Bohemia: Military History and Notable Events

1419 - 1434 - Hussite Wars (All Facts)

• Series of conflicts between the namesake followers of Jan Hus and the Czech and the Roman Catholic Church that began with the Defenestration of Prague

  • Series of conflicts in which the namesake followers of Jan Hus protested against the stringent Catholic policies of King Wenceslas IV of Bohemia

• Two years into this series of conflicts, at a meeting at Caslav, the representatives of Bohemia and Moravia renounced Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund as their king and founded their own government

• Series of conflicts in which the namesake followers of Jan Hus, led by Jan Zizka, won a series of victories in Bohemia against German armies sent to oppose them

• Series of conflicts which ended with the Battle of Lipany

1419 - Defenestration of Prague (All Facts)

• Incident which began with a mass demonstration in the namesake capital city of Bohemia, in which thousands of Hussites marched on the New Town Hall

• After demands for the release of several of their preachers were ignored, the crowd forced its way into the building and threw the Catholic councilors and others whom the Hussites threw out of the windows into the square

• Incident in which a meeting of townspeople was held and which appointed four captains to administer the city

• Incident which began with a protest against the recent Catholic policies of King Wenceslas IV

1434 - Battle of Lipany (All Facts)

• Battle in which the Utraquists and Catholics of Sigismund and the Holy Roman Empire, both of which comprised the Bohemian League, defeated the Taborites

• Battle which thus ended the Hussite Wars

1431 - 1449 - Council of Basel / Florence (All Facts)

• Council in which the Hussites were condemned as heretics

• Council which opened negotiations between the Catholic Church and Hussites, which effectively split the Hussites into two groups: the moderate Utraquists and radical Taborites

1468 - 1478 - Bohemian-Hungarian War (All Facts)

1618 - 1648 - Thirty Years’ War / Holy Roman Empire (All Facts)

• Conflict

  • between Catholics and Protestants in Germany following the failure to reconcile them via the Peace of Augsburg

• Conflict which began

  • with the Defenestration of Prague and Bohemian Revolt

  • when Bohemia elected itself a new Protestant as king, Frederick V, previously the elector of Palatine, to replace the Habsburg King Ferdinand II, whom the Bohemian estates had previously “accepted” as king

• Conflict during which

  • The Protestant Union was dissolved

• Conflict during which

  • Johann Tserclaes (Count of Tilly) and his Catholic forces sacked the Heidelberg University Library

• Conflict which saw / involved

  • The Bohemian Revolt

    • The Defenestration of Prague

    • The Battle of White Mountain

  • The Vatellina War (between Spain and Switzerland)

  • The Battle of Lutter

  • The Battle of Dessau Bridge

  • The Sack of Magdeburg

  • The Battle of Breitenfeld

  • The Eighty Years’ War / Dutch Revolt (between Spain and the Netherlands / Dutch Republic)

• Just four years prior to the start of the war,

  • Catholics and Protestants alike in Germany were already preparing for the conflict, which threatened to engulf the whole continent as

    • battle-lines were already being drawn up by then

    • fortunes were already being spent equipping private armies throughout Germany

    • Germany prepared itself to be the battlefield when the war would break out

  • In the Protestant north of Germany,

    • whole cities were ringed with star-shaped walls, bastions, and moats

  • In Catholic Bavaria and in the Rhineland,

    • great new fortresses pierced the skylines

  • intense diplomatic activity was taking place, particularly on the part of

    • Prince Christian of Anhalt-Bernburg

    • King James of England

1618 - 1620 - Bohemian Revolt (All Facts)

• Revolt of the namesake estates against Ferdinand II and the Habsburgs that were ruling there

  • Revolt of Bohemians against the pro-Catholic policy of the regents in Prague

• Revolt led by Jindřich Thurn (of Bohemia)

• Revolt which triggered the Thirty Years’ War

• Revolt which began with the Defenestration of Prague

1618 - Defenestration of Prague (All Facts)

• Incident which triggered the Thirty Years’ War

• Incident which occurred due to

  • the antagonism of Protestants in Bohemia against the staunchly Catholic Ferdinand II of the House Habsburg

    • He was installed for the Kingdom of Bohemia (which was part of the Holy Roman Empire at the time) by his Catholic cousin and then-Holy Roman Emperor Matthias

    • He was hated because he and his governors refused permission for the building of two Lutheran churches in the namesake city

• Incident in which

  • three Catholic men were hurled through a window,

    • two of which (Martinitz and Slavata) were lieutenants of King Ferdinand of Bohemia

      • Martinitz went first, screaming “Jesu, Maria! Help!” as he crashed over the sill

      • Slavata went second, fighting hard but having been knocked senseless

    • the third of which was their secretary who made the unfortunate mistake of holding onto his employers while the mob vented their fury on them

  • the two lieutenants’ death was demanded by Jindřich Matyáš Thurn (of Bohemia) after Thurn called a meeting of nobles, gentry, and burghers from all over the province of Bohemia in response to Ferdinand II’s installation as king of Bohemia

  • one of the Protestant rebels looked down from the window and shouted, “By God, his Mary has helped” as the two men had landed on a rubbish heap and fled the scene

1620 - Battle of White Mountain (All Facts)

• Battle in which the Holy Roman Empire and Catholic League of Imperial Princes, with help from Spain, defeated Bohemia and the Electorate of the Palatinate during the Bohemian Revolt during the Thirty Years’ War

• Battle during which

  • King Frederick V of Bohemia and his queen were in high spirits at the dinner table as they entertained the English ambassadors there

  • the armies of the fanatically Catholic emperor Ferdinand II had invaded Bohemia from Austria

  • King Frederick V was confident that his enemy’s forces were too weak with hunger or wracked with plague to fight while his own army occupied an unassailable position on the namesake location near Prague

  • the army of Bohemia had become mutinous during a lengthy artillery barrage and many had refused to fight as they were overwhelmed by Bavarian and Spanish infantry

  • King Frederick V rode out to encourage his soldiers after his dinner with the English ambassadors, but had not even reached the city gates when he met the first fugitives after his army had been defeated and Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II’s banner flew over the namesake location

  • the citizens of Prague closed the gates against their invaders, and King Frederick V and his wife fled in such haste that they almost forgot their youngest prince, although they did remember most of their crown jewels

1623 - Battle of Stadtlohn (All Facts)

• Battle in which Johann Tserclaes and his (Bavarian) forces defeated Christian of Brunswick and his forces during the Thirty Years’ War

• Battle in which 15K of Brunswick’s 21K men died

• Battle after which Tserclaes firmly held Heidelberg and Mannheim and upon which the House of Habsburg controlled the entire northern Palatinate

1635 - Peace of Prague (All Facts)

• Peace Treaty signed between Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II and Elector John George of Saxony in which

  • ended the pre-French “religious-based” phase of the Thirty Years’ War as the war was not really about religion thereafter

  • the dukes of Saxony and Brandenburg retained their ecclesiastical lands which they held eight years prior

  • the armies of Saxony and Brandenburg had to switch allegiance and come under the command of the Holy Roman Empire

  • Calvinists were excluded, and the Holy Roman Empire would continue to wage war on them thereafter

• Peace Treaty signed between Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II and the Lutheran states of Bavaria, Mainz, Cologne, and Trier

  • This allowed the emperor to claim that all the major German Protestant Princes were united behind him

  • The treaty was political and religious in nature

• Peace Treaty which

  • brought rejoicing to Germany

  • brought fear to France, the Netherlands, and other European powers