June 21, 1621: The Executions of 27 Noblemen on the Old Town Square
On June 21, 1621, a huge crowd gathered in Old Town Square to view the executions of 27 noblemen involved in the Estates Uprising the previous year. Defenestration, White Mountain, and the Aftermath In a rebellion against the Habsburg monarchy and the threat of being forced to convert to Catholicism or leave their homeland, several Bohemian nobles first threw two governors and a secretary out of a window at Prague Castle in 1618, then battled the Imperial army at White Mountain in 1620. After the crushing military defeat, forty-seven nobles were put on trial. More than half of them were sentenced to death. June 21 The executions began at 5 a.m. Prague’s executioner, Jan Mydlář, stood ready, with four sharpened swords. Twenty-four of the nobles would be beheaded that day, and the other three would be hanged. A contemporary drawing of the scene shows two bodies dangling from a beam protruding from a window in the Old Town Hall, while another hangs from a gallows in the area where the statue grouping of Jan Hus stands today. Mydlář, a Protestant himself, sympathized with the nobles, but he was forced to do his job. He eschewed the traditional red executioner’s hood for a black...
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