Battle of White Mountain, 1620: two hours that ended Bohemia's revolt

The Battle of White Mountain was short, and its consequences were long. In about two hours on a November afternoon, the army of the rebel Bohemian estates was broken outside Prague. The revolt that had begun the Thirty Years' War collapsed, and Bohemia, Herodote.net observes, was bound to the House of Habsburg for nearly three centuries.²

From the window of Prague Castle

Bohemia before 1618 was more tolerant in religion than most of the Holy Roman Empire. About two thirds of its people were Protestant. In 1617 the Bohemian diet accepted Ferdinand of Styria, a zealous Catholic, as the next king, and he soon began to undo that toleration. On 23 May 1618 Protestant nobles threw two Catholic imperial officials out of a window of Prague Castle, the Defenestration of Prague, and the estates rose in revolt.³

When Emperor Matthias died in 1619, Ferdinand succeeded him as emperor and as king of Bohemia. The Bohemian diet refused to accept him and on 26 August 1619 offered the crown to Frederick V, the Calvinist Elector Palatine. His reign lasted barely a year, and he was later nicknamed the Winter King.⁴

Allies who never came

Frederick counted on the Protestant Union and on his father-in-law, King James I of England. Neither gave real help, and the Dutch and the Duke of Savoy sent only about 7,000 soldiers between them. Ferdinand did far better. Spain committed 12,000 troops, Maximilian of Bavaria, head of the Catholic League, sent money and an army in return for land and an electoral title, and the Lutheran Elector of Saxony joined the Emperor too. On 2 July 1620 the Protestant Union agreed an armistice with the Catholic League in the Treaty of Ulm, leaving Frederick alone.⁵

On 20 September the Imperial army under Count Bucquoy, about 15,000 men by EBSCO's count, and the Catholic League army under Count Tilly, about 10,000, crossed into Bohemia and marched on Prague. The Bohemian commander, Christian of Anhalt, could not stop them. His army was weak in more than numbers. Herodote.net describes soldiers, many of them foreign mercenaries, who were exhausted, hungry and unpaid for months.⁶

Two hours on the hill

Anhalt drew up his army on White Mountain, a broad hill on the western outskirts of Prague. It was a strong position: a hunting lodge covered his right flank and a brook his left. The sources disagree on the numbers. EBSCO gives Anhalt about 15,000 men, many of them barely trained Bohemian volunteers, against some 25,000 Imperial and League troops. Herodote.net counts 21,000 Bohemians against about 25,000 Imperials.⁷

Tilly sent his well-trained and well-equipped troops straight at the center of the Bohemian line. The defenders did not hold. The fighting took place in the afternoon and, by both accounts, was over in about two hours, with the Bohemian army fleeing in every direction. Herodote.net puts the Imperial loss at a few hundred men and the Bohemian loss at about 2,000.⁸

Prague surrenders

According to Herodote.net, the beaten army did not try to defend Prague. Frederick, hearing of the defeat, fled and spent the rest of his life in exile in the Netherlands. Herodote.net adds that Count Thurn, one of the leaders of the revolt, escaped to Moravia, and that the citizens of Prague, who surrendered without resistance, hoped in vain for mercy.⁹

The repression was harsh. Imperial soldiers looted Bohemia and executed suspected rebels without trial. On 21 June 1621, 27 leaders of the revolt were put to death in a public ceremony on Prague's Old Town Square. Herodote.net says 24 were beheaded and three hanged, and that other rebels were quartered. The heads were fixed to the bridge tower; EBSCO says the heads of twelve of the executed stayed on the tower of the Charles Bridge for ten years.¹⁰

Three centuries of consequences

The land of those who had supported the revolt was confiscated and sold cheaply to Catholic loyalists. EBSCO estimates that about three quarters of privately owned land changed hands. Protestants were told to convert or leave; about a fifth of the nobles and burghers left the kingdom, among them the scholar Jan Amos Komenský (Comenius). Prague University was given to the Jesuits. A new constitution bound Bohemia to the hereditary lands of the Habsburgs, moved its chancellery to Vienna and cut the powers of the diet.¹¹

The war itself did not end at White Mountain. It spread to Denmark and northern Germany and went on until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. For Bohemia, Herodote.net concludes, it was the end of the autonomy of a largely Slav kingdom at the heart of the Empire. Twenty-three years later the same long war brought the French victory at Rocroi.¹²