The Revolt Defeated 219Friedrich foremost among them, were more concerned with planning
for flight at the first opportunity the following morning.
Flee they did, Friedrich going first to Silesia but soon having to move
on until he eventually reached safety in Holland. Anhalt went fur-
ther, taking refuge with the Scandinavian monarchs, but the defeat and
the fact that his son was in Imperial hands after being wounded and
captured at the White Mountain restrained him from any further par-
ticipation in the war, and three years later he not only secured a royal
pardon but even recovered his little principality. Thurn too escaped, and
like many others he sought briefly to make his peace with Ferdinand,
but he soon realised that there was to be no peace, and before long he
was in Constantinople with a delegation sent by Bethlen Gabor to try
to elicit support from the Turkish sultan for a further campaign against
the emperor.^38 Thereafter he continued to be actively involved in the
war against Ferdinand for a further twelve years, much of the time in
Swedish service, until at the age of 65 he was captured and then released
into enforced retirement by Wallenstein.
Those who stayed behind were not so fortunate, the ordinary people
of Prague foremost among them. Maximilian entered the city at noon
on the day after the battle, only a few hours after Friedrich and his com-
panions had fled, and the men from the victorious armies streamed in
after him, intent on taking what they considered to be their just reward.
In this period it was accepted practice for a city taken by storm to be
given over to the troops for looting for a defined period, usually no more
than a day, both as recompense for the dangers they had faced and as a
punishment for the citizens for not surrendering in good time, as well
as a warning to others. Prague had not been taken by storm, and it was
Ferdinand’s own capital, as king of Bohemia, rather than an enemy city,
but it was looted by his Imperialist troops and his League allies none the
less, and over a prolonged period rather than for a single day.
Soon after the capture of the city an emissary of the elector of Saxony
reported that the soldiers ‘thirst after nothing but blood and money’,
and another eyewitness added that Bucquoy was allowing his soldiers
to plunder at will, ‘for no other reason than that on top of all the rob-
bery he wants to extract many thousand taler from Prague as protection
money’. Even a month later a correspondent from the city noted: ‘There
is no end to the robbery and murders here. To start with they plun-
dered the houses of the directors and the Calvinists, but now they make
no distinctions and steal from everybody in the streets.’^39 Maximilian
himself complained about the conduct of Bucquoy’s troops in a let-
ter of 16 November to Ferdinand. ‘They murder, rob and plunder both