Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (52 page)
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Authors: Peter Demetz
BOOK: Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City
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The battle started with a probing movement of the Catholics against the Protestant left wing—the imperial general merely wanted to assess the strength of the enemy—but it quickly developed into a fierce fight when the Hungarians turned to run and Thurn’s more experienced men were exposed to a cutting attack. The Protestant counterattack tried to pierce the Spanish center, while the courageous Moravians attacked the Catholic right wing; the League’s Lothringian and German troops, held in reserve, were ordered to intervene. Now the tide turned against the Protestants, and the king’s guard in the Hv
zda garden was massacred
by Italian troops. Within an hour, more than two thousand soldiers on both sides were dead; while the Moravians and Austrians fought a last rearguard action to save the Protestant cause, their companions tried to reach Prague, and the victorious armies of the Catholic League rested on the field. At Hrad
any Castle, a nightlong discussion of the war council was held. Count Matthias Thurn and the Austrian Calvinist Georg Erasmus Tschernembl demanded that Prague be defended, but they were turned down, and in the morning the royal couple and the leaders of the revolt packed their bags. The imperial army entered Prague without a shot being fired, and within the day the Protestants formally submitted to Maximilian of Bavaria, who accepted their humiliation in the name of Emperor Ferdinand II.
zda garden was massacredby Italian troops. Within an hour, more than two thousand soldiers on both sides were dead; while the Moravians and Austrians fought a last rearguard action to save the Protestant cause, their companions tried to reach Prague, and the victorious armies of the Catholic League rested on the field. At Hrad
any Castle, a nightlong discussion of the war council was held. Count Matthias Thurn and the Austrian Calvinist Georg Erasmus Tschernembl demanded that Prague be defended, but they were turned down, and in the morning the royal couple and the leaders of the revolt packed their bags. The imperial army entered Prague without a shot being fired, and within the day the Protestants formally submitted to Maximilian of Bavaria, who accepted their humiliation in the name of Emperor Ferdinand II.Maximilian of Bavaria left after a week, with his long wagon train of loot, and the emperor, disregarding the moderate Prague Catholics and relying on the Spanish party, appointed Karl of Liechtenstein, a convert, as eager to make a profit as he was newly ardent in his religion, to chair the commission charged with prosecuting those responsible for the revolt. The Viennese offices and the Prague commission proceeded quietly and deliberately, knowing only too well who had escaped abroad (in the best NKVD manner, a Colonel Tiefenbach was abducted from Switzerland and executed on Austrian soil) and who believed, naively, that their lives would be spared. The order to arrest people on the commission’s list was given only in late February 1621, and prisoners were meanwhile held at the Hrad
any White Tower or in the Old Town hall. In order to avoid examination under torture, Martin Frühwein, an articulate magistrate of the Old Town who had written a treatise on the defense of the Estates, committed suicide by jumping to his death from the window, but his body was quartered and the pieces of his corpse exhibited at different town squares, his head and one hand nailed to the gallows. In late spring, the Prague commission made its recommendation to Vienna; it was accepted quickly enough, with a few brutal changes, and the executions of twenty-seven barons, knights, and burghers, old and young, Czech and German, Protestant and (one) Catholic, were set for June 21, 1621.
