A true picture of the execution

Sheets like this one were the news of the seventeenth century. Printers in German cities cut a set of small scenes, wrote a caption under each, and sold the sheet in the street while the story was still being talked about. The title, in the curtained cartouche at the bottom, reads in German: A true picture of how on 21 June of this year 1621 the execution of several Bohemian lords, directors and others of the lords’, knights’ and burghers’ estates, who had opposed His Imperial Majesty, was carried out in the royal capital of Prague.

How to read it

Start at the top and read like a book. The long strip shows the prisoners driven to the castle under a strong guard, where the emperor’s commissioners read each man his sentence. The big scene in the middle is the square on the morning itself. Around it: Doctor Jesenius on the scaffold, two burghers hanged from a window of the town hall, three men flogged out of the city, and the bridge tower where the heads were put up.

Can we trust it?

The printer was not in Prague, and some details are drawn from what was told rather than seen. But the names written into the scenes, the town hall with its clock, the gallows and the drums agree with what people who were there wrote down. It is a good witness, read with care.