The Bohemian Revolt

In 1526, Ferdinand I, the ruler of Austria, had conquered Bohemia and imposed the rule of the Roman Catholic Habsburg dynasty over the Kingdom.

In 1618, in what is known as the Bohemian Revolt, Protestant Bohemians attempted to rid their kingdom of Catholic rule by the Habsburgs.

The Bohemian Revolt against the Holy Roman Empire began successfully. The revolt was not a popular uprising, but an aristocratic coup led by a minority of desperate militant Protestants.

In May 1618 in Prague, a group of noblemen marched to the royal palace, found two king’s chief advisers and hurled them out of an upper story window. The official’s lives, if not their dignity, were preserved by the pile of manure in which they landed. This incident came to be known as The Defenestration of Prague.

This initiate a Protestant counter offensive throughout the Habsburg lands. Fear of Ferdinand’s policies led to Protestant uprisings in Hungary, as well as Bohemia. Those who seized control of government declared Ferdinand deposed and the throne vacant.

When Emperor Mathias died in 1619, the stalemate broken, Ferdinand succeeded to Imperial title as Ferdinand II (1619 – 1637) and Ferdinand V, one of the Protestant electors, accepted the Bohemian crown.

The Bohemian crisis led the Hapsburgs straight into the Thirty Years’ War. This means that the major international conflict of the seventeenth century and perhaps altogether the major conflict in European history between the Crusades and the Napoleonic wars, started as a domestic affair within one of the Hapsburg domains. The Battle of White Mountain was the first major battle of the Thirty Years’ War. It ended the Protestant Bohemian Revolt and led to the subjugation of Bohemia until the founding of Czechoslovakia in 1918.
The Bohemian Revolt

History of Russian Bloody Sunday (1905)

In 1904 war broke out between Russia and Japan. The Russians expected to win. Instead they suffered disastrous defeat.

The humiliation of defeat helped spark off the 1905 revolution in Russia. In 1905 the workers of St. Petersburg protested hardships due to cyclical downturns in the economy.

By the beginning of the second week of January 1905, over 100,000 St. Petersburg workers were on strike. On Sunday, January 9, 1905, many of them, still believing in the old myth of the benevolent tsar, marched to his Winter Palace to present him with a petition, begging him to sue hos royal authority to relieve their desperate conditions.

Urban workers appealed to the Tsar as “little father” for relief for their hardships. The tsar never received the petitioners, for he was outside the city at his Tsarkoe Selo residence. But troops near the palace and on snowy avenues leading to it did greet them – with shots and swords.  A thousand were killed, including many women and children, who were appealing to the tsar for relief.

This was ‘Bloody Sunday’ or ‘Vladimir’s Day’. The event set-off a revolution that spread to Moscow and the countryside.

Bloody Sunday opened the Revolution of 1905. The reception given the marches destroyed all popular faith in the tsar; henceforth, he and his bureaucrats were lumped together as responsible for the nation’s ill.

The immediate reaction to Bloody Sunday in Russia at large was a widespread outbreak of disorder, which increased as the year went on. Strike occurred in all the major cities and towns.
History of Russian Bloody Sunday (1905)

Jean-Paul Marat of French Revolution

Before the Revolution, Jean-Paul Marat (24 May 1743 – 13 July 1793) had been a doctor and a writer and he had fancied himself an important scientist.

He was born in Switzerland and became a French Revolutionary.

In September 1789, he launched the newspaper that brought him fame: L’Ami du people (The Friend of the People).

His journalism was renowned for its fiery character and uncompromising stance toward ‘enemies of the revolution’ and basic reforms for the poorest members of society.

His newspaper was little more than an extended editorial page filled with intemperate calls for violence against traitors and for an elected dictator to serve for a limited time to save the Revolution.

His reputation as a blood thirsty writer who called for the executions of counter-revolutionaries made many suspects that he was behind the September Massacres. In 1792, Marat was elected to the National Convention.

Marat suffered from the chronic skin condition psoriasis and spent much time in his bath with a vinegar soaked bandage.

This was where Charlotte Corday found him. As soon as they were alone together she stabbed him, cutting his carotid artery.
Jean-Paul Marat of French Revolution