Ferdinand II.

Ferdinand II., emperor of Germany from 1619 to 1637, was born at Gratz, 9th July 1578. He was grandson of Ferdinand I., his father being Charles, Archduke of Carinthia and Styria, the younger brother of Maximilian. His mother, Maria of Bavaria, early inspired him with hatred against the Protestants, and he was educated by the Jesuits at Ingolstadt, along with Maximilian of Bavaria. It is said that at Loretto he took a solemn oath before the altar of the Mother of God to reinstate Catholicism as the sole religion of his dominions at any cost. As soon as he succeeded to the government of his own duchy of Styria, he set about putting down Protestantism by force. He attempted the same in Bohemia and Hungary, of which countries he had been elected king during the lifetime of his cousin, the childless emperor Matthias; but though at first unsuccessful, and even in danger of losing his dominions, he ultimately managed, with the aid of the Catholic League and of the Elector John George I. of Saxony, to subdue them. Bohemia lost all its privileges, and by merciless hanging, confiscation of property, and the banishment of innumerable families, was reduced to obedience, while by the introduction of the Jesuits, and rigorous persecution of Protestants, he re-established Catholicism. His measures were less entirely successful in Hungary. Meanwhile Ferdinand had been elected emperor of Germany (1619). The war that had already been begun was now transferred to a wider area, and took the character of a religious war—the famous 'Thirty Years' War' (q.v.). The two imperial generals, Tilly and Wallenstein, were opposed by a confederacy of the Protestant states of Lower Saxony, with Christian IV. of Denmark at their head; but the confederates were defeated by Tilly at the battle of Lutter, in Brunswick, and forced to conclude peace at Lübeck in 1629. Confident in the ascendancy which he had acquired, Ferdinand in the same year issued an edict of restitution for the whole of Germany, taking away from the Protestants nearly all the rights they had acquired by a century of struggles; and the troops of Wallenstein and of the League were immediately set to work to carry out this edict in several places. But his further success was soon arrested by the dismissal of Wallenstein, on which the diet of the empire at Ratisbon had insisted, by the opposition of Richelieu, and by the arrival upon the troubled scene of the great Protestant hero, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. After the murder of Wallenstein, at which the jealous Ferdinand connived to his eternal disgrace, the imperial commander, Gallas, by the victory of Nordlingen (1634) detached Saxony from the Swedish alliance; but the ability of the Swedish generals, for whom Austria had none that were a match, and the open part that France now took in the contest, brought back the balance of victory so far to the Protestant arms, that ere the wretched Ferdinand died, February 15, 1637, he had lost all hope of ever attaining the object he had pursued with such unreasoning and relentless constancy. His reign is one of the most disastrous in history; for Germany owes him nothing but bloodshed, misery, and desolation. See Hurter, Geschichte Ferdinands II. (11 vols. Schaffh. 1850-64).