Crumbling Empires
Two Bold Acts of Defiance Against Imperial Power
This essay uses the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand to paint a vivid portrait of the 1618 Defenestration of Prague. Though the 1914 event stemmed from ethnic tensions and the 1618 event from religious conflict, both events involved Slavic peoples rebelling against Germanic empires, and both precipitated major wars. The killing of the heir…