Prague threw officials out of windows three times, and once it started a thirty-year war
In May 1618, angry Protestant nobles hurled two Catholic regents and their secretary out of a window at Prague Castle. All three survived a drop of about 21 metres. Catholics credited angels, Protestant pamphlets later blamed a dung heap, the secretary was made a baron with a joke of a title, and Europe slid into the Thirty Years' War.
Bohemia's capital did this more than once. On 30 July 1419 a Hussite procession led by the priest Jan Želivský stormed the New Town Hall after the council refused to swap prisoners, and the judge, the burgomaster and several councillors were thrown out and killed. Pro-Hussite nobles took over the kingdom, the Pope declared a crusade, and the Hussite Wars followed. A second episode on 24 September 1483, during a coup in the city's towns, had the opposite effect, leading to the Kutná Hora settlement of 1485 that declared both churches equal and kept religious peace for 31 years.
The 1618 crisis grew out of a broken promise. Emperor Rudolf II's Letter of Majesty of 1609 let Bohemia's largely Protestant estates practise their faith freely. His brother Matthias was willing to keep conceding, but Matthias's heir, Ferdinand of Styria, a champion of the Counter-Reformation elected king in 1617, halted construction of Protestant chapels on royal land and dissolved the estates' assembly when they objected.
On 23 May, the eve of Ascension Day, the Protestant lords led by Count Thurn confronted four regents at the Bohemian Chancellery. Two were judged too pious to be responsible and escorted out. Jaroslav Bořita of Martinice and Vilém Slavata of Chlum, known hardliners, admitted a role in an imperial letter threatening the estates and apparently expected mere arrest; instead they were declared rebels and pushed through the window, followed by the secretary Philip Fabricius.
Fabricius was later ennobled as Baron von Hohenfall, which translates roughly as Baron of Highfall. The word defenestrate is thought to have entered English through this incident. Both sides began gathering allies at once, and after Matthias died in 1619 the Bohemian estates deposed Ferdinand, now Holy Roman Emperor, and chose the Calvinist Frederick V of the Palatinate as their king.
Source: Defenestrations of Prague
