The Second Defenestration of Prague

Throwing people out of windows has along legacy in Prague a true scandal on Bohemia. In each major incident but the last, rebelling Protestants tossed entrenched Catholics out of their strongholds.

On 23 May 1618 Defenestration of Prague, saw the Holy Roman Emperor’s two regents in Prague, Jaroslav Martinic and Vilem Slawata, together with their scribe, Philip Frabricius, thrown out of the high windows of the Council Room of Hradcany Castle by Count Heinrich von Thurn, titular head of the anti-Habsburg Protestant faction, and his allies.

This hasty execution however was not fatal to then three victims; it is said form height of forty feet, neither of the three was killed by the fall and some of their friends having pulled them out of the mud which they had sunk. The three men landed in a manure heap and survived, with Fabricius later being ennobled by the Emperor under the intentionally ironical name of von Hohenfall.

This second Defenestration of Prague led to the beginning of the Thirty Years War. The War of the Thirty Years was the last struggle sustained for the cause of the reformed religion, which for a hundred years, had served as a pretext for all the trouble that had overwhelmed Europe, from the revolt of the peasants of Swabia under Charles V to the peace of Westphalia.
The Second Defenestration of Prague