On 23 May 1618, the Bohemian Protestant nobles defied their King Ferdinand, heir to Holy Roman Emperor Matthias, and threw the Roman Catholic governors of Bohemia from a window of their office at Prague Castle in an act which came to be known as the Defenestration of Prague.

A Habsburg Roman Catholic army under the command of Charles Bonaventure de Longueval, Count of Bucquoy, was approaching Prague but a Protestant army stopped it near Čáslav for several weeks; subsequent problems with food supplies and illness forced Buqouy to withdraw.

Part of the Roman Catholic army held a position between two ponds and suffered most of its casualties from artillery fire.

As a result, the main part of the Habsburg army had to leave Bohemia.

But the Protestants did not follow up their victory by chasing the enemy, thereby missing an opportunity to crush their Catholic opponents.