Insurrection 153The question of why he had not stayed away was still more diffi-
cult. Schlick’s explanation was that when Thurn had told him of the
plan he also assured him that the issue would be debated in the cas-
tle before any action was taken. However when the members of the
Estates had reached the ante-chamber and Schlick had tried to argue
against violence, so he claimed, Thurn ‘immediately stood up from the
table and exhorted the many present to go with him into the chan-
cellery, which is what happened’. Schlick thus found himself standing
helplessly at the back of the room while ‘the ringleaders’, who he does
not name, carried out the defenestration. Martinitz, on the other hand,
identifies Schlick himself as one of nine principals in shouting down the
regents in the confrontation, and as one of those who actually seized
Slavata and dragged him to the window.^43
The other document cited by Gindely concerns Wilhelm Lobkowitz,
who a little before the main trials made a short statement dealing only
with the defenestration. As he was heading for the castle, ‘Fels met me
on the bridge, and said to me that a few were going to take a flight out
of the window. I asked him where that had been decided, as I knew
nothing of it, but he merely shook his head and rode off to join Count
Thurn.’ When he got to the castle, says Lobkowitz, he had not wanted
to go into the chancellery, and had only done so after repeated requests
from others, just in time to hear the regents asked about the emperor’s
letter and Martinitz’s refusal to answer. ‘At that they all yelled out that
they were real villains who ought to be thrown out of the window.’ He
had then, claims Lobkowitz, taken the other two regents by the hand
and led them out into the ante-chamber, so that he had not been present
when Martinitz and Slavata were attacked, and nor had he returned into
the chancellery afterwards.^44 Martinitz, however, while confirming that
Lobkowitz had indeed been one of those ushering his colleagues out,
identifies him as one of the most active and vocal participants before
that, as well as naming him specifically among the five who threw him
out of the window, and he is likewise listed as such in one of the trial
testimonies and by Khevenhüller.^45
These accounts given by Schlick and Lobkowitz are transparent
attempts to exonerate themselves by attributing the defenestration to
a plan prepared by others, and it is notable that they identify only Fels,
who was dead, and Thurn, who was out of Habsburg reach, thus exclud-
ing the possibility of those named contradicting their version of events.
Schlick, indeed, does not specifically refer to a plot, effectively attribut-
ing everything to Thurn, whereas Lobkowitz implicates Thurn only by
allusion to his association with Fels. Both were clearly lying about their