Heresy
Defenestration of Prague
Events went forward of their own momentum. In June Sigismund turned away from a direct assault on Prague, evidently somewhat surprised to meet resistance. He did linger long enough to get into the city and be crowned at the cathedral, but he left again immediately. In July, royalist forces burned a parish priest along with women and children at the village of Arnostovice.
On 6 July 1420, Wenceslaus dismissed the Utraquist city councillors and replaced them with Catholics. On 30 July, Jan Zelivsky, a preacher at Our Lady of the Snows, organized a demonstration. Three churches were still allowed to offer the chalice, and these filled to overflowing, and Zelivsky's was the most crowded of all. On that day, he led his congregation to St Stephens, one of the Catholic churches and the one where, up until 1418, he had been the preacher. He told his followers, mostly day laborers and poor artisans, some armed with pikes and swords, that the had come to take back the church.
The priests barred the doors, but the Hussites battered them down and immediately held a triumphant communion. They then marched on the New Town hall, where they found some of those newly-appointed Catholic city councillors. The Hussites demanded the release of all Hussite prisoners and demanded the keys to the prison. The councillors refused. At some point in the discussion, the crowd stormed into the room. They pitched thirteen of the councillors out the window. Those who were not killed by the fall were slain by the Hussite crowd below. This is the famous Defenestration of Prague. (The word comes from fenêtre, the French word for window).