Vodňanský of Uračov, Václav Jizbický. The last to undergo death were Henry Kozel, Andrew Kocour of Otín, George Řečický, Michael Wittman, Simon Vokáč of Chyš and Špicberk, Leander Rüppel, and George Hauenschild. On the tower of the ancient Charles Bridge, which connects the Old Town with the Small Town in Prague, twelve heads of the rebels were set up in small wire cages, six on each side of the tower, to awe the populace. There these gruesome evidences of Hapsburg hatred remained for years. On the same tower were exposed to public view the hands of Šlik and Michalovic and the tongue of Jesenský. Rüppel’s head and hand were nailed on the wall of the Town House.
So ended the “Bloody Day at Prague”—a day that Bohemians may have forgiven, but which none have forgotten. What now followed is probably without parallel in the history of European nations. Edmund de Schweinitz, in commenting on the consequences of the Bohemian Revolution, says that “in the history of Christendom there were few events more mournful. From the pinnacle of prosperity Bohemia and Moravia were plunged into the depths of adversity.”
The month the executions took place, the emperor, or rather the so-called Liechtenstein’s Commission on Confiscations which had been appointed
