Page:Guide to the Bohemian section and to the Kingdom of Bohemia - 1906.djvu/85

65 the battle on the White mountain near Prague 1620 the protestants were entirely defeated, any further resistance became impossible; the leaders were executed 1621 on the market place in front of the Old townhall, the lands and other property of the protestants were confiscated, and a [sic] no protestants were allowed to live in the country, many thousands of the best families went into exile. Prague lost more than the half of its inhabitants, in the course of the war it was several times captured in turn by the armies of both parties and almost everything of any worth was taken partly by the Saxons in 1631 to Dresden and partly by the Swedes in 1648 to Sweden, and the former treasures of Bohemia are now the most conspicuous articles in foreign museums. The seats of the exiled nobility were taken by foreigners, especially by generals who were most successful in crushing the population, and therefore their fiercest enemies. On the ruins of the devastated land of which three quarters were confiscated, and of whose population of three millions there remained only about eight hundred thousand there gradually arose some new palaces of the victorious nobility, among them the grand palace of Waldstein duke of Friedland, some churches and monasteries in the now barok style. But Prague ceased in 1614 to be the residence of the kings of Bohemia, who lived after that year in Vienna; the depopulated borders of the land, where staunch Bohemian adherents of the protestants religion had lived, were occupied by Germans from the neighbouring country; Prague, although fortified during the reign of Ferdinand III. and Leopold I. could not escape great damages during the French wars and ''Frederic II. of Prussia caused immense suffering and wreck by bombarding the city during the Seven years war'' (1757). With the end of this war a longer period of peace began in Bohemia, and Prague as well as the country began to recover from its baneful effects, although Joseph’s II secularisation of a great number of churches and monasteries and his disregard of historical rights and monuments spoilt many precious buildings and products of art and industry. The churches and cloisters were either given to other new public humanitarian institutions, as asylums for incurables and lunatics, or hospitals (1790) or sold for private pur- 5