Followers of the executed reformer Jan Hus, enraged by Catholic authorities, hurled seven town councilors to their deaths from the New Town Hall in Prague. The killings triggered the Hussite Wars, a prolonged and bloody conflict between Bohemian reformers and the combined forces of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church.
The First Defenestration of Prague grew from years of tension between followers of Jan Hus, the Czech priest burned at the stake for heresy in 1415, and the Catholic establishment that controlled Bohemian civic life. On July 30, 1419, a crowd of Hussites, enraged after officials refused to release imprisoned protesters, stormed the New Town Hall and threw the burgomaster and several councilors out the windows to a mob waiting below with pikes and swords.
King Wenceslaus IV, reportedly so shaken by news of the killings that he suffered a fatal stroke weeks later, left a power vacuum that deepened the crisis. What followed were the Hussite Wars, nearly two decades of conflict pitting Bohemian reformers, including the brilliant one-eyed general Jan Žižka, against repeated crusades ordered by the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor.
The defenestration became a template and a metaphor: Prague would see a second, more famous defenestration in 1618, and the word itself entered political vocabulary as shorthand for a violent, symbolic overthrow. The Hussite movement, meanwhile, is now seen as an early precursor to the Protestant Reformation, a century before Martin Luther nailed his theses to a church door.