On the death of Louis the same strenuous competition for the vacant throne was aroused as before his father’s accession, and this time the Archduke Ferdinand, brother of the reigning Emperor, Charles of Austria, was chosen. Ferdinand became also King of Hungary and Archduke of Austria, thus uniting in the person of a common ruler three kingdoms inhabited by different nationalities. This settled the matter as to the succession for a while, for the throne passed from Ferdinand’s son to his grandson Rudolph. Rudolph was eventually deposed in favour of his brother Matthias. During all this time the ceaseless warfare between the Roman dominion and the Reformed doctrines went on, and the rival parties were ever striving to gain power and to swing the balance over to their side. The country was restless, families were divided against themselves, and no one felt safe.
It was during the reign of Matthias that the curious incident about throwing the councillors out of the window of the council-chamber took place, a scene unequalled in any other assembly in any age.
The soreness between Protestants and Catholics had reached a head in regard to the succession to the throne, for King Matthias was another of the many childless monarchs. The Catholic councillors had therefore arranged that he should be succeeded by Archduke Ferdinand of Styria, a determined persecutor of the Protestants. The Protestants took immediate action in protesting, but were checkmated by a royal message prohibiting the meeting of their “Estates” or council. Their leader was Count Thurn, who had been Burgrave of the Karlstyn, but had been superseded by a Catholic called Martinic. The Estates usually met in the Hradcany Palace at Prague, but when they issued a manifesto attacking the royal councillors they were forbidden to meet there any more. Accordingly they met elsewhere secretly. Count Lutzow, in his charming little book The Story of Prague, thus describes what followed:
Besides Thurn, a few other leaders, Colonna of Fels, Budova, Ruppa, two nobles of the Kinsky, and two of the Rican family were present. Ulrich of Kinsky proposed that the royal Councillors should be poniarded in the Council chamber [where they were to meet next day], but Thurn’s suggestion that they should be thrown from the windows of the Hradcany Palace prevailed. This was in Bohemia the traditional death-penalty for traitors. As the Estates afterwards quaintly stated, “They followed the example of that which was done to Jezebel, the tormentor of the Israelite people and also that of the Romans and other famed nations, who were in the habit of throwing from rocks and other elevated places those who disturbed the peace of the commonwealth.”
Early on the morning of the memorable 23rd of May the representatives of Protestantism in Bohemia proceeded to the Hradcany; all of them were in full armour and most of them were followed by one or more retainers. They first proceeded to the hall where the Estates usually met. The address to the king which the defenders had prepared was here read to them. All then entered the hall of the royal Councillors, where a very stormy discussion arose. Count Slik, Thurn, Kinsky, and others violently accused Martinic and Slavata, the two principal Councillors, of being traitors. Slik particularly accused Martinic of having deprived “that noble Bohemian hero, Count Thurn,” of his office of Burgrave of the Karlstyn. He added that “as long as old men, honest and wise, had governed Bohemia, the country had prospered, but since they (Martinic and Slavata), worthless disciples of the Jesuits, had pushed themselves forward, the ruin of the country had begun.”
What now happened can best be given in the words of the contemporary historian, Skala Ze Zhore:
“No mercy was granted them, and first the lord of Smecno (i.e. Martinic) was dragged to the window near which the secretaries generally worked; for Kinsky was quicker, and had more aid than Count Thurn, who had seized Slavata. Then they were both thrown, dressed in their cloaks and with their rapiers and decorations, just as they had been found in the Councillors’ office, one after the other, headforemost out of the western window into a moat beneath the palace, which, by a wall, was separated from the other deeper moat. They loudly screamed, ‘Ach, ach, Ouve!’ and attempted to hold on to the window-frame, but were at last obliged to let go, as they were struck on their hands.
“It remains to add that neither of the nobles, nor Fabricius their secretary, who was also thrown from the window, perished, a circumstance that the Catholics afterwards attributed to a miracle.”
About a year after this incident King Matthias died and was succeeded by Ferdinand of Styria, who was not recognised by the Protestants. They chose instead Frederick, the Elector Palatine, who had married the daughter of James I. of England. About two months after his coronation in Prague his wife Elizabeth gave birth to a son called Rupert; he lived to be known as the dashing Prince Rupert, who played such a gallant part in the English Civil Wars. He and his brother Maurice both died without children, and it was through their sister Sophia that the Hanoverian kings of England came to the British throne after the unhappy termination of the Stuart line. Sophia’s son was George I. of England.
The Elector Frederick is known as “the Winter King,” because hardly had he assumed the crown than the forces of the Austrian Empire met the Bohemians in a severe battle, called the Battle of the White Mountain, near Prague, in which the Bohemians were completely routed and their newly made king was forced to fly. His brief reign therefore extended only over a few winter months. The battle was followed by wholesale executions and confiscations among the Protestants; in the market-place at Prague, on June 21 in the same year, twenty-six leading Protestants, headed by Count Slik, were executed.