The Defenestrations of Prague were two incidents in the history of Bohemia;
there have been more. The first occurred in 1419 and the second in 1618, although
the term "Defenestration of Prague" more commonly refers to the later incident.
Both helped to trigger prolonged conflict within Bohemia and beyond.
Defenestration is the act of throwing someone or something out of a window.
First Defenestration of Prague The First Defenestration of Prague
involved the killing of seven members of the city council by a crowd of radical
Czech Hussites on 30 July 1419. Jan Želivský, a Hussite priest at the
church of the Virgin Mary of the Snows, led his congregation on a procession
through the streets of Prague to the New Town Hall, on Charles Square. The town
council members had refused to exchange their Hussite prisoners. While they
were marching, a stone was thrown at Želivský from the window of the town
hall. This enraged the mob and they stormed the town hall. Once inside the
hall, the group threw the judge, the burgomaster, and some thirteen members
of the town council out of the window and into the street, where they were
killed by the fall or dispatched by the mob.
King Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia, upon hearing this news, was stunned and died
shortly after, supposedly due to the shock.
The procession was a result of the growing discontent at the contemporary
direction of the Church and the inequality between the peasants and the
Church's prelates, and the nobility. This discontentment combined with rising
feelings of nationalism and increased the influence of radical preachers such
as Jan Želivský, influenced by Wycliffe, who saw the current state of the
Catholic Church as corrupt. These preachers urged their congregations to
action, including taking up arms, to combat these perceived transgressions.
The First Defenestration was thus the turning point between talk and action
leading to the prolonged Hussite Wars. The wars broke out shortly afterward and
lasted until 1436. Second Defenestration of Prague
The Second Defenestration of Prague precipitated the Thirty Years' War.
= Background = In 1555, the Peace of Augsburg had
settled religious disputes in the Holy Roman Empire by enshrining the principle
of Cuius regio, eius religio, allowing a prince to determine the religion of his
subjects. The Kingdom of Bohemia since 1526 had been governed by Habsburg
Kings, who did not, however, force their Catholic religion on their largely
Protestant subjects. In 1609, Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia,
increased Protestant rights. He was increasingly viewed as unfit to govern,
and other members of the Habsburg dynasty declared his younger brother,
Matthias, to be family head in 1606. Matthias began to gradually wrest
territory from Rudolf, beginning with Hungary. In order to strengthen his hold
on Bohemia, Rudolf in 1609 issued the Letter of Majesty, which granted
Bohemia's largely Protestant estates the right to freely exercise their religion,
essentially setting up a Protestant Bohemian state church controlled by the
estates, "dominated by the towns and rural nobility". Upon Rudolf's death,
Matthias succeeded in the rule of Bohemia and extended his offer of more
legal and religious concessions to Bohemia, relying mostly on the advice of
his chancellor, Bishop Melchior Klesl. Conflict was precipitated by two
factors: Matthias, already aging and without children, made his cousin
Ferdinand of Styria his heir and had him elected king in 1617. Ferdinand was a
proponent of the Catholic Counter-Reformation and not likely to be
well-disposed to Protestantism or Bohemian freedoms. Bohemian Protestants
opposed the royal government as they interpreted the Letter of Majesty to
extend not only to the land controlled by the nobility or self-governing towns
but also to the King's own lands. Whereas Matthias and Klesl were prepared
to appease these demands, Ferdinand was not, and in 1618 forced the Emperor to
order the cessation of construction of some Protestant chapels on royal land.
