On the morning of May 23, 1618, a group of Protestant nobles stormed through Prague Castle, ready to do something extreme. The Habsburgs — the most powerful royal family in Europe — had been crushing their religious freedoms for years. Catholic governors now ran Bohemia. The Letter of Majesty, guaranteeing Protestant rights, was treated like scrap paper. Petitions and diplomacy had gotten nowhere. So the nobles fell back on an old Czech tradition: when politics fails, there’s always the window.
0%
Crowns & Conquests·1/2·1′
The place
Prague Castle
The Defenestrations of Prague
The window that started a war consuming eight million lives
May 23, 1618Prague Castle
Moral of the Story
“A single moment of defiance can unleash consequences beyond any human calculation.”
Characters
V
Vilem SlavataJ
Jaroslav MartinicP
Philipp FabriciusC
Count ThurnP
Protestant noblesSource
Contemporary diplomatic records; Habsburg archives; Czech national histories