A mobile fort assembled by drawing wagons into a defensive circle, like the Wild West wagon circle or the Boer laager. The first references are from the time of Julius Caesar, when the Helvetii and the German tribes are reported to have used them, the latter in 55 bc. Byzantine armies frequently used such a formation, and the Russians developed it to provide a defensible locality in the middle of the flat and featureless steppe, which they called the gulai-gorod (‘running castle’). The Teutonic Knights also retreated into a wagenburg after their defeat at Tannenberg in 1410. When Zizka developed the technique for the Hussites, it was not, therefore, a new idea, but in the period 1419 to 1435, when they held off three imperial Crusades against them, they improved it with specially built wagons which could be chained together. Sometimes used in combination with earthworks, the wagenburg proved highly effective against armoured cavalry. However, when different Hussite factions fought each other—the Utraquist Hussites allied with the Roman Catholics against the extreme Hussite Taborites—they both used the wagenburg, and the result was a very immobile battle. The wagenburg proved an excellent way of exploiting crossbows and handguns, but would not have lasted long in the face of the field artillery which appeared later. The technique was rediscovered by the white settlers in South Africa, where the Boers made laagers against the indigenous inhabitants, and in the American West. But once again, neither the Zulus nor the Plains Indians had artillery.
— Christopher Bellamy
