Eight Hundred Dead under Drahomíra

Drahomíra, who was given in marriage to Vratislav, son of Bořivoj, was a maiden of famous lineage and fair countenance, but of heathen upbringing. At first she was gracious both to her husband and to the Christian lords and promised that she would learn the catechism and receive baptism, but afterwards she brazenly deceived her teachers and became far more cruel against the Christians than Jezebel of old against the prophets. While her pious husband lived she cunningly concealed her hatred. But when, after his death, the grandmother Ludmila took the elder son Wenceslas to rear, she took the younger, Boleslav, for her own training, seized the government of the land and by an immediately issued mandate ordered that the churches be closed to the Christians and holy ministration stopped. In Prague the officials were replaced and idolaters were set in the places of Christians; at their instigation the faithful suffered many wrongs both secretly and openly and were murdered, and that without any punishment whatsoever. But not even this sufficed Drahomíra's unsated fury, for she wished to drive out and exterminate all Christians as swiftly as might be. She therefore summoned one of the most venomous burghers, whom she had presented to the people of Prague as their magistrate, revealed to him her accursed intent and earnestly required him to carry it out either by cunning or by force, promising an ample reward. He accepted that wickedness, furnished with weapons in his house six hundred men bound to him by oath, and hastened with them to the houses of those who were to be slain. But by God's ordering the matter was revealed to the Christians, and they too gathered, to the number of about four hundred, to defend their lives. They fought one another so that the Christians prevailed — and there fell on both sides about eight hundred men, with whose blood the square and the streets were anointed.