Editing Defenestrations of Prague (section)

=== Background ===
{{No sources|section|date=May 2025}}[[File:Prager.Fenstersturz.1618.jpg|thumb|300px|1662 woodcut of the 1618 event, by engraver [[Matthäus Merian the Elder]] for chronicler [[Johann Philipp Abelin]]'s ''Theatrvm Evropaevm'']]In 1555, the [[Peace of Augsburg]] had settled religious disputes in the [[Holy Roman Empire]] by enshrining the principle of ''[[Cuius regio, eius religio]]'', allowing a prince to determine the religion of his subjects. The [[Kingdom of Bohemia]] since 1526 had been governed by [[Habsburg]] kings, who did not force their Catholic religion on their largely Protestant subjects. In 1609, [[Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor|Rudolf II]], Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia (1576–1612), increased Protestant rights. He was increasingly viewed as unfit to govern, and other members of the Habsburg dynasty declared his younger brother, [[Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor|Matthias]], to be family head in 1606. Matthias began to gradually wrest territory from Rudolf, beginning with Hungary. In 1609, to strengthen his hold on Bohemia, Rudolf issued the ''[[Letter of Majesty]]'', which granted Bohemia's largely Protestant estates the right to freely exercise their religion, essentially setting up a Protestant Bohemian state church controlled by the estates, "dominated by the towns and rural nobility".<ref>{{cite book |last=Wallace |first=Peter |title=The Long European Reformation |year=2004 |location=New York|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |page=155}}</ref> Upon Rudolf's death, Matthias succeeded in the rule of Bohemia (1612–1619) and extended his offer of more legal and religious concessions to Bohemia, relying mostly on the advice of his chancellor, Bishop [[Melchior Klesl]].{{Citation needed|date = August 2017}}

Conflict was precipitated by two factors: Matthias, already aging, and without children, made his cousin, [[Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor|Ferdinand of Styria]], his heir and had him elected king in 1617. Ferdinand  was a proponent of the Catholic [[Counter-Reformation]] and not likely to be well-disposed to Protestantism or Bohemian freedoms. Bohemian Protestants opposed the royal government as they interpreted the Letter of Majesty to extend not only to the land controlled by the nobility or self-governing towns but also to the king's own lands. Whereas Matthias and Klesl were prepared to appease these demands, Ferdinand was not; in 1618 he forced the Emperor to order the cessation of construction of some [[Protestant]] chapels on royal land. When the Bohemian estates protested against this order, Ferdinand had their assembly dissolved.{{Citation needed|date = August 2017}}