The Defenestration of Prague survival legend
On 23 May 1618 Protestant nobles threw Catholic officials from a window of Prague Castle. Each side later gave rival explanations for why they survived.
Four Catholic lords regent reached the Bohemian Chancellery at 8:30 in the morning on 23 May 1618. Members of the dissolved assembly of the Protestant estates, led by Count Thurn, gathered half an hour later. The Public Domain Review describes what followed: Slavata clung to the ledge and pleaded for help from the Virgin until the crowd pushed him out of the window too. The deputies' secretary came last, pulled away from the nobleman Joachim von Schlick and thrown out.
The men survived, and two explanations grew up. The Catholic side held that angels or the Virgin Mary broke their fall. The Protestant reply was that they landed on a dung heap. Figures of Speech says the dung heap story has no contemporary source, that none of the men who fell mentions one, and that historians suspect it began as a counter to the Catholic claim.
"On 23 May 1618, four Catholic lords regent, Count Jaroslav Bořita of Martinice[9], Count Vilem Slavata of Chlum, Adam II von Šternberk (the supreme burgrave), and Matouš Děpolt of Lobkovice (the grand prior), arrived at the Bohemian Chancellery at 8:30 am. After preparing the meeting hall, members of the dissolved assembly of the three main Protestant estates gathered at 9:00 am, led by Count Thurn, who had been deprived of his post as castellan (burgrave) of Karlštejn Castle by the Emperor."
- Windows Onto History: The Defenestrations of Prague (1419-1997), The Public Domain Review
- 23 May 1618: the Second Defenestration of Prague, Figures of Speech