Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Thirty Years' War: 1618-48
On May 23, 1618, two Catholic governors appointed by Ferdinand were thrown out of the
windowsofPragueCastle(alongwiththeirsecretary)-thecountry's
seconddefenestration
- an event that's now taken as the official beginning of the complex religious and dynast-
ic conflicts collectively known as the
Thirty Years' War
. Following the defenestration, the
Bohemian Diet expelled the Jesuits and elected the youthful Protestant “Winter King”, Fre-
derick of the Palatinate, to the throne. In the first decisive set-to of the war, on November 8,
1620, the Czech Protestants were utterly defeated at the
Battle of Bílá hora
or
Battle of the
White Mountain
by the imperial Catholic forces under Count Tilly. In the aftermath, 27 Prot-
estant nobles were executed on Prague's Staroměstské náměstí, and the heads of ten of them
displayed on the Charles Bridge.
It wasn't until the Protestant Saxons occupied Prague in 1632 that the heads were finally
takendownandgivenaproperburial.TheCatholics eventually drovetheSaxonsout,butfor
the last ten years of the war Bohemia became the main battleground between the new cham-
pions of the Protestant cause - the Swedes - and the imperial Catholic forces. In 1648, the
final battle of the war was fought in Prague, when the Swedes seized Malá Strana, but failed
to take Staré Město, thanks to stubborn resistance on the Charles Bridge by Prague's Jewish
and newly Catholicized student populations.
The Counter-Reformation and the Dark Ages
The Thirty Years' War ended with the
Peace of Westphalia
, which, for the Czechs, was as
disastrous as the war itself. An estimated five-sixths of the Bohemian nobility went into ex-
ile, their properties handed over to loyal Catholic families from Austria, Spain, France and
Italy.Bohemiahadbeendevastated,withtownsandcitieslaidwaste,andthetotalpopulation
reduced by almost two-thirds; Prague's population halved. On top of all that, Bohemia was
nowdecisivelywithintheCatholicsphereofinfluence,andthefullforceofthe
Counter-Re-
formation
was brought to bear on its people. All forms of Protestantism were outlawed, the
education system was handed over to the Jesuits and, in 1651 alone, more than two hundred
“witches” were burned at the stake in Bohemia.
The next two centuries of Habsburg rule are known to the Czechs as the
Dark Ages
. The
focus of the empire shifted back to Vienna and the Habsburgs' absolutist grip over the Czech
Lands catapulted the remaining nobility into intensive Germanization, while fresh waves of
German immigrants reduced Czech to a despised dialect spoken only by peasants, artisans
andservants.ThesituationwassobadthatPragueandmostotherurbancentresbecameprac-
ticallyGerman-speakingcities.Bytheendoftheeighteenthcentury,theCzechlanguagewas
onthevergeofdyingout,withgovernment,scholarshipandliteraturecarriedoutexclusively
in German. For the newly ensconced Germanized aristocracy, and for the Catholic Church,
