11. John of Bohemia, despite being blind for more than a decade, led an ill-advised charge at the Battle of Crécy which unsurprisingly cost him his life
The Count of Luxembourg from 1309, John of Bohemia simultaneously reigned as the King of Bohemia from 1310 until his death in 1346. The eldest son of Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII, with the support of his powerful father John, who had been raised in Paris, was able to capture Prague in December 1310 and depose the reigning monarch Henry of Carinthia. Attempting to succeed his father, John was passed over in favor of Louis IV of Wittelsbach in 1314. Nevertheless, John was loyal to his triumphant competitor, supporting him in the Battle of Mühldorf in 1322 and was rewarded with the Egerland for his dispassionate committal of duty.
Widely disliked inside Bohemia, viewed as a foreign ruler, John lost his eyesight from ophthalmia in 1336 whilst in Lithuania. Refusing to let his disability prevent him from discharging his office, John allied himself with Philip VI of France in the Hundred Years’ War. Commanding the vanguard at the Battle of Crécy in 1346, the blind fifty-year-old king was killed fighting the English. According to chroniclers, the courageous king demanded he be allowed at least one strike to bloody his sword and charged into the midst of the battle. However, in the course of this foolhardy attack John, along with his bodyguard retinue, were slain to the last man.