any White Tower or in the Old Town hall. In order to avoid examination under torture, Martin Frühwein, an articulate magistrate of the Old Town who had written a treatise on the defense of the Estates, committed suicide by jumping to his death from the window, but his body was quartered and the pieces of his corpse exhibited at different town squares, his head and one hand nailed to the gallows. In late spring, the Prague commission made its recommendation to Vienna; it was accepted quickly enough, with a few brutal changes, and the executions of twenty-seven barons, knights, and burghers, old and young, Czech and German, Protestant and (one) Catholic, were set for June 21, 1621.The town was full of soldiers, thirty-nine workers had erected a huge scaffold against the wall of the Old Town hall, black cloth was laid out theatrically, and drums were rolling; an eyewitness remarked, “You couldn’t understand your own word or anybody else’s.” The sequence of the executions was by rank. Joachim Andreas Count Schlick was beheaded first (his Lutheran forebears had been among the leaders of the revolt of 1547) and, after him, seventy-four-year-old Václav Budova, patriarch
of the Czech Brethren, Kryštof Harant of Polžice and Bezdružice, famous musician at the court of Rudolf II and artillery commander when Count Thurn lay brief siege to Vienna. Among the many knights were eighty-six-year-old Kašpar Kaplín of Sulevice, Bed
ich of Bílá, Otto of Loos, Bohuslav of Michalovice (whose right hand was cut off before he was beheaded), and the Catholic Diviš
ernín of Chudenice, who had made the fateful mistake of opening the gates of Hrad
any to representatives of the Estates on the morning of the defenestration. There were three German civil servants, Leander Rüpel, of the Palatinate, Georg Hauschild, of the appellate courts, and Dr. Friedrich Georg of Oldenburg. Among the burghers of the Old, New, and other towns, Valentin Kochan was executed because he had raised his voice against Ferdinand at the meeting of the Estates in 1617; Johann Kutnauer, the youngest of the townspeople, was hanged on a beam jutting out of the town hall window. In the case of Jessenius, his majesty the emperor revised the commission’s recommendation—his tongue was cut off (he had negotiated on behalf of the Estates with the Hungarians in Bratislava) and then he was beheaded and quartered, rather than the other way around. Minor offenders were dealt with later: a few burghers publicly whipped, those sentenced to life carted away to Castle Zbiroh, and Mikuláš Diviš for two hours nailed by his tongue to the gallows because he had had the temerity to welcome Friedrich and Elizabeth to Prague at the head of a joyful group of people dressed as Hussite peasants who had made a great deal of noise with their flails, or so Queen Elizabeth thought. The severed heads of twelve were carried in iron baskets to the tower of the stone bridge and exhibited there. Only in 1631, when Saxons briefly occupied Prague (among them the indefatigable Count Thurn), were they taken down and buried at the Týn Church, where they were found in 1766.
of the Czech Brethren, Kryštof Harant of Polžice and Bezdružice, famous musician at the court of Rudolf II and artillery commander when Count Thurn lay brief siege to Vienna. Among the many knights were eighty-six-year-old Kašpar Kaplín of Sulevice, Bed
ich of Bílá, Otto of Loos, Bohuslav of Michalovice (whose right hand was cut off before he was beheaded), and the Catholic Divišernín of Chudenice, who had made the fateful mistake of opening the gates of Hradany to representatives of the Estates on the morning of the defenestration. There were three German civil servants, Leander Rüpel, of the Palatinate, Georg Hauschild, of the appellate courts, and Dr. Friedrich Georg of Oldenburg. Among the burghers of the Old, New, and other towns, Valentin Kochan was executed because he had raised his voice against Ferdinand at the meeting of the Estates in 1617; Johann Kutnauer, the youngest of the townspeople, was hanged on a beam jutting out of the town hall window. In the case of Jessenius, his majesty the emperor revised the commission’s recommendation—his tongue was cut off (he had negotiated on behalf of the Estates with the Hungarians in Bratislava) and then he was beheaded and quartered, rather than the other way around. Minor offenders were dealt with later: a few burghers publicly whipped, those sentenced to life carted away to Castle Zbiroh, and Mikuláš Diviš for two hours nailed by his tongue to the gallows because he had had the temerity to welcome Friedrich and Elizabeth to Prague at the head of a joyful group of people dressed as Hussite peasants who had made a great deal of noise with their flails, or so Queen Elizabeth thought. The severed heads of twelve were carried in iron baskets to the tower of the stone bridge and exhibited there. Only in 1631, when Saxons briefly occupied Prague (among them the indefatigable Count Thurn), were they taken down and buried at the Týn Church, where they were found in 1766.After the executions, confiscations and expropriations went on for two years or more, and substantially changed Prague’s social scene. The emperor gave vast stretches of land, forfeited by Protestant nobles, to his Spanish generals and Austrian advisers (the Eggenbergs were awarded the Rožmberk lands in southern Bohemia), and the new archbishop of Prague and other church dignitaries who demanded restitution of everything the Hussites of old had taken had little reason to be dissatisfied. The imperial commission condemned 680 persons and fifty towns all over Bohemia to loss of property and possessions, and those who were spared outright confiscation and were allowed to sell their belongings were paid in coin that was low in silver—virtually robbed. All non-Catholic clergy had to leave; Lutherans, being protected by the emperor’s Saxon allies,
