Prague, 21 June 1621
The morning of the twenty-seven
At five in the morning the first of them climbed the scaffold before the Old Town Hall. A printer drew the scene that summer. Read it with us, letter by letter.
Read the plate
A. The Old Town Hall
The scaffold stood against the town hall, under its clock tower. Every window is full of faces.
B. The council and the judges
The engraver labelled them: Altstetter Rhat und Kayserliche Richter, the Old Town council and the emperor's judges.
C. Count Schlick
The engraver wrote his name beside him: Graf Schlick. He went first; the executioner, Jan Mydlář, had four swords ready.
D. The gallows
Nathanael Vodňanský, hanged on a gallows on the square. Three of the twenty-seven died by the rope.
E. The drums
Drums and trumpets played all morning, so the crowd would not hear the condemned.
F. The soldiers
The gates were shut and imperial soldiers, foot and horse, held the square.
1609 to 1648
From a promise to a peace
How a letter of religious freedom became a revolt, a defeat, a scaffold and thirty years of war.
1609
9 July 1609
The Letter of Majesty
Emperor Rudolf II promises the Bohemian estates freedom of religion.
1618
23 May 1618
The defenestration
Protestant nobles throw two governors and a secretary from a window of Prague Castle. All three survive.
1619
26 August 1619
A king of their own
The estates depose Ferdinand and elect Frederick of the Palatinate.
1620
8 November 1620
The White Mountain
The estates' army is beaten in under two hours. Frederick flees.
1621
February 1621
The arrests
The leaders of the revolt are taken to the castle under guard.
1621
19 June 1621
The sentences
Thirty are sentenced: twenty-seven to die, three to be banished.
1621
21 June 1621
The execution
Twenty-seven men die on the Old Town Square between five and ten in the morning.
1622
May 1622
Schlick comes down
His widow is allowed to bury his head with his body.
1627
10 May 1627
One faith
The Renewed Land Ordinance makes Catholicism the only faith allowed in Bohemia.
1628
1628
Comenius leaves
Thousands of Protestant families go into exile, the teacher Jan Amos Comenius among them.
1631
November 1631
The heads are buried
The Saxon army takes Prague and has the eleven heads on the bridge tower buried in the Týn Church.
1648
24 October 1648
The peace
The Peace of Westphalia ends the war that began with a window in Prague.
21 June 1621
Five hours on the square
What happened that morning, as the people who were there wrote it down.
Before dawn
The gates are shut
The city gates are closed. Imperial soldiers, foot and horse, take the square and the streets round it. The scaffold is hung with black.
5:00
The first name
Count Schlick is called first. The drums and trumpets begin, so the crowd won't hear the condemned.
The lords
Budovec, Harant
The lords follow, then the knights, by rank and age. Kašpar Kaplíř, eighty-six, is the first of the knights.
The burghers
The largest group
Seventeen burghers: town councillors, lawyers, a physician. Jan Jesenius's tongue is cut out before he dies.
The rope
Three are hanged
Kutnauer and Sušický hang from a window of the town hall, Vodňanský from the gallows: the more shameful death.
About 10:00
It is over
After five hours the drums stop. Twelve heads are carried to the Old Town Bridge Tower.
The roll
Three lords, seven knights, seventeen burghers
Every name, in the order of their estates. Most died by the sword; three by the rope.
Lords
Joachim Andreas Schlick
Count, 52, a leader of the revolt. The first to die; his right hand was cut off after.
Beheaded
Lords
Václav Budovec of Budov
Diplomat and scholar, 70. He had fought for the Letter of Majesty.
Beheaded
Lords
Kryštof Harant of Polžice
Traveller to Jerusalem, writer and composer, 57.
Beheaded
Knights
Kašpar Kaplíř of Sulevice
The oldest, at 86, and the first of the knights.
Beheaded
Knights
Prokop Dvořecký of Olbramovice
Beheaded.
Beheaded
Knights
Fridrich of Bílá
Beheaded.
Beheaded
Knights
Jindřich Otta of Los
Beheaded.
Beheaded
Knights
Diviš Černín of Chudenice
56, the only Catholic. As captain of the castle he let the rebels in in 1618.
Beheaded
Knights
Vilém Konecchlumský of Konecchlumí
Beheaded.
Beheaded
Knights
Bohuslav of Michalovice
His right hand was cut off before he was beheaded.
Beheaded
Burghers
Valentin Kochan of Prachová
Of the New Town of Prague.
Beheaded
Burghers
Tobiáš Štefek of Koloděje
Of the New Town of Prague.
Beheaded
Burghers
Jan Jesenius
Physician and rector of the university, 55. His tongue was cut out first.
