Insurrection 143Martinitz managed to escape up a ladder back into the building and
Fabricius found his way out independently. Noting that Slavata was very
anxious to stress the miraculous nature of their escape it seems likely
that this part of his account is at best greatly exaggerated, as no-one was
hit during this supposedly prolonged gunfire, although he claims that
Martinitz had shot-holes in his clothes and a scratch on his arm. Two
of those who were present at the defenestration said at their trials that
they had heardtheshot (possibly the one fired earlier by Hans Litwin
Ríˇˇcan), one adding that he did not know to that day who had fired it,
while another who was not there stated that he had heard only that
one of Thurn’s men had fired at someone.^15 Martinitz himself makes
no mention of being shot at, ending his account of his ordeal with his
safe landing, and of course Slavata himself was virtually, if not actually,
unconscious at the relevant time.
The two regents were able to take refuge in the lodgings of the absent
chancellor, Zden ̆ek Lobkowitz, where, it is said, Thurn sought them
later in the day, accompanied by armed men, but was driven off by the
chancellor’s formidable wife. Martinitz made his escape under cover of
darkness, eventually making his way to Bavaria, while Slavata stayed in
Prague for an extended period to recover from his injury, subject only to
a loose house arrest, until he too was finally able to slip away. After the
defeat of the revolt the two regents were elevated to the rank of count
in 1621, while Fabricius was ennobled with the title of ‘von Hohenfall’,
that is ‘of the high fall’.
A defenestration plot?
Most modern histories of the Thirty Years War (Parker’s being an excep-
tion) maintain that the defenestration was planned in advance and
carried out by a small group led by Thurn, with the specific intention of
committing the Bohemians irrevocably to a revolt. Thus Wilson, one of
the most recent writers, says that ‘the revolt was not a popular uprising,
but an aristocratic coup led by a minority of desperate militant Protes-
tants’. In the Estates assembly Thurn and his associates ‘whipped up
passions by claiming the regents intended to arrest them. It was time,
Thurn declared on 22 May to “throw them out of the window, as is
customary”....He met his closest supporters that evening in Albrecht
Jan Smiˇrický’s house near the castle to coordinate the plot for the next
day....This time the conspirators were fully prepared to use violence.’
After they had done so, concludes Wilson, ‘Thurn had achieved his
objective of radicalising the situation’.^16