Battle of White Mountain

On 8 November 1620, on a low plateau just west of Prague, the army of the rebel Bohemian estates was routed in about an hour by the forces of the Emperor Ferdinand II and the Catholic League. The Battle of White Mountain ended the Bohemian revolt, the opening phase of the Thirty Years' War, and drove the "Winter King" Frederick V from his throne. Its consequences shaped the religion, language and ruling class of the Czech lands for the next two centuries.

Many of the Bohemian estates were Protestant and had been guaranteed religious freedom by the Emperor Rudolf II's Letter of Majesty of 1609. In 1617 the devoutly Catholic Ferdinand of Styria was named heir to the Emperor Matthias, including the Bohemian crown. Protestants feared for their faith, their property and their traditional self-government. In May 1618 their leaders threw two royal regents and a secretary from a window of Prague Castle, the Defenestration of Prague, and rose in revolt. After Matthias died in 1619 and Ferdinand became emperor, the estates chose the Calvinist Elector Palatine Frederick V as their king in his place.

In 1620 Ferdinand moved to retake Bohemia. His forces combined imperial troops under Charles Bonaventure de Longueval, Count of Bucquoy, the army of the German Catholic League under Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly, and Spanish reinforcements, largely Italian and Walloon, sent from Naples. The philosopher René Descartes is said to have accompanied the Catholic League army as an observer. Frederick's army was commanded by Prince Christian of Anhalt. Having overrun much of western Bohemia, the imperial forces marched on Prague, and Anhalt hurried ahead to take up a position on the White Mountain, with little time to dig in. Both sides were affected by unpaid mercenaries, cold, wet weather and low morale, and estimates of their strength vary; commonly cited figures give the imperial side about 23,000 men and the Bohemians about 21,000.

A small imperial force probing the Bohemian flank found the defenders falling back, and Tilly quickly reinforced the attack. Anhalt's son Christian led a cavalry charge that broke some imperial infantry, but Tilly's cavalry drove it back. Seeing their horsemen retreat, the Bohemian infantry fired a volley at long range and withdrew, and company after company left the field, many without fighting. A last stand near the Star Palace failed when Neapolitan infantry stormed the position and captured the guns. The fighting lasted about an hour. Losses are given differently in different accounts, but the Bohemian side lost several thousand killed, wounded or captured, the imperial side only several hundred.

Imperial troops entered Prague the next day, and Frederick fled with his wife Elizabeth after a reign of only one winter, the origin of his mocking nickname. Forty-seven leaders of the revolt were tried, and twenty-seven were executed in the Old Town Square; crosses set in the paving there commemorate them. An estimated five-sixths of Bohemia's nobles left the country, and their estates were confiscated. A Protestant army in Silesia fought on until 1623.

Ferdinand then imposed Catholicism on the kingdom. Calvinists and other non-Lutherans were ordered to convert or leave in 1621, Lutheran worship was banned in 1622, and in 1626 Lutherans too were told to convert or emigrate. Most Bohemians became Catholic, though a Protestant minority survived. Over the following two centuries a Catholic, largely German-speaking elite replaced much of the Czech nobility and the Czech language declined, a period later nationalist writers called the "Dark Age". The war itself widened as Spain occupied the Palatinate and Denmark and later Sweden entered the struggle.

Our 1600 map shows Bohemia within the Holy Roman Empire before the revolt, and the 1650 map shows it firmly under the Habsburg Monarchy; the battlefield now lies on the edge of Prague in the Czech Republic.