John of Bohemia

John of Bohemia was blind for the last decade of his life and had himself led into the French line at Crecy to strike one blow, which killed him. He was the son of the Emperor Henry VII, of the house of Luxembourg, and got Bohemia at fourteen by marrying the heiress of the Premyslid kings after the dynasty died out. The Bohemians never took to him and he never much liked Bohemia; he spent his reign elsewhere, campaigning in Italy, Poland, Lithuania and the Rhineland, and was known across Europe as the model of a chivalric prince and, less admiringly, as a king who taxed one kingdom to pay for adventures in others. He did enlarge it - Silesia was brought under the Bohemian crown in his reign - and he arranged the marriage of his son Charles to a French princess and had him educated at the French court, which mattered more than anything else he did. He lost the sight of one eye on crusade in Lithuania and the other to a physician's treatment a few years later. In August 1346, blind and about fifty, he was with the French army at Crecy when the English longbowmen were destroying the French cavalry. He asked his knights to take him far enough forward to strike a blow with his sword; they tied their bridles together so as not to lose him, rode in, and were found the next morning still tied together with their horses dead around them. The Black Prince is said to have taken his ostrich-feather crest and motto, Ich dien, which the Prince of Wales has used since. His son became the Emperor Charles IV. He is buried at Luxembourg, having been moved several times over the centuries. Bohemian chroniclers judged him an absentee and French ones a paragon, which is a fair summary of how he spent his time.

• Lived: 1296 CE – 1346 CE
• Nationality: Bohemian
• Roles: ruler, military