On This Day in History: July 30

The defenestrations of Prague

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Most kids, when they learn what “defenestrate” means, have a reaction of “Why do they need a word for that?” combined with “Haha, that’s funny.” As it turns out, defenestration—the throwing of a person from a window—has a rich history. The Czechs were big fans, doing it a few times in Prague between the 15th and 17th centuries. In the first one they chose a window quite high from the ground and attained the expected results of icky ground splatter. But there were additional consequences.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: July 30, 1419--

In 1415, Jan Hus, an influential Czech theologian and church reformer, was burned at the stake because the church don’t need no reformin’. His followers, Hussites, were vexed. There was much discontent among Hussites because of the inequalities between church leaders and the nobility, and the peasantry. Eventually they got pissed enough that on July 30, 1419, a crowd of Hussites marched to the town hall in Prague. Supposedly, the Hussite priest leading the group was hit with a rock thrown from a window of the town hall, and it gave everyone a grand fucking idea.

They stormed into the building and threw the judge, the chief magistrate, and several members of the town council from the top window. They died, because those kind of Czechs don’t bounce. Mass death by defenestrating mob was now a thing. So was the civil war it started. Many more deaths came during the Hussite Wars, which would last for 17 years.

Then the group did it again in 1483, except it was more symbolic, because the Prague politicians they were pissed at had already been killed in a coup, so they threw their corpses out a window as an additional fuck you.

In 1618 was the Third Defenestration of Prague. Sometimes it gets called the second one, cuz throwing dead bodies doesn’t count, or some shit. Anyway, it’s the 1618 one, and it was a gooder. Although I guess that depends on your perspective.

In 1618 plenty of people were getting into this Protestantism thing that’d begun a century earlier when Martin Luther nailed a list to a church door of 95 reasons why the Catholic Church can fuck all the way off. The Protestants and Catholics in Prague weren’t getting along so well, and some Protestants threw a bunch of Catholic governors out of the windows of Prague Castle and took over the government. None of them died, because they landed in a big soft pile of poo. Well, Catholics said they were saved by angels, but having their falls broken by a massive dung heap sounds more probable.

Anyway, that third bit of defenestration initiated the Thirty Years’ War, in which eight million people died. Fun times!

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