Battle of the White Mountain

Battle of White Mountain
Part of the Thirty Years' War
The Battle of White Mountain (1620), where Imperial-Spanish forces under Johan Tzerclaes, Count of Tilly won a decisive victory.
Date 8 November 1620 Location Bílá Hora near Prague, Bohemia (present-day Prague, Czech Republic) 50°04′42″N 14°19′10″E / 50.07833°N 14.31944°E / 50.07833; 14.31944Coordinates: 50°04′42″N 14°19′10″E / 50.07833°N 14.31944°E / 50.07833; 14.31944 Result Decisive Catholic victory
Belligerents
Bohemian Estates	Holy Roman Empire Spain Catholic League
Commanders and leaders
Christian I of Anhalt-Bernburg Jindřich Matyáš Thurn	Charles de Longueval, Count of Bucquoy Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly
Strength
15,000 men: (Mainly mercenaries from Bohemia and the German lands, Hungarian and Austrian allies)	27,000 men: (From the Empire, the Catholic League, soldiers from Spain, the Spanish Netherlands and Polish Lisowczycy)
Casualties and losses
4,000 dead or wounded	700 dead or wounded

The Battle of White Mountain (Czech: Bitva na Bílé hoře, German: Schlacht am Weißen Berg) was an important battle in the early stages of the Thirty Years' War.

It was fought on 8 November 1620 (New Style calendar). An army of 15,000 Bohemians and mercenaries under Christian of Anhalt was defeated by 27,000 men of the combined armies of Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor led by Charles Bonaventure de Longueval, Count of Bucquoy and the German Catholic League under Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly at Bílá Hora ("White Mountain") near Prague. The site is now part of the city of Prague.

The battle marked the end of the Bohemian period of the Thirty Years' War and decisively influenced the fate of the Czech lands for the next 300 years. Its aftermath drastically changed the religious landscape of the Czech lands after two centuries of Protestant dominance. Roman Catholicism retained majority in the Czech lands until the late 20th century.

In the early 17th century most of the Bohemian estates, although under the dominion of the predominantly Roman Catholic Holy Roman Empire, had large Protestant populations, and had been granted rights and protections allowing them varying degrees of religious and political freedom. In 1617, as Emperor Matthias lay dying, his cousin Ferdinand — a fiercely devout Roman Catholic and proponent of the Counter-Reformation — was named his successor as Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia. This led to deep consternation among many Bohemian Protestants, who feared not only the loss of their religious freedom, but also of their traditional semi-autonomy, under which many of the estates had separate, individual constitutions governing their relationship with the Empire, and where the King was elected by the local leaders.

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