To deal with the elector palatine and his allies the new emperor allied himself with Maximilian I., duke of Bavaria, and the Catholic League, who drove Frederick from Bohemia in 1620, while Ferdinand’s Spanish allies devastated the Palatinate. Peace having been made with Bethlen Gabor in December 1621, the first period of the war ended in a satisfactory fashion for the emperor, and he could turn his attention to completing the work of crushing the Protestants, which had already begun in his archduchies and in Bohemia. In 1623 the Protestant clergy were expelled from Bohemia; in 1624 all worship save that of the Roman Catholic church was forbidden; and in 1627 an order of banishment against all Protestants was issued. A new constitution made the kingdom hereditary in the house of Habsburg, gave larger powers to the sovereign, and aimed at destroying the nationality of the Bohemians. Similar measures in Austria led to a fresh rising which was put down by the aid of the Bavarians in 1627, and Ferdinand could fairly claim that in his hereditary lands at least he had rendered Protestantism innocuous.
The renewal of the Thirty Years’ War in 1625 was caused mainly by the emperor’s vigorous championship of the cause of the counter-reformation in northern and north-eastern Germany. Again the imperial forces were victorious, chiefly owing to the genius of Wallenstein, who raised and led an army in this service, although the great scheme of securing the southern coast of the Baltic for the Habsburgs was foiled partly by the resistance of Stralsund. In March 1629 Ferdinand and his advisers felt themselves strong enough to take the important step towards which their policy in the Empire had been steadily tending. Issuing the famous edict of restitution, the emperor ordered that all lands which had been secularized since 1552, the date of the peace of Passau, should be restored to the church, and prompt measures were taken to enforce this decree. Many and powerful interests were vitally affected by this proceeding, and the result was the outbreak of the third period of the war, which was less favourable to the imperial arms than the preceding ones. This comparative failure was due, in the initial stages of the campaign, to Ferdinand’s weakness in assenting in 1630 to the demand of Maximilian of Bavaria that Wallenstein should be deprived of his command, and also to the genius of Gustavus Adolphus; and in its later stages to his insistence on the second removal of Wallenstein, and to his complicity in the assassination of the general. This deed was followed by the peace of Prague, concluded in 1635, primarily with John George I., elector of Saxony, but soon assented to by other princes; and this treaty, which made extensive concessions to the Protestants, marks the definite failure of Ferdinand to crush Protestantism in the Empire, as he had already done in Austria and Bohemia. It is noteworthy, however, that the emperor refused to allow the inhabitants of his hereditary dominions to share in the benefits of the peace. During these years Ferdinand had also been menaced by the secret or open hostility of France. A dispute over the duchies of Mantua and Monferrato was ended by the treaty of Cherasco in 1631, but the influence of France was employed at the imperial diets and elsewhere in thwarting the plans of Ferdinand and in weakening the power of the Habsburgs. The last important act of the emperor was to secure the election of his son Ferdinand as king of the Romans. An attempt in 1630 to attain this end had failed, but in December 1636 the princes, meeting at Regensburg, bestowed the coveted dignity upon the younger Ferdinand. A few weeks afterwards, on the 15th of February 1637, the emperor died at Vienna, leaving, in addition to the king of the Romans, a son Leopold William (1614-1662), bishop of Passau and Strassburg. Ferdinand’s reign was so occupied with the Thirty Years’ War and the struggle with the Protestants that he had little time or inclination for other business. It is interesting to note, however, that this orthodox and Catholic emperor was constantly at variance with Pope Urban VIII. The quarrel was due principally, but not entirely, to events in Italy, where the pope sided with France in the dispute over the succession to Mantua and Monferrato. The succession question was settled, but the enmity remained; Urban showing his hostility by preventing the election of the younger Ferdinand as king of the Romans in 1630, and by turning a deaf ear to the emperor’s repeated requests for assistance to prosecute the war against the heretics. Ferdinand’s character has neither individuality nor interest, but he ruled the Empire during a critical and important period. Kind and generous to his dependents, his private life was simple and blameless, but he was to a great extent under the influence of his confessors.
Bibliography.—The chief authorities for Ferdinand’s life and reign are F.C. Khevenhiller, Annales Ferdinandei (Regensburg, 1640-1646); F. van Hurter, Geschichte Kaiser Ferdinands II. (Schaffhausen, 1850-1855); Korrespondenz Kaiser Ferdinands II. mit P. Becanus und P.W. Lamormaini, edited by B. Dudik (Vienna, 1848 fol.); and F. Stieve, in the Allegmeine deutsche Biographie, Band vi. (Leipzig, 1877). See also the elaborate bibliography in the Cambridge Modern History, vol. iv. (Cambridge, 1906).
