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The last American soldier killed in action during World War II on the European battlefield.
Charley Havlat was the son of Czech emigrants Antonín Havlát (born in Ronov) and Antonia Havlátová birth name Němcová. Fate has prepared for him an end full of irony.

One of the first Austro-Hungarian pilots from our territory.

As is well known, Jára Cimrman created a historical triptych about famous lost Czech battles. There have been more groundbreaking events in our history and they are shrouded in many legends and ambiguities. For some, we are still beating our breasts, as this tragedy was a turning point, and if we put everything into a historical context, it is not so certain about the "fracture" of many of the famous data. Respectively, for some it is not certain whether the opposite result would not actually be worse, as the event unfortunately had only bad solutions.

Thanks to qualitative changes in armaments and tactics, the material and time requirements for the training of soldiers gradually increased to such an extent that already at the end of the sixteenth century untrained "amateurs" from the provincial milita had no chance against military professionals. Thus, as in the late Roman period, the war again became a lifelong vocation for soldiers. Unlike antiquity, however, medieval mercenaries were not hired by the state, but - in today's terminology - by military entrepreneurs who received a so-called "patent" from the state (monarch), entitling them to recruit a certain number of soldiers.

Immediately after the Prague defenestration, the more moderate Estates wrote an apology letter to Emperor Matthias in which they explained in a complicated way that they all thought differently than it seemed - that they tried to kill the high emperor's officials in his own interest and for his own benefit. This caused a war that over the next thirty years devastated a substantial part of Europe.

Unlike the villagers, the inhabitants of the walled cities could be sure that if they remained behind the walls, nothing bad would happen to them. Of course, until these walls are raided by the regular army. This was especially true of the inhabitants of the capital of the Czech kings - Prague, whose fortifications, built in the mid-fourteenth century, were in recent years at least partially adapted to the latest military developments and therefore had some prospects to withstand raids by robber groups of deserters and maroders, and armies as well.

From a purely military point of view, the last battle of the Thirty Years' War ended just as the whole war ended - indecisively. In such a case, both opponents are in the habit of claiming that they won. Nothing against it. The Swedes conquered and retained Hradčany and Mala Strana (and most of Bohemia and Moravia), while the emperors did not conquer anything, but they retained at least the rest of the city. Ideal situation for historians of both sides.

Orientation table of military ranks used during the Thirty Years' War, list of Prague city officials during the siege, list of officers ... List of literature.