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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;talerman, post: 4516735, member: 89314&quot;]A coin from the start of the Thirty Years&#039; War which devastated Germany</p><p><br /></p><p>ESTATES OF BOHEMIA &amp; MORAVIA&nbsp; Kipper 12 Kreuzer 1620 struck in Olmutz, Moravia</p><p><br /></p><p>In 1555, the Peace of Augsburg had settled religious disputes in the Holy Roman Empire by enshrining the principle of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuius_regio,_eius_religio" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuius_regio,_eius_religio" rel="nofollow">Cuius regio, eius religio</a></i>, allowing a prince to determine the religion of his subjects. The Kingdom of Bohemia since 1526 had been governed by Habsburg kings, who did not force their Catholic religion on their largely Protestant subjects. However, in 1617&nbsp; Ferdinand of Styria (who would become Emperor as Ferdinand II in 1619) was elected king. He was a proponent of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. in 1618 he had the Emperor order the cessation of construction of some Protestant chapels on royal land in Bohemia.&nbsp; When the Bohemian estates protested against this order, Ferdinand had their assembly dissolved. A group of Protestant nobles went to confront Ferdinand&#039;s Regents in Prague Castle and ended up throwing two of them and their secretary out of a third floor window, the famous Defenestration of Prague (May 23 1618). They survived the 70-foot (21-metre) fall, according to Catholics thanks to angels or by the intercession of the Virgin Mary, who caught them, according to later Protestant pamphleteers due to their falling on to a dung heap. </p><p>The Defenestration of Prague of 1618 symbolized a decisive break between the Estates of Bohemia and Moravia and the Habsburgs. The Estates elected a government of thirty directors, ten from each estate, and&nbsp; hired an army of their own.&nbsp; At a Diet in Prague on 16 July 1619 they established a confederation of the Estates of Bohemia, Moravia, Upper and Lower Lusatia,and Silesia. The diet deposed Ferdinand, and elected as king the Calvinist Friedrich V, the Elector Palatine and&nbsp; the leader of the Protestant Union, a military alliance founded by his father. Twice during 1619 the Estates’ army attempted to take Vienna and failed. However, in 1620 Ferdinand II&nbsp; invaded Bohemia from the south, while the elector of Saxony threatened it from the north (the Saxon ruler, though Lutheran, had designs on the Lusatias and Silesia). The Estates’ armies had to fall back toward Prague. On an elevated site outside the city called White Mountain (Bila ´ Hora) the tired, poorly organized, and ill-paid soldiers of the Estates faced a slightly larger force loyal to Ferdinand. In a two-hour battle on November 8, 1620, they suffered a catastrophic defeat (the Battle of White Mountain).&nbsp; Friedrich fled. The rebellion of the Estates (and their independent coinage, like this coin) was over. The Thirty Years’ War, a broader conflict between the forces of the Catholic Emperor and Protestant opponents, had just begun.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1119091[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1119092[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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