He was the son of a member of the geheimrat of Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria, Franz Napus von Thurn-Valsassina, count of Linz and his second wife, Countess Barbora Gräfin von Schlick, daughter of Hieronymus Schlick count of Bassano and Weißkirchen and countess Katharina von Gleichen-Tonna. Both of his parents were Protestants. Count Jindrich Matyas was born on in Lipnice nad Sázavou castle in the Crown of Bohemia. After the death of his father, he was fostered to his Catholic uncle John Ambrose. Young count Thurn served in the Imperial Habsburg embassy, and visited Istanbul, Syria, Egypt and Jerusalem. From 1592 he served in the imperial army against Turks. In imperial service, Thurn rose to the ranks of colonel and War Councillor. By marriage, he came into remarkable landholdings, in Croatian Krajina among other places. The Emperor granted him the burgraviate of Karlštejn Castle in central Bohemia as reward for his accomplishments in the battles against the Turks in Hungary. In northeast Bohemia he purchased 1605 the lordship of Veliš manor, which brought him to the membership of the Bohemian estate of nobles. Politically, Thurn joined the Protestants of Bohemia where he served as marshal of the nobility. In 1617, the devout Catholic archduke Ferdinand of Styria was put forward as Habsburg successor to the aged, childless emperor Matthias, and also to be elected to the Bohemian throne. Bohemian nobles required him to commit to honor their freedom of religion, enshrined in the Decree of the late emperor Rudolph II. Thurn was one of signatories of Bohemians' critical reply to Ferdinand.
Leader of the Bohemian Rebellion
Despite his accession to the crown of Bohemia in 1617, Ferdinand was not willing to agree to the demands of the Bohemian nobility. Furthermore, their demands also failed to prevent Ferdinand's election as Holy Roman Emperor in 1619. What the nobles did achieve was that in 1618, in a stormy event at the Royal Castle of Prague, count Thurn was a key leader of that faction of the nobility who incited a crowd that defenestrated two of Ferdinand's representatives, Bořita of Martinice and Slavata of Chlum together with their scribe, Philip Fabricius. Following the defenestration, Thurn was elected as one of the thirty Defenders of the Protestant Faith elected by the Estates of Bohemia. The revolt of the Protestant population of Bohemia began on 23 May 1618 and Thurn took command of the national army. His command was signified by a series of ineffective campaigns, faults in the campaign plan in some cases beyond his control, which frustrated imperial efforts to quickly crush the revolt. He participated in deposing Ferdinand of Bohemia from the throne and in the election of Frederick V, Elector Palatine as the new Bohemian king. Count Thurn was commander of a regiment at the inauspicious Battle of White Mountain in 1620. After the Bohemians' defeat there, Ferdinand exiled him, like all the other Protestant nobility and townspeople. Consequently, Thurn lost his estates in Bohemia.
In exile
After being exiled, Thurn continued to take part in the fighting and political negotiations of the Thirty Years' War against the Habsburgs, acting in the roles of both diplomat and as a soldier. In 1626 he took command of some troops in Silesia. Then he served as lieutenant general in the army of King Gustav Adolf of Sweden. His only son, count Frantisek Bernard, who rose to the rank of colonel in Swedish service, fell ill during the Polish campaign and died in 1628. On 11 October 1633 Thurn and his force of 8000 soldiers were confronted by Wallenstein's army near Steinau an der Oder in Saxony, where he was captured. He was ransomed soon from the captivity, and retired to the family's new holdings in Pärnu, Estonia. Count Thurn died there, and was buried in the St Mary's Cathedral of Tallinn. His heir was his underage grandson, count Heinrich von Thurn-Valsassina of Pärnu, son of František Bernard and Magdalena von Thurn-Valsassina. Count Thurn wrote a booklet in German, titled Defensionsschrift, the work justifying his role in the events of 1618 as a deliberate, conscious defence of his religious beliefs. The booklet was published in Sweden.
