Ondřej Puklice of Vztuhy

In the mid-fifteenth century Ondřej Puklice of Vztuhy ranked among the most important men of České Budějovice. He began as a merchant, but entered the town council as early as 1438 and, with short interruptions, sat on it until the end of his life. Several times he was mayor.

The greatest test came in 1453, when King Ladislav Pohrobek pledged Budějovice for life to Jindřich of Rožmberk. For a free royal town that meant the danger of losing the rights on which it stood. The burghers opposed the Rožmberks and Puklice stood at their head. After four years of struggle the king issued a charter that Budějovice were no longer to be pledged to anyone.

When Jiří of Poděbrady later became King of Bohemia, Puklice sided with him. He himself was a Catholic, but remained loyal to his king even after the pope laid him under interdict. It was not only an ecclesiastical penalty: Jiří was declared deposed, and by papal decision his subjects need not keep faith with him.

Budějovice preacher Václav Mondl travelled the towns proclaiming the papal decision. Budějovice, a Catholic town standing with the king, thus found itself in an exceptionally dangerous dispute. Puklice called the town council and secured a decision that the bull would not be proclaimed in the town, the preacher would not enter, and the gates would stay closed.

The town split. Against Puklice stood people dissatisfied with the ruling patriciate, among them mainly craftsmen and burghers around Matěj Rabenhaupt and Tomáš Frühauf. Faith, politics, municipal power and social tension mixed in the dispute. It was not a simple clash of one nationality against another.

Someone warned Puklice that danger threatened him.

He answered with a sentence his son later recorded:

“Why would they rise against me? I have done them no harm!”

The revolt broke out on 25 May 1467.

In the morning noise rose on the square. Puklice wanted to put on armour and go among the rebels to ask what they demanded. His wife Johanna returned from church and begged him not to leave the house. Others held him back too, until at last he stayed home.

Johanna stood at the window. Puklice stepped up behind her onto a bench. Someone below spotted them and a cry rose from the square:

“Look, the king and queen lie in the window.”

Puklice ordered the house closed.

Meanwhile the rebels occupied the town gates. At the Písek Gate they took the keys from the gatekeeper by force. Old Rabenhaupt climbed onto a bench by the pillory and in a beadle’s voice summoned people to the mayor’s house.

Then the attack began.

They beat on the gates and hacked at them with axes. When the doors would not yield, they smashed windows and grilles. Puklice unlocked a chamber, took both sons into it and shut himself in with them. Outside some thirty men gathered with a great beam and battered the house with it.

One of Puklice’s sons, Jan, was in the chamber with him then. That is why we know this part of the event in such detail.

When the attackers got inside, Rabenhaupt came to the chamber door and called for Master Ondřej to open and not be afraid. On his honour and faith he promised that nothing would happen to him. Johanna heard that promise. After hesitation she gave up the keys.

Rabenhaupt did not open the door, however. An iron bar still held it from within. He therefore urged Puklice to slide it aside.

Puklice asked whether he had certainty.

“Wait, let me reassure you better,” Rabenhaupt answered.

He went down to the stairs and gave a signal below. People at once rushed up and began to beat the door with axes and great smiths’ hammers.

Puklice had a partisan in the chamber. He could have defended himself and struck several men before they reached him. He did not. According to Jan’s record Puklice did not resist because if he raised a weapon the attackers would hack his children to pieces too.

He stood, prayed and begged his sons to love one another as brothers.

When the iron bars gave way, armourer Hanuš Aufunddahin leapt into the chamber and struck Puklice from behind on the helmet with an axe. Then everyone who could push through beat him. They shoved him from the chamber to the stairs, tore off his helmet, tripped him and dragged him down by the feet.

And he stood up.

So they beat him again.

He lay before his own house and begged them to bring a priest, for he wished to confess. Someone went for a priest. Václav Malý came, and Puklice confessed lying on the ground. People stood around advising that they strip him of his armour and hack him to pieces.

The priest asked that they at least carry him up into the house.

They answered him:

“Nothing more is his; everything is ours.”

So they carried him away. Wounds made it impossible to take him upstairs, so they laid him at the back by the door into the yard. Some only pretended to help carry.

Puklice wore a turquoise ring. They wanted to pull it off, but his hands were so hacked that he cried out in pain. The one who tried for the ring fled.

Meanwhile the rebels went to the town hall and chose their own council. They took six councillors from the old and elected twelve from among themselves.

Puklice came to himself once more and managed to write a last will. When the conspirators learned of it, they came for him again. They carried him in a trough to the town-hall cellar. There they locked him and let no one near him.

In his own house meanwhile they tapped Puklice’s beer, old and white. Tailor Weis and others handed it to anyone who came, sent it to women at home, and what they could not drink they poured on the ground.

Puklice remained in the town-hall cellar.

He died over six days.

A few years later Jan Puklice, one of the sons who had been in the chamber with their father, wrote an account of his death. Names, promises, violence and the sentence Ondřej Puklice spoke before the revolt broke out remained in it:

“Why would they rise against me? I have done them no harm!”

What followed

Puklice’s opponents gained the upper hand in the town by the coup. His supporters were removed from the town council and replaced by new councillors.

Even Puklice’s death did not in the end bring punishment of the guilty. King Jiří of Poděbrady pardoned them, because in the political situation of the time he could not afford to lose the loyalty of an important royal town.