The Massacre in

Běchovice Běchovice () is a suburb of Prague, currently a municipal district in the administrative district Prague 21. It is located about 13 km east of the city centre. The main road and railway line connecting Prague and Kolín pass through Běchov ...

occurred on 17 June 1848 at the train station in the village of

near

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

(now part of the city), in

Bohemia Bohemia ( ; cs, Čechy ; ; hsb, Čěska; szl, Czechy) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohem ...

(now the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

). In the revolutionary year 1848, many of Prague's bourgeoisie decided to flee the city. Many of them fled by train. In those times, there was only one railway line that connected

with

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, by way of

Česká Třebová Česká Třebová (; german: Böhmisch Trübau) is a town in Ústí nad Orlicí District in the Pardubice Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 15,000 inhabitants. The town centre is well preserved and is protected by law as an urban monument ...

and

Olomouc Olomouc (, , ; german: Olmütz; pl, Ołomuniec ; la, Olomucium or ''Iuliomontium'') is a city in the Czech Republic. It has about 99,000 inhabitants, and its larger urban zone has a population of about 384,000 inhabitants (2019). Located on th ...

, and Běchovice was the first station beyond Prague. Because of its location, General

Windischgraetz The House of Windisch-Graetz, also spelled Windisch-Grätz, is an Austrian-Slovenian aristocratic family, descending from Windischgraz in Lower Styria (present-day Slovenj Gradec, Slovenia). The noble dynasty serving the House of Habsburg achieve ...

chose Běchovice as a main center for searches for rebels. Windischgraetz and his army searched each train, but they were not able to find any guns or rebels. Soon after 6 a.m., a train arrived full of students fleeing from Prague. It is not known what exactly happened. There was probably a minor skirmish between one of the passengers and some soldiers, but it grew to a massacre.

Hussar A hussar ( , ; hu, huszár, pl, husarz, sh, husar / ) was a member of a class of light cavalry, originating in Central Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. The title and distinctive dress of these horsemen were subsequently widely ...

s attacked the train and slaughtered everyone on sight. Everyone was ordered to stay on the train, but the hussars pulled people out and killed them. Some of the passengers, mainly women and children, fled to the nearby train station building although it was under heavy fire. The exact number of those killed is not known, but there were over 100 heavily wounded passengers.

External links

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Massacre in Běchovice
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bechovice massacre Massacres in the Czech Republic 1848 in the Austrian Empire 19th century in Bohemia 1848 murders in Europe