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 cerely to uphold the Letter of Majesty in its substance and its integrity, and will treat those who violate it as they deserve. Also, I do not doubt that you in the towns are in the habit of reading Historias et Annales Bohemiae [these words are in Latin in the original], and that you well know how great were the liberties of the estate of the citizens under King Sigismund and King Wenceslas, and how much you forfeited and lost under King Ferdinand.”’

This passage proves, what indeed is admitted by all modern Bohemian historians, that the defenestration was a premeditated act. The Bohemians honestly believed that they were inflicting punishment according to law—the law of Judge Lynch, it must be admitted—on the Austrian officials.

I can only quote briefly from Skála’s detailed account of the actual defenestration. The nobles entered the council-chamber where the imperial officials were sitting. The latter refused to give an immediate answer to the Bohemians, who demanded guarantees for the liberty of their religion. A long discussion began, in which Counts Thurn and Šlik, Lobkovic, Kaplíř, and other Bohemian nobles took part, while Martinic and Slavata—the other imperial councillors had fled—were too terrified to say much in their own defence.

‘Immediately afterwards,’ Skála writes, ‘voices were heard among the nobles suggesting that these scoundrels should be arrested and hurried off to the Black Tower ; but others cried out that the traitors should be thrown out of the windows.’