty, he found himself king at just fourteen—an imported teenager ruling a kingdom that barely tolerated him.
He wasn’t Czech. He barely spoke Czech. His subjects hated him for it. So he did what all misunderstood nobles do: he left.
For decades, John was Europe’s most aggressively itinerant monarch. He fought in Italy, Flanders, Hungary, France—basically everywhere except Bohemia. He crusaded against pagans in Prussia and Christians in Italy. If there was a war, John was there. If there wasn’t, he’d start one for sport.
He loved tournaments, armor, and expensive failures. Chroniclers called him “a splendid knight, a magnificent fool.” He once mortgaged half his kingdom to fund a campaign in Lombardy, where he lost more money than he ever made in taxes. But people adored him anyway. He had the medieval charisma of a man who would duel you for stepping on his shadow.
And then came blindness.
In the 1330s, a degenerative eye disease began clouding his vision. By 1340, the man who had seen half of Europe could see none of it. But that didn’t stop him. He ruled by proxy, fought by instinct, and cultivated a reputation as the courtly madman of Europe.
The World’s Most Expensive Suicide Attempt
By 1346, Europe was drenched in the early blood of the Hundred Years’ War. Edward III of England had landed in Normandy, eager to prove that French soil looked better painted red. France called in all its allies—including John, the blind lion of Bohemia.
He arrived with five hundred knights and zero fear. His retinue tried to keep him behind the lines, but John didn’t believe in “behind.”
When the English longbowmen began their massacre at Crécy, the French cavalry charged again and again, slaughtered by the thousands. The field became a blender of chivalry and mud. Horses screamed. The air stank of shit, blood, and dying nobility.
John stood in the storm, unseeing, unyielding. He asked, “Where is my son Charles?”
“Fighting, my lord.”
“Then lead me to him. Let me strike one blow for Bohemia.”
So they tied his horse’s bridle to theirs, forming a blind man’s cavalry chain—an image so insane it should’ve been myth, but wasn’t. The blind king spurred forward into the English line.
What followed was a medieval demolition derby.
John’s group crashed through the archers, slashing wildly, their horses impaling themselves on stakes. Chronicles claim John killed several enemies before collapsing under the swarm. When the melee cleared, his body was found still strapped to his companions, surrounded by corpses.
Edward of England, perhaps sensing good PR, ordered John’s body returned to Bohemia with honors. The English even kept his motto, Ich dien (“I serve”), which the Prince of Wales still uses today—proof that even your epitaph can be looted if it’s catchy enough.
The Blind King Becomes a Symbol
Death is the ultimate publicist.
In life, John was a nuisance—a king without a country, a sightless wanderer clinging to relevance.
In death, he became a legend.
The chroniclers turned his charge into an opera of doomed valor. The poets made him a martyr for chivalry. France, ever eager to canonize lost causes, praised his courage as “the purest flower of knighthood.”
Even the Bohemians, who’d spent his reign wishing he’d move out, built monuments. Suddenly, the absentee landlord became a national hero.
Blindness became the metaphor: chivalry’s final act before modern war—the age of armor meeting the age of arrows. John of Bohemia was Europe’s last knight errant, galloping into machine-made death with eyes wide shut.
The Ironies Pile Up
Here’s where the story starts to rot beautifully.
John’s son, Charles—future Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV—had begged him not to fight that day. He survived Crécy and went on to build Prague into the jewel of Central Europe.
In other words: Dad died for chivalry; son built libraries.
History, as usual, chose the pragmatist over the poet.
John’s remains didn’t rest easy, either. They were moved, stolen, misplaced, reburied. One rumor says the English kept his horse’s armor as a trophy. Another claims the French tried to canonize him until someone remembered he’d been excommunicated three times.
His motto, Ich dien, got hijacked by the English monarchy—those same longbow bastards who killed him. His name lives on in Luxembourg as the patron of blind optimism, and in Bohemia as the guy who finally made Czechs forgive German kings—for about ten minutes.
And in France? He’s remembered as a chivalric saint who galloped straight into futility. Which, to be fair, is kind of their brand.
The Charge as Performance Art
John’s death wasn’t just a suicide; it was a statement piece. He charged not because he thought he’d win, but because he refused to stop being the story.
Think about it: a blind man on a horse, tethered to two squires, charging into a mechanized hail of death—that’s not strategy, that’s theater.
It’s also one of the last times anyone mistook valor for victory.
Crécy shattered the illusion of knightly warfare. The longbow made mockery of armor. The age of aristocratic dueling died in that mud. And John of Bohemia—eyes gone, pride intact—was the final, beautiful casualty of that extinction.
If Don Quixote had lived two centuries earlier, he’d have followed John into that same storm.
The Legend Ages Like Wine and Iron
In the centuries that followed, John’s story was retold in increasingly ridiculous tones. Painters depicted him glowing like a saint. Romantic poets drooled over his “noble blindness.” In 19th-century Germany, he became a proto-national hero—the man who proved Teutonic courage didn’t need sight, reason, or survival.
By the 20th century, he was a statue, a symbol, a tourist attraction. His blind charge became shorthand for doomed gallantry—a meme before memes. Every general leading men into slaughter quoted him, knowingly or not.
If you’ve ever watched a commander order a suicidal assault “for honor,” John’s ghost is there, reins knotted to theirs.
The Epilogue No One Asked For
His body made it home eventually. They say when they cut his reins, the horses were still tied together, still facing forward.
He’d died exactly as he’d lived—charging into darkness, dragging better men along for the ride.
The chroniclers gave him every virtue. The historians gave him context. The rest of us give him a smirk and a nod.
For all his blindness, John of Bohemia saw one thing perfectly clear:
If you can’t live with dignity, die with style.
Warrior Rank #182
Sources & Inspirations
Jean Froissart, Chroniques, Book I (c. 1370–1400) — primary account of Crécy and John’s death.
Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (1978).
Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War: Trial by Battle (1990).
Peter Hoskins, In the Steps of the Black Prince: The Road to Poitiers, 1355–1356 (2013).
David Green, The Hundred Years War: A People’s History (2014).
Knights Who Really Should Have Stayed in Bed, Monksbridge Press, 1598 (probably apocryphal).
“Blind But Fabulous: Medieval Deaths Worth Copying,” The Chivalric Quarterly, Issue 13.
Sir Reginald’s Guide to Dying Spectacularly in Plate Armor (out of print, hopefully).
A drunken Welsh archer allegedly muttering, “Nice try, old man,” circa 1346.
