The Other Defenestration of Prague

As one of the most entertainingly named events in history, and the dramatic instigation of one of its most terrible wars, the Defenestration of Prague is comparatively well-known as 17th century murders not involving the English go. What is less familiar is that when the Bohemian Protestant elite Jaime Lannistered a bunch of Catholic nobles and their secretary in 1618, plunging Central Europe into a war that killed a third of its population, they were (intentionally or otherwise) apeing the behaviour of another group of Bohemian religious dissidents from 199 years earlier.

At that time, Jan Želivský had led his large congregation through the streets in Prague in protest against what they saw as the corruption of the Church. It was embroiled in a seemingly never-ending series of conflicts and disputes. Rival popes and their patrons raised armies against one another. Those who went to fight bled and those who stayed at home were bled dry in taxes.

Great was the resentment against the Church and, thus, great was the popularity of the pious preachers who denounced its ways. The people rallied behind Jan Želivský just as they had rallied behind Želivský’s patron, Jan Hus, when he began protesting the excesses of the Church and calling for reform. Hus had been executed by the King of Hungary in 1415, four years earlier. The King had called a Council to end the many bitter religious disputes of the time. There, the great men of the Church found Hus guilty of heresy. Poetic justice dictated that this supposed end to division would only incite the people of Bohemia against the Church. Hus’ followers grew in number and boldness. These ‘Hussites’ turfed priests loyal to the Pope from their Parishes and began to openly resist the established order. The time had come, they said, for the Church to return to the people, not to be the lapdog of fat princes and greedy barons.

Onto this set did Želivský and his Hussites march. Tension, fear, anger. Their specific grievance that day was that the magistrates had imprisoned a number of their co-religionists. They remained peaceful until some idiot inside had the bright idea of throwing a rock at Želivský. The Hussites would take no more of this high-handed and disdainful treatment. Led by the valiant knight Sir Jan Žižka, the mob stormed the town hall and threw a whole load of people out the windows. Some accounts say seven, some say thirteen, everyone agrees the judge and the mayor got the drop.

199 years later, a similar action would precipitate the Thirty Years War, a horrifyingly brutal and complex war that began between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire but would eventually involve all Europe in a highly unholy bloodbath. The First Defenestration achieved something remarkably similar. The reformist Hussites — sometimes even called proto-protestants by historians — soon found themselves in internecine war against the Emperor, the same man who had killed Hus but now with a bigger crown. The Pope, his ally, called a sequence of crusades against them. Aided by exceptional commanders, tactical innovation, and (at one point) Poland, the Hussites fought successfully against these invasions. They were victorious again and again in the field but outright victory against Empire and Papacy could never really be on the cards—besides, in proud dissident tradition, the Hussites were constantly hindered by internal divisions.

Astoundingly, the war(s) ended by compromise. In 1431 the Church held the Council of Basel to discuss reform and invited the moderate Hussites. These moderates had gained the upper hand over the radicals and were prepared to come to terms. What followed were the ‘compacts’. They allowed essentially Hussite teaching to continue in Bohemia in return for loyalty to the Church. The war ended and peace reigned again.

Thanks to this tolerance they were perfectly positioned to join the Protestants when the Reformation came. For the next two hundred years the people of Bohemia never forgot their reformist inclinations. They remembered what could be achieved by peasants and preachers against crowns and bishops and that, sometimes, all you need is an open window…