FREDERICK IV. (1574-1610), elector palatine of the Rhine, only surviving son of the elector Louis VI., was born at Amberg on the 5th of March 1574. His father died in October 1583, when the young elector came under the guardianship of his uncle John Casimir, an ardent Calvinist, who, in spite of the wishes of the late elector, a Lutheran, had his nephew educated in his own form of faith. In January 1592, on the death of John Casimir, Frederick undertook the government of the Palatinate, and continued the policy of his uncle, hostility to the Catholic Church and the Habsburgs, and co-operation with foreign Protestants. He was often in communication with Henry of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV. of France, and like him was unremitting in his efforts to conclude a league among the German Protestants, while he sought to weaken the Habsburgs by refusing aid for the Turkish War. After many delays and disappointments the Union of Evangelical Estates was actually formed in May 1608, under the leadership of the elector, and he took a prominent part in directing the operations of the union until his death, which occurred on the 19th of September 1610. Frederick was very extravagant, and liked to surround himself with pomp and luxury. He married in 1593 Louise, daughter of William the Silent, prince of Orange, and was succeeded by Frederick, the elder of his two sons.
See M. Ritter, Geschichte der deutschen Union (Schaffhausen, 1867-1873); and L. Häusser, Geschichte der rheinischen Pfalz (Heidelberg, 1856).
FREDERICK V. (1596-1632), elector palatine of the Rhine and king of Bohemia, son of the elector Frederick IV. by his wife, Louisa Juliana, daughter of William the Silent, prince of Orange, was born at Amberg on the 26th of August 1596. He became elector on his father’s death in September 1610, and was under the guardianship of his kinsman, John II., count palatine of Zweibrücken (d. 1635), until he was declared of age in July 1614. Having received a good education, Frederick had married Elizabeth, daughter of the English king James I., in February 1613, and was the recognized head of the Evangelical Union founded by his father to protect the interests of the Protestants. In 1619 he stepped into a larger arena. Before this date the estates of Bohemia, Protestant in sympathy and dissatisfied with the rule of the Habsburgs, had been in frequent communication with the elector palatine, and in August 1619, a few months after the death of the emperor Matthias, they declared his successor, Ferdinand, afterwards the emperor Ferdinand II., deposed, and chose Frederick as their king. After some hesitation the elector yielded to the entreaties of Christian I., prince of Anhalt (1568-1630), and other sanguine supporters, and was crowned king of Bohemia at Prague on the 4th of November 1619. By this time the emperor Ferdinand was able to take the aggressive, while Frederick, disappointed at receiving no assistance either from England or from the Union, had few soldiers and little money. Consequently on the 8th of November, four days after his coronation, his forces were easily routed by the imperial army under Tilly at the White Hill, near Prague, and his short reign in Bohemia ended abruptly. Soon afterwards the Palatinate was overrun by the Spaniards and Bavarians, and after a futile attempt to dislodge them, Frederick, called in derision the “Winter King,” sought refuge in the Netherlands. Having been placed under the imperial ban his electorate was given in 1623 to Maximilian I. of Bavaria, who also received the electoral dignity.
The remainder of Frederick’s life was spent in comparative obscurity, although his restoration was a constant subject of discussion among European diplomatists. He died at Mainz on the 29th of November 1632, having had a large family, among his children being Charles Louis (1617-1680), who regained the Palatinate at the peace of Westphalia in 1648, and Sophia, who married Ernest Augustus, afterwards elector of Hanover, and was the mother of George I., king of Great Britain. His third son was Prince Rupert, the hero of the English civil war, and another son was Prince Maurice (1620-1652), who also assisted his uncle Charles I. during the civil war. Having sailed with Rupert to the West Indies, Maurice was lost at sea in September 1652.
In addition to the numerous works which treat of the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War see A. Gindely, Friedrich V. von der Pfalz (Prague, 1884); J. Krebs, Die Politik der evangelischen Union im Jahre 1618 (Breslau, 1890-1901); M. Ritter, “Friedrich V.,” in the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, Band vii. (Leipzig, 1878); and Deutsche Lieder auf den Winterkönig, edited by R. Wolkan (Prague, 1899).
FREDERICK I. (1369-1428), surnamed “the Warlike,” elector and duke of Saxony, was the eldest son of Frederick “the Stern,” count of Osterland, and Catherine, daughter and heiress of Henry VIII., count of Coburg. He was born at Altenburg on the 29th of March 1369, and was a member of the family of Wettin. When his father died in 1381 some trouble arose over the family possessions, and in the following year an arrangement was made by which Frederick and his brothers shared Meissen and Thuringia with their uncles Balthasar and William. Frederick’s brother George died in 1402, and his uncle William in 1407. A further dispute then arose, but in 1410 a treaty was made at Naumburg, when Frederick and his brother William added the northern part of Meissen to their lands; and in 1425 the death of William left Frederick sole ruler. In the German town war of 1388 he assisted Frederick V. of Hohenzollern, burgrave of Nuremberg, and in 1391 did the same for the Teutonic Order against Ladislaus V., king of Poland and prince of Lithuania. He supported Rupert III., elector palatine of the Rhine, in his struggle with King Wenceslaus for the German throne, probably because Wenceslaus refused to fulfil a promise to give him his sister Anna in marriage. The danger to Germany from the Hussites induced Frederick to ally himself with the German and Bohemian king Sigismund; and he took a leading part in the war against them, during the earlier years of which he met with considerable success. In the prosecution of this enterprise Frederick spent large sums of money, for which he received various places in Bohemia and elsewhere in pledge from Sigismund, who further rewarded him in January 1423 with the vacant electoral duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg; and Frederick’s formal investiture followed at Ofen on the 1st of August 1425. Thus spurred to renewed efforts against the Hussites, the elector was endeavouring to rouse the German princes to aid him in prosecuting this war when the Saxon army was almost annihilated at Aussig on the 16th of August 1426. Returning to Saxony, Frederick died at Altenburg on the 4th of January 1428, and was buried in the cathedral at Meissen. In 1402 he married Catherine of Brunswick, by whom he left four sons and two daughters. In 1409, in conjunction with his brother William, he founded the university of Leipzig, for the benefit of German students who had just left the university of Prague. Frederick’s importance as an historical figure arises from his having obtained the electorate of Saxe-Wittenberg for the house of Wettin, and transformed the margraviate of Meissen into the territory which afterwards became the kingdom of Saxony. In addition to the king of Saxony, the sovereigns of England and of the Belgians are his direct descendants.
There is a life of Frederick by G. Spalatin in the Scriptores rerum Germanicarum praecipue Saxonicarum, Band ii., edited by J. B. Mencke (Leipzig, 1728-1730). See also C. W. Böttiger and Th. Flathe, Geschichte des Kurstaates und Königreichs Sachsen (Gotha, 1867-1873); and J. G. Horn, Lebens- und Heldengeschichte Friedrichs des Streitbaren (Leipzig, 1733).