Account of the Defenestration of Prague, 23 May 1618
A detailed narrative of how the Protestant nobles of Bohemia confronted the king’s regents in Prague Castle on 23 May 1618 and threw two of them and a secretary from the window. It is told from the side of the Catholic victims.
The narrative gives the day and hour, names the speakers on both sides and reports the exchange at length: the nobles’ charge that the regents Slawata and Martinicz had advised a royal letter against them and were working to undo the Letter of Majesty of 1609, the regents’ replies, the vote of those present and the throwing of the three men into the castle moat.
The publication cited here does not name the author. The standpoint is plain from the text: it gives the regents’ words and prayers in full, calls them martyrs for God and the emperor, and says that the Virgin Mary was seen to break the fall of Martinicz. It is therefore evidence for the course of events as the Catholic party told it and for the grievances the Protestant nobles voiced, as their opponents recorded them. It is cited in the Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia.
Cited in
- 1618 to 1648, firm date