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Updated: June 22, 2025
The windows of kings' palaces look out from many chambers. The windows of the Hradschin look out, as we are told, from a thousand. But the rooms within have seldom many tenants, nor the tenants, perhaps, many thoughts. Chamber after chamber, you shall pass through them by the score, and know by signs unconsciously recognised that there is not, and never has been, true habitation within them.
It was the 23rd of May, 1618. At an early hour on that fatal day, the Protestant Convention met in the Hradschin, and then, a little later, the fiery Thurn sallied out with a body of armed supporters, arrived at the Royal Castle, and forced his way into the Regent's Chamber, where the King's Councillors were assembled. There, in a corner, by the stove sat Martinic and Slawata.
Sitting in full harness on horseback in the great square before the cathedral, the warlike bishop compelled the population to make oath to him as the Emperor's commissary. The street fighting went on however day by day, poor Rudolph meantime cowering in the Hradschin.
Marie Louise gave it the name of Hradschin, which is the name of the mountain on which the castle of Prague is built.
John of Nepomuk was cast into the Moldau for refusing to publish the confession of King Wenceslaus' consort. On the opposite bank I mounted the Hradschin, and paid a visit to the cathedral, in which a large sarcophagus, surrounded and borne by angels, and surmounted by a canopy of crimson damask, is dedicated to the memory of the saint.
'Halt! cries Colonel Brandes, who has charge of the thing; divides them in three: 'First one party, deal with these river-boats, that Pandour doggery; second party, pull these stray wagons to right and left, making the way clear; third party, drag our own wagons forward, shoulder to shaft, and yoke them out of shot-range; you, Captain Carlowitz, and calls twenty volunteers to go with Carlowitz, and drag their own cannon, 'step you forward, keep the gate of that Hradschin till we all pass! In this manner, rapid, hard of stroke, clear-headed and with stern regularity, drilled talent gets the burning Nessus'-shirt wriggled off; and tramps successfully forth with its baggages.
And now poor Rudolph was to be turned out of the Hradschin, and sent packing with or without his collections to the Tyrol. The bellicose bishop of Strassburg and Passau, brother of Ferdinand, had little difficulty in persuading the downtrodden man to rise to vengeance.
On the third day, Leopold, driven out of the town, took up a position on the heights, from which he commanded it with his artillery. Then came a feeble voice from the Hradschin, telling all men that these Passau marauders and their episcopal chief were there by the Emperor's orders.
This park is situated without the fortifications of the Hradschin, at about half an hour's walk from them, in a valley formed by the river Moldau, and stretches away to the plateau which forms the eastern boundary of the valley.
On the hill above the western end of the city, stands a chapel on the spot where the Bavarians put an end to Protestantism in Bohemia by the sword, and the deluded peasantry of the land make pilgrimages to this spot, as if it were rendered holy by an act over which Religion weeps! Ascending the broad flight of steps to the Hradschin, I paused a moment to look at the scene below.
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