Passes to Charles V. of Germany.—As Philip died in 1506, his elder son, the celebrated Charles V., became heir to the united monarchies, and was elected emperor of Germany in 1519. Thus, by a succession of fortunate marriages, the House of Hapsburg became the most powerful dynasty in the world.
Charles V., however, resigned all his German territories to his younger brother, Ferdinand I., who was thus the continuation of the Austrian branch of the line. Under Ferdinand the power of Austria greatly increased.
Division of the Empire.—In the partition of the inheritance that took place among Ferdinand’s three sons, the eldest, Maximilian II., received the imperial crown along with Austria, Hungary and Bohemia; the second, Ferdinand, Tyrol and Upper Austria; the third, Charles, got Styria, Carinthia, etc. Maximilian II. was fond of peace, tolerant in religion, and a just ruler. He died in 1576; and of his five sons, the eldest, Rudolf II., became emperor.
Rudolf II. was negligent, leaving everything to his ministers and the Jesuits. His war with the Porte and Transylvania brought him little credit; and the Protestants of Bohemia, oppressed by the Jesuits, extorted from him a charter of religious liberty. In 1608 he was obliged to cede Hungary, and in 1611 Bohemia and Austria, to his brother Matthias.
Matthias, who became emperor in 1612, ceded Bohemia and Hungary to his cousin Ferdinand, son of the Archduke Charles of Styria, third son of Maximilian II. Matthias lived to see the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ war, and died in 1619.
Ferdinand II. and the Thirty Years’ War.—Bohemia refused to acknowledge his successor, Ferdinand II., to whom all the Austrian possessions had again reverted, and chose the Elector Palatine, Frederick V., the head of the Protestant Union, as king. This election gave the signal for the Thirty Years’ war, in which the House of Austria took the lead, both as the champion of Catholicism, and the head of a power which aimed at universal domination in Germany and in the Christian world. The battle of Prague (1620) subjected Bohemia to Ferdinand, who formally set about rooting out Protestantism in that country and in Moravia. The emperor also succeeded in extorting acknowledgment of his sovereignty from the states of Austria; and here, too, Protestantism, which had made great progress since the time of Luther, was mercilessly suppressed.
Under Ferdinand’s successor, the Emperor Ferdinand III. (1637-1657), Austria continued to be a theater of war; and at the peace of Westphalia (1648) had to cede Alsace to France.
Leopold I. and the War of the Spanish Succession.—Ferdinand III.’s son and successor, Leopold I., provoked the Hungarians to rebellion by his severity. The struggle between Leopold and Louis XIV. of France for the heirship to the king of Spain led to the War of the Spanish Succession, during which Leopold died, in 1705.
His eldest son and successor, the enlightened Joseph I., continued the war. He died childless in 1711, and was succeeded by his brother, Charles VI.