FERDINAND III. (1608-1657), Roman emperor, was the elder son of the emperor Ferdinand II., and was born at Gratz on the 13th of July 1608. Educated by the Jesuits, he was crowned king of Hungary in December 1625, and king of Bohemia two years later, and soon began to take part in imperial business. Wallenstein, however, refused to allow him to hold a command in the imperial army; and henceforward reckoned among his enemies, the young king was appointed the successor of the famous general when he was deposed in 1634; and as commander-in-chief of the imperial troops he was nominally responsible for the capture of Regensburg and Donauwörth, and the defeat of the Swedes at Nördlingen. Having been elected king of the Romans, or German king, at Regensburg in December 1636, Ferdinand became emperor on his father’s death in the following February, and showed himself anxious to put an end to the Thirty Years’ War. He persuaded one or two princes to assent to the terms of the treaty of Prague; but a general peace was delayed by his reluctance to grant religious liberty to the Protestants, and by his anxiety to act in unison with Spain. In 1640 he had refused to entertain the idea of a general amnesty suggested by the diet at Regensburg; but negotiations for peace were soon begun, and in 1648 the emperor assented to the treaty of Westphalia. This event belongs rather to the general history of Europe, but it is interesting to note that owing to Ferdinand’s insistence the Protestants in his hereditary dominions did not obtain religious liberty at this settlement. After 1648 the emperor was engaged in carrying out the terms of the treaty and ridding Germany of the foreign soldiery. In 1656 he sent an army into Italy to assist Spain in her struggle with France, and he had just concluded an alliance with Poland to check the aggressions of Charles X, of Sweden when he died on the 2nd of April 1657. Ferdinand was a scholarly and cultured man, an excellent linguist and a composer of music. Industrious and popular in public life, his private life was blameless; and although a strong Roman Catholic he was less fanatical than his father. His first wife was Maria Anna (d. 1646), daughter of Philip III. of Spain, by whom he had three sons: Ferdinand, who was chosen king of the Romans in 1653, and who died in the following year; Leopold, who succeeded his father on the imperial throne; and Charles Joseph (d. 1664), bishop of Passau and Breslau, and grand-master of the Teutonic order. The emperor’s second wife was his cousin Maria (d. 1649), daughter of the archduke Leopold; and his third wife was Eleanora of Mantua (d. 1686). His musical works, together with those of the emperors Leopold I. and Joseph I., have been published by G. Adler (Vienna, 1892-1893).
See M. Koch, Geschichte des deutschen Reiches unter der Regierung Ferdinands III. (Vienna, 1865-1866).
FERDINAND I. (1793-1875), emperor of Austria, eldest son of Francis I. and of Maria Theresa of Naples, was born at Vienna on the 19th of April 1793. In his boyhood he suffered from epileptic fits, and could therefore not receive a regular education. As his health improved with his growth and with travel, he was not set aside from the succession. In 1830 his father caused him to be crowned king of Hungary, a pure formality, which gave him no power, and was designed to avoid possible trouble in the future. In 1831 he was married to Anna, daughter of Victor Emmanuel I. of Sardinia. The marriage was barren. When Francis I. died on the 2nd of March 1835, Ferdinand was recognized as his successor. But his incapacity was so notorious that the conduct of affairs was entrusted to a council of state, consisting of Prince Metternich (q.v.) with other ministers, and two archdukes, Louis and Francis Charles. They composed the Staatsconferenz, the ill-constructed and informal regency which led the Austrian dominions to the revolutionary outbreaks of 1846-1849. (See [Austria-Hungary].) The emperor, who was subject to fits of actual insanity, and in his lucid intervals was weak and confused in mind, was a political nullity. His personal amiability earned him the affectionate pity of his subjects, and he became the hero of popular stories which did not tend to maintain the dignity of the crown. It was commonly said that having taken refuge on a rainy day in a farmhouse he was so tempted by the smell of the dumplings which the farmer and his family were eating for dinner, that he insisted on having one. His doctor, who knew them to be indigestible, objected, and thereupon Ferdinand, in an imperial rage, made the answer:—“Kaiser bin i’, und Knüdel müss i’ haben” (I am emperor, and will have the dumpling)—which has become a Viennese proverb. His popular name of Der Gütige (the good sort of man) expressed as much derision as affection. Ferdinand had good taste for art and music. Some modification of the tight-handed rule of his father was made by the Staatsconferenz during his reign. In the presence of the revolutionary troubles, which began with agrarian riots in Galicia in 1846, and then spread over the whole empire, he was personally helpless. He was compelled to escape from the disorders of Vienna to Innsbruck on the 17th of May 1848. He came back on the invitation of the diet on the 12th of August, but soon had to escape once more from the mob of students and workmen who were in possession of the city. On the 2nd of December he abdicated at Olmütz in favour of his nephew, Francis Joseph. He lived under supervision by doctors and guardians at Prague till his death on the 29th of June 1855.
See Krones von Marchland, Grundriss der österreichischen Geschichte (Vienna, 1882), which gives an ample bibliography; Count F. Hartig, Genesis der Revolution in Österreich (Leipzig, 1850),—an enlarged English translation will be found in the 4th volume of W. Coxe’s House of Austria (London, 1862).