Ferdinand III of Habsburg
Ferdinand III inherited the Thirty Years' War from his father and spent his reign getting out of it. Born in 1608, he was elected King of Hungary and Bohemia in his father's lifetime and took military command after the assassination of Wallenstein in 1634 — an assassination his own court had ordered, and which removed the only general Habsburg Austria had who could win the war and could not be controlled. He commanded at Nördlingen that year, where the imperial and Spanish armies destroyed the Swedish force and reversed everything Gustavus Adolphus had gained. That victory produced the Peace of Prague in 1635, which was meant to end the war by settling the German question among Germans, and it brought France in openly instead, since Richelieu could not accept a Habsburg victory whatever it cost. Ferdinand became emperor in 1637 and fought thirteen more years, most of them losing, with Swedish armies in Bohemia and French armies on the Rhine and his own territories stripped. What distinguishes him from his father is that he understood that the war could not be won and negotiated accordingly. He authorised the talks at Münster and Osnabrück, accepted terms in 1648 that conceded Calvinist toleration, the effective sovereignty of the German princes, and territory to France and Sweden, and imposed the settlement on the Spanish branch of his own family, which wanted to fight on. He was a serious composer and kept a musical court. He died in 1657. What he salvaged is the point. The Habsburgs lost the German question in 1648 and kept Bohemia, Hungary and Austria as a hereditary bloc under a single administration, which is the state that fought the Ottomans out of Hungary in his son's reign and lasted until 1918.
- Lived: 1608 CE – 1657 CE
- Nationality: Austrian
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state, military_leader
