The Swedish Siege of 1648

JAN 01 1648 · 12:00

Karel Škréta, detail of the siege of Prague at the Horská Brána, 1648. Škréta painted the defence of the Old Town from inside it; the canvas is itself a Bohemian-baroque founding document. Place: Hradčany and Malá Strana (held by Sweden); Old Town and New Town (held by Prague) Figures: Hans Christoff von Königsmarck, Swedish field marshal · Rudolph Colloredo, imperial commander on the right bank · the Prague student militia · the Jewish defenders of the Old Town walls On the night of 25 July 1648, a force of three thousand Swedes under Königsmarck, guided by a former imperial colonel familiar with the castle's drainage, climbs in through a culvert below the Strahov monastery. By dawn they hold Hradčany and Malá Strana. The Rudolfine collections, what survives of them, are inventoried by Swedish officers within the week and shipped down the Elbe in autumn convoys. Königsmarck takes Arcimboldo's heads, Dürer's Rose Garlands, sixteen Titians, the Codex Argenteus (the silver Bible of Ulfilas), Tycho's mechanical celestial globe, the prosthetic-armor bronze of the emperor Rudolf, and a great deal else. The Codex Argenteus reaches Uppsala. Several Titians do not: the Stockholm-bound flotilla loses three ships off Bornholm in 1659.