People were all pragmatic, especially nobles whose lineages stretched back centuries. They each had their own way of surviving, and at a time like this, its value became apparent.
On April 13, 1848, after receiving news of the Prague uprising, Prince Windisch-Grätz immediately led troops back into the city to suppress the rebellion. With the cooperation of the local nobility, he retook the entire city in less than three days.
To intimidate the local powerholders, Prince Windisch-Grätz ordered the execution of every ringleader involved in the uprising. Basically, every rebel from minor leader upward was put to death.
More than two thousand heads hung from the streets of Prague, leaving the nobles who had escaped disaster trembling with fear.
It had to be known that those killed this time were not merely ordinary people. At Franz's request, prominent figures were now the first to be executed.
Ordinary people could still be used as laborers, but nobles and capitalists who had joined the rebellion could not even serve as laborers. Thus, the higher one's social standing, the faster one died.
During the executions, the city government also selected a group of people with notoriously bad reputations and subjected them to public trials, exposing the crimes they had committed in the past.
With their heads, the Vienna government won another wave of popular support. One only had to look at the cheering people of Prague to know just how deeply those men had been hated.
Their usurious debts no longer needed to be repaid. A series of laws enacted by the Vienna government to protect their interests would now be implemented here, while the capitalists, street thugs, and hooligans who had oppressed them all mounted the guillotine.
The Czechs belonged to the West Slavs. Racially, they were close to the Poles, but