Background
Ferdinand of Hapsburg was born in Graz in Styria on July 13, 1608, son of the later emperor Ferdinand II and Maria Anna of Bavaria.
From 1626 onward his father brought him into the councils of state.
Ferdinand of Hapsburg was born in Graz in Styria on July 13, 1608, son of the later emperor Ferdinand II and Maria Anna of Bavaria.
From 1626 onward his father brought him into the councils of state.
Educated by the Jesuits, he became Archduke of Austria in 1621, King of Hungary in 1625, and King of Bohemia in 1627.
In 1627 Ferdinand enhanced his authority and set an important legal and military precedent by issuing a Revised Land Ordinance that deprived the Bohemian estates of their right to raise soldiers, reserving this power solely for the monarch.
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 Donauworth, and the defeat of the Swedes at Nordlingen.
After Wallenstein's murder, Ferdinand commanded nominally at the battle of Nördlingen in 1634 and won reflected glory.
Twice during the protracted peace negotiations, in 1645 and in 1647, he took personal command of his armies in an effort to win on the battlefield what he could not gain at the bargaining table.
The Westphalian treaties of 1648 were a great disappointment to him, and Ferdinand had to be forced by his supporters to accede to them and rid Germany of the foreign soldiery. .
In 1653 he engineered the election of his oldest son, Ferdinand Maria, as king of Rome, only to have his hopes dashed with his heir's sudden death in 1654.
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.
The last years of his reign were largely taken up by his ultimately successful efforts to secure the imperial throne for his second son, the Archduke Leopold.
His musical works, together with those of the emperors Leopold I and Joseph I, have been published by G. Adler (Vienna, 1892 - 1893).
He firmly upheld the Catholic restoration in Bohemia and Austria but showed more willingness to negotiate with the established Protestant states of Germany.
Unlike his father, he was a gifted linguist and spoke the languages of all his subjects: German, Hungarian, Czech, Italian, Spanish, and French as well as Latin.
Frugal, stolid, and rather shy, he grew mistrustful and ill-tempered in his later years.
Aside from his passion for the hunt, Ferdinand III had a love of learning and a special fondness for music which became a family tradition.
Ferdinand III had a love of learning and a special fondness for music which became a family tradition.
He studied music under Giovanni Valentini, who bequeathed his musical works to him, and had close ties with Johann Jakob Froberger, one of the most important keyboard composers of the 17th century.
On 20 February 1631 Ferdinand III married his first wife Archduchess Maria Anna of Spain, by whom he had six children.
In 1648, Ferdinand III married his second wife, Archduchess Maria Leopoldine of Austria, they had a single son.
In 1651, Ferdinand III married Eleonora Gonzaga, they were parents to four children.
Ferdinand II was a member of the House of Habsburg, was Holy Roman Emperor, King of Bohemia and King of Hungary. His acts started the Thirty Years' War.
She was German princess member of the House of Wittelsbach by birth and Archduchess of Inner Austria by marriage.
