Matthias
Matthias
Holy Roman Emperor · King of Bohemia · King of Hungary · Archduke of Austria
1557 – 1619
Biography
Spent decades wresting authority from his brother Rudolf II piece by piece before finally succeeding him. His reign was short, childless, and dominated by religious tension in Bohemia that climaxed in the Defenestration of Prague three months before his death — the spark of the Thirty Years' War. He left the empire to his ferociously Catholic cousin Ferdinand of Styria.
Events
On 23 May 1618 a delegation of Bohemian Protestant nobles threw two imperial regents and their secretary out of a third-story window of Prague Castle. All three survived the seventy-foot fall, landing in a dung heap. The act was the opening provocation of the Thirty Years' War — Europe's longest, most destructive religious conflict, which killed perhaps a quarter of the population of Germany.
Also there: Ferdinand II
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