namely, to precipitate a great devastating war, and
to leave Bohemia hopelessly enchained for close on three centuries.

We have seen the "Winter King"[1] pass this way with his English wife,
pause here to be crowned, and then after a short year's reign, fly from
the country that trusted him when his army and the cause he was called
upon to stand for went under in a sea of blood on the White Mountain. It
is only about an hour on foot to the battlefield where the army of
Protestant Bohemia, after retiring before the Imperialist host, made its
final, fatal stand. After all, Frederick's short reign was only an
interlude: the hand of the Habsburg had closed over Bohemia when
Ferdinand I ascended its throne in 1526 by virtue of his marriage with
Anna, and also, as I have said, by the free use of Austrian gold; and
the victory won by Charles V at Muehlberg in 1547 had almost crushed the
cause of Protestantism out of existence.

[Footnote 1: Frederick, Count of the Palatinate, was called the "Winter
King," probably because he came to Prague one winter and left the next
one.]

The battlefield where the independence of Bohemia was lost in November
1620 lies on a plateau, as background to which stands a peculiar
building. Surrounded by a park and overlooking undulating country stands
the "Star." It is a former royal hunting-box, built several centuries
before the battle and planned as a six-pointed star. It has no
architectural beauty; it is in appearance a somewhat ungainly landmark
and must have been pretty uncomfortable to live in, even for the less
exacting royalties of the Middle Ages, but it stands on what, for the
Bohemian, should be holy ground. The forces of the Holy Roman Empire,
aided by Bavarians and Spaniards, were arrayed against the army of
Frederick, the "Winter King," which stood for religious freedom. Perhaps
the Protestant forces were not united, they were composed of Czechs,
Moravians, Germans and Hungarians, perhaps that their King had left
them somewhat hurriedly, at any rate the spirit of the old covenanters,
Hus and [vZ]i[vs]ka, no longer informed the Bohemian Army. The first to
break were the Hungarians, and the conduct of the others was not up to
tradition; only a small force of Moravians under Count [vS]lik refused
to yield. They took their stand against the wall of the Star Park, along
which the dead at some places lay ten or twelve high, according to
contemporary writers.

Then the Jesuit-ridden