When the Bohemian estates protested against this order, Ferdinand had their
assembly dissolved. = The Defenestration =
On May 23, 1618, four Catholic Lords Regent, Count Jaroslav Borzita of
Martinice, Count Vilem Slavata of Chlum, Adam II von Sternberg, and Matthew
Leopold Popel Lobcowitz, arrived at the Bohemian Chancellory at 8:30 am. After
preparing the meeting hall, members of the dissolved assembly of the three main
Protestant estates gathered at 9:00 am, led by Count Thurn, who had been
deprived of his post as Castellan of Karlstadt by the Emperor. The Protestant
Lords' agenda was to clarify whether or not the four regents present were
responsible for persuading King Matthias to order the cessation of churches on
royal land. According to Martinice himself:
Lord Paul Rziczan read aloud... a letter with the following approximate content:
His Imperial Majesty had sent to their graces the lord regents a sharp letter
that was, by our request, issued to us as a copy after the original had been
read aloud, and in which His Majesty declared all of our lives and honour
already forfeit, thereby greatly frightening all three Protestant
estates. As they also absolutely intended to proceed with the execution
against us, we came to a unanimous agreement among ourselves that,
regardless of any loss of life and limb, honour and property, we would stand
firm, with all for one and one for all... nor would we be subservient, but
rather we would loyally help and protect each other to the utmost, against all
difficulties. Because, however, it is clear that such a letter came about
through the advice of some of our religious enemies, we wish to know, and
hereby ask the lord regents present, if all or some of them knew of the letter,
recommended it, and approved of it. Before the regents gave any answer, they
requested that the Protestants give them the opportunity to confer with their
superior, Adam von Waldstein, who was not present. If they were given the
opportunity, the Protestants would get an official answer to their grievance by
the next Friday. The Protestants demanded an immediate answer. Two
regents, Adam II von Sternberg and Matthew Leopold Popel Lobcowitz, were
declared innocent by the Protestant Estate holders and too pious to have any
responsibility in the letter's creation. They in turn were removed from the room;
however, before leaving, Adam II von Sternberg made it clear that they "did
not advise anything that was contrary to the Letter of Majesty". This left only
Count Vilem Slavata of Chlum, Count Jaroslav Borzita of Martinice, known
Catholic hard-liners, and Philip Fabricius the secretary to the Regents.
They eventually claimed responsibility for the letter and, assuming they were
only going to be arrested, welcomed any punishment the Protestants had planned.
Count von Thurn turned to both Martinice and Slavata and said "you are enemies of
us and of our religion, have desired to deprive us of our Letter of Majesty,
have horribly plagued your Protestant subjects... and have tried to force them
to adopt your religion against their wills or have had them expelled for this
reason". Then to the crowd of Protestants, he continued "were we to
keep these men alive, then we would lose the Letter of Majesty and our
religion... for there can be no justice to be gained from or by them". Soon
after, the two Regents were thrown out of the third floor window along with the
Regents' secretary, Philipus Fabricius, but survived after falling 70 feet.
Catholics maintained the men were saved by angels or by the intercession of the
Virgin Mary, who caught them; later Protestant pamphleteers asserted that
they survived due to falling onto a dung heap, a story unknown to contemporaries
and probably coined in response to divine intervention claims. Philip
Fabricius was later ennobled by the emperor and granted the title Baron von
Hohenfall. = Aftermath =
Immediately after the Defenestration, the Protestant estates and Catholic
Habsburgs started gathering allies for war. After the death of Matthias in
1619, Ferdinand II was elected Holy Roman Emperor. At the same time, the
Bohemian estates deposed him as King of Bohemia and replaced him with Frederick
V, Elector Palatine, a leading Calvinist and son-in-law of the protestant James
VI and I, King of Scotland, England and Ireland.
Because they deposed a properly chosen king, the Protestants could not gather
the international support they needed for war. Just two years after the
Defenestration, Ferdinand and the Catholics regained power in the Battle
of White Mountain on November 8, 1620. This became known as the first battle in
the Thirty Years' War. There was plundering and pillaging in
Prague for weeks following the Battle. Several months later, twenty-seven
nobles and citizens were tortured and executed in the Old Town Square. Twelve
of their heads were impaled on iron hooks and hung from the Bridge Tower as
a warning. This also contributed to catalyzing the Thirty Years' War.
Further defenestrations More events of defenestration have
occurred in Prague during its history, but they are not usually called
defenestrations of Prague. A defenestration happened on 24
September 1483, when a violent overthrow of the municipal governments of the Old
and New Towns ended with throwing the Old-Town portreeve and the bodies of
seven killed aldermen out of the windows of the respective town halls.
Sometimes, the name the third defenestration of Prague is used,
although it has no standard meaning. For example, it has been used to describe
the death of Jan Masaryk, who was found below the bathroom window of the
building of the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 10 March 1948. The
official report listed the death as a suicide. However, it was widely believed
he was murdered, either by the nascent Communist government in which he served
as a non-partisan Foreign Minister, or by the Soviet secret services. A Prague
police report in 2004 concluded after forensic research that Masaryk had
indeed been thrown out the window to his death. This report was seemingly
corroborated in 2006 when a Russian journalist claimed that his mother knew
the Russian intelligence officer who defenestrated Masaryk.
Notes References
An English translation of part of Slavata's report of the incident is
printed in Henry Frederick Schwarz, The Imperial Privy Council in the
Seventeenth Century, pp. 344–347.