21. 6. 1689 Calendary

21.6. 1689 "French" fire engulfed Prague

Categories: Years of war and revolution , Calendar

Praha

In 1689 a huge fire engulfed Prague. Over 820 houses were engulfed in flames and 150 people died. Thirty arsonists were subsequently captured, a French revenge.

The fire was started by the French King Louis XIV. This enemy of the Habsburgs, driven by anger after the defeat of his allies the Turks at Vienna, first set fire to the city in the Palatinate and the Rhineland and then targeted Prague. About thirty executioners were hired, who came to Prague and on June 21, 1689, threw grenades and incendiary cartridges into selected houses in assigned streets.

More than 800 houses and a number of churches were burnt down and about 150 people died. Some of the arsonists were caught and everything came to light. "Terrible was the sight of the three cities of Prague on fire, for all night long the conflagration raged in the engulfed streets, from which one after another the predatoryto the element of fire, so that even the work of arsonists was no longer needed to spread the flames in all directions," writes Josef Svátek in his book The Last Budovec.

The fire raged on the next day, but fortunately it did not spread further to the as yet unconsumed second half of the Old and New Town. The town administrators finally took the plunge and had the roofs of several hundred neighbouring houses torn off, thus preventing the flames from spreading further. The situation calmed down in the afternoon, and the fire no longer spread dramatically.

"In the burnt streets, however, the flames continued to shoot upwards, and clouds of smoke were still rolling out of the burnt areas, but these were only the last bursts of the ragingof the element whose main force had already been undermined and which was now digesting the last remnants of that force," Svátek describes what happened in 1689.

The fire wreaked truly terrible havoc. In the Old Town 285 houses were burnt down, and in the lower New Town 146 buildings lay in ruins. But the worst of the fire was in the Jewish Town, where 319 houses were burnt down. Only a few outlying houses remained. At least 749 town and manor houses were destroyed, in addition to several churches, monastery and parish buildings and ten synagogues, bringing the total number of buildings engulfed by fire to 820.

The damage amounted to a staggering amount, as almost nothing of the houses could be saved. Thousands of families suddenly found themselves homeless and destitute. All the accumulated goods, both domestic and foreign, worth millions, were burned in the Jewish town. The greatest disaster was the loss of several hundred lives.

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Zajímavý počtení. Ty francouzy sou prostě svině a sraby....

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