Beheaded
Burghers
Kryštof Kober of Koberšperk
Of the New Town of Prague.
Beheaded
Burghers
Jan Šultys of Felsdorf
First councillor of Kutná Hora. His head was sent home to be shown there.
Beheaded
Burghers
Maxmilián Hošťálek of Javořice
Of Žatec. His head was sent home to be shown there.
Beheaded
Burghers
Leander Rüppel of Ruppach
A lawyer. His right hand was cut off first.
Beheaded
Burghers
Jiří Hauenšild of Fürstenfeld
His right hand was cut off first.
Beheaded
Burghers
Jan Kutnauer of Sonnenštejn
Hanged from a window of the town hall.
Hanged
Burghers
Simeon Sušický of Sonnenštejn
Hanged beside Kutnauer.
Hanged
Burghers
Nathanael Vodňanský of Uračov
Hanged on the gallows on the square.
Hanged
Burghers
Václav Maštěrovský of Jizbice
Beheaded.
Beheaded
Burghers
Jindřich Kozel of Peclinovec
Of the New Town of Prague.
Beheaded
Burghers
Ondřej Kocour of Votín
Beheaded.
Beheaded
Burghers
Jiří Řečický
Beheaded.
Beheaded
Burghers
Michal Witmann
Beheaded.
Beheaded
Burghers
Simeon Vokáč of Chyše
Beheaded.
Beheaded
Kašpar Kaplíř of Sulevice
Drawn from life in Prague in 1610 by the emperor's own engraver. Eleven years later he was the oldest man on the scaffold.
Aegidius Sadeler, 1610
Afterwards
Ten years on the bridge tower
Twelve heads were put up in iron baskets on the Old Town Bridge Tower, the gate to the stone bridge, where everyone crossing the river would see them. Count Schlick's was taken down in 1622 at his widow's request. The rest stayed until the Saxons took Prague in 1631 and had them buried in the Týn Church.
- heads on the tower
- 12
- Schlick's taken down
- 1622
- the other eleven buried
- 1631
Where it happened
Twenty-seven crosses in the paving
The 27 crosses
Annals, meeting point at the Old Town Hall Staroměstské náměstí 1 110 00 Prague 1By the east wall of the Old Town Hall, where the scaffold stood, twenty-seven white crosses are set into the stones. Our walks start there.
Get directions
More events
Other mornings, other prints
Each event explained with the pictures people made of it at the time.
23 May 1618
The defenestration of Prague
Protestant nobles threw two of the emperor's governors and their secretary out of a castle window. All three lived, and the war that followed lasted thirty years.
Prague Castle · The Thirty Years' War
8 November 1620
The battle of the White Mountain
The army of the Bohemian estates was beaten in under two hours on a hill outside Prague. Its king fled the next day, and the revolt was over.
Bílá hora, west of Prague · The Thirty Years' War
24 October 1648
The Peace of Westphalia
Thirty years after the defenestration, the war that began in Prague ended in two towns in Westphalia. In Prague, the fighting stopped on the stone bridge.
Münster and Osnabrück · The Thirty Years' War
12 September 1683
The siege of Vienna
For two months an Ottoman army besieged Vienna. Then a relieving army came over the hills of the Vienna Woods and broke the siege in a day.
Vienna and the Kahlenberg · The Great Turkish War
Walks and schools
Stand where the scaffold stood
A ninety-minute walk from the crosses to the bridge tower, lesson packs with every print in high resolution, and talks for schools.
Lesson pack
€24
For teachers, ages 13 to 18.
- Three lessons on the Bohemian revolt
- Every print in high resolution
- Worksheets and teacher's notes
- Use it with all your classes
School walk
4,900 CZK
For a class of up to 30.
- The 1621 walk for your class
- A worksheet for each pupil
- Teachers come free
- Weekday mornings, booked ahead
Talk at your school
6,500 CZK
When the class can't come to Prague.
- Sixty minutes with the prints on screen
- Questions from the class
- In Prague and up to 100 km around
Notes
From the archive
How to read a news sheet from 1621
Seven scenes, German captions and a curtain: a short guide to the news of the seventeenth century.
Two pictures of one morning
A news sheet printed in 1621 and a Dutch etching made almost eighty years later show the same execution. They don't agree.
Hollar's Prague, then and now
Wenceslaus Hollar drew his home city in 1636. Most of what he saw is still there.
One print a month
A print from the time, and the story it tells, once a month by email. Nothing else.
Prague remembers
Walk the Old Town with a historian and the prints of the time in your hand. Every day but Monday, at ten and at two.
A long view of Prague. Wenceslaus Hollar, 1649.