138 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
in 1609, and the repeated prohibition only served to confirm the view
that those rights were being progressively eroded. When the assembly
met again on the following day, 22 May, the discussion centred on how
to respond, as a result of which a four-man delegation headed by Schlick
was sent to the castle to ask the regents to receive the membersen bloc,
the intention being to demand of them whether or not they had advised
upon or drafted the emperor’s original letter. Rather surprisingly the
regents agreed, probably not realising how many would attend or what
they were planning to ask, telling them to come the following morning,
Wednesday 23 May, after the church service for the eve of Ascension
Day.^5
Before that various other rumours and alarms increased the tension
in the hothouse atmosphere of Prague that night. ‘Meanwhile’, testified
Fruewein, ‘a report had spread rapidly among the people that the defen-
sors’ lives were in the greatest danger’, another echo of the incidents
which had inflamed tempers during the 1609 meeting.^6 Even more omi-
nously, it was learned that the guard on the castle had been doubled,
following which anxious enquiries were made, eventually eliciting an
explanation from the captain of the garrison. He had indeed doubled
the guard, not on the orders of the regents, but on his own author-
ity in accordance with long-standing practice during Ascension week,
when for some reason the guard had always been doubled. By no means
convinced, many of the assembly members decided to go well armed
the following morning, and to be accompanied to the castle by their
retainers.
Precisely what happened on that day remains uncertain. Partly this is
because far too many Protestant representatives went to the castle for
them to be accommodated in an orderly meeting, so that the room was
packed. All were standing, as chairs and benches had been removed to
make space, while others stood outside the doors in an adjoining room
or in the corridor, and as a result few could have been in a position to
see and hear clearly all that went on. Thus even reports from those who
were present are intrinsically unreliable, and there are in any case few
such accounts extant, not least because any from the Protestant side
were potentially incriminating, and like other dangerous documents
they would probably have been destroyed as the revolt collapsed.^7 A
small amount of information emerged thereafter in the course of the
Habsburg investigations, but mainly from individuals who were on trial
for their lives, so that their evidence is obviously suspect.
The problem is compounded by the speed with which the event
became acause célèbre, the reports of which were often tainted by pro-
paganda or commercially motivated sensationalism, so that fact and