7 Insurrection
Prelude
Events moved rapidly in the eleven months between Ferdinand’s
coronation as king of Bohemia on 29 June 1617 and the outbreak of
the revolt arising from the defenestration of Prague on 23 May 1618.
Doubtless encouraged and emboldened by their easy victory over the
succession, the Catholic party continued and increased its efforts to
undermine little by little the gains the Protestants had made through the
Letter of Majesty. As these steps were individually relatively small and
localised, they were correspondingly difficult to resist, adding a grow-
ing feeling of frustration to the resentment and apprehension in the
Protestant community and among their leaders.
Many country areas had already been affected by Matthias transfer-
ring churches on royal land into the jurisdiction of the archbishop of
Prague, thus effectively, whether or not legally, depriving them of the
religious freedoms granted by the Letter of Majesty. Now it was the turn
of the towns, as royal officials sought increasingly to interfere with their
autonomy in the Catholic interest. One approach was to manipulate
the selection of council members and appointments to key positions,
so that in the Old Town of Prague, for example, where the popula-
tion was predominantly Protestant, Catholics came to occupy a good
half of the council seats. Elsewhere applications for new citizenships
began to be granted only to Catholics, ironically a reversal of some
previous malpractices which had benefited only Protestants. Royal offi-
cials also started to insist that councils could only take certain actions
after gaining their permission, including on religious matters such as
the appointment of ministers, as a first step in imposing a growing con-
trol over what had previously been local prerogatives. This culminated
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