were allowed to stay for a year. In 1622, the Jesuits, who had taken back St. Clement, united the old Carolinum and the Clementinum in a single new university institution and were given supervision of all schools and printing presses in Bohemia; it so happened that Bedfich Bride], chief Jesuit censor, turned out to be the most gifted metaphysical poet of the Baroque Czech tongue. By 1624, the Catholic religion was declared to be the only legal one, with a special commission overseeing forced conversions (six months or else), and a new wave of exiles—German Lutheran burghers and Czech Brethren, among them the philosopher and pedagogue Comenius—left to work, pray, teach, and die abroad: all in all, about 36,000 families. In 1627, the imperial offices issued new administrative rules, the Verneuerte Landesordnung, actually a new constitution, which declared Bohemia to be a land of the Hapsburg Empire ruled by inheritance (not election), in its religious life exclusively Catholic, and yielding to the Estates only those rights that did not clash with the intentions and demands of the Viennese court. The question who, or what, was responsible for the defeat of the revolt of the nobles, was answered as early as 1620 by the sharp-eyed Austrian Tschernembl, who deplored that his brothers in arms the Bohemian nobles had been unwilling to arm the peasants (whom they feared) against the imperial power, to mobilize a
levée en masse
, in the ancient Hussite way. Palacký, the father of Czech historiography, advanced a similar idea two hundred years later.
were allowed to stay for a year. In 1622, the Jesuits, who had taken back St. Clement, united the old Carolinum and the Clementinum in a single new university institution and were given supervision of all schools and printing presses in Bohemia; it so happened that Bedfich Bride], chief Jesuit censor, turned out to be the most gifted metaphysical poet of the Baroque Czech tongue. By 1624, the Catholic religion was declared to be the only legal one, with a special commission overseeing forced conversions (six months or else), and a new wave of exiles—German Lutheran burghers and Czech Brethren, among them the philosopher and pedagogue Comenius—left to work, pray, teach, and die abroad: all in all, about 36,000 families. In 1627, the imperial offices issued new administrative rules, the Verneuerte Landesordnung, actually a new constitution, which declared Bohemia to be a land of the Hapsburg Empire ruled by inheritance (not election), in its religious life exclusively Catholic, and yielding to the Estates only those rights that did not clash with the intentions and demands of the Viennese court. The question who, or what, was responsible for the defeat of the revolt of the nobles, was answered as early as 1620 by the sharp-eyed Austrian Tschernembl, who deplored that his brothers in arms the Bohemian nobles had been unwilling to arm the peasants (whom they feared) against the imperial power, to mobilize a
levée en masse
, in the ancient Hussite way. Palacký, the father of Czech historiography, advanced a similar idea two hundred years later.
In an age of executions and confiscations, the Jewish community was distinctly favored by imperial policies, and Prague’s Jews, who had few illusions about the Bohemian Estates, felt increasingly loyal to the dynasty, much as Viennese and Prague Jews did in the later nineteenth century. When the Catholic armies were permitted to loot and rape the helpless towns immediately after the Battle of the White Mountain, army guards protected the Jewish community; Ferdinand II confirmed and expanded Jewish privileges by two edicts in 1623 and 1627. The bonds between Prague’s Jews and the dynasty were tested in 1648 when Swedes occupied the Minor Town and Hrad
any Castle and threatened the Old Town with artillery fire and a fierce attack across the stone bridge. The town was defended by soldiers from a small garrison, students of the university led by their Jesuit teachers, and members of the Jewish community, who helped to extinguish fires, cared for the wounded, and joined in the fighting. Twenty-two Jews died, many more were injured, and the Swedes did not cross the river.
any Castle and threatened the Old Town with artillery fire and a fierce attack across the stone bridge. The town was defended by soldiers from a small garrison, students of the university led by their Jesuit teachers, and members of the Jewish community, who helped to extinguish fires, cared for the wounded, and joined in the fighting. Twenty-two Jews died, many more were injured, and the Swedes did not cross the river.Other books
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