Ferdinand II (Holy Roman Empire)

Ferdinand II (Holy Roman Empire) (1578-1637), Holy Roman emperor (1619-1637), king of Bohemia (1617-1619), and king of Hungary (1621-1625). He was born in Graz, Austria, the grandson of Emperor Ferdinand I, and was educated by Jesuits, from whom he acquired a deep antipathy toward Protestantism. In 1618, in protest against Ferdinand's efforts to restore Catholicism, Bohemian rebels threw two of Ferdinand's ministers out of a window. This incident, known as the Defenestration of Prague, was the immediate cause of the Thirty Years' War. The Bohemians replaced Ferdinand with Frederick V, elector of the Rhenish Palatinate. Ferdinand, as a Habsburg, became Holy Roman emperor in 1619 and, allied with Bavaria and the Catholic League, defeated the Bohemians at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620. He deposed Frederick and sent him into exile. Ferdinand was waging war simultaneously against a force of Hungarian Protestants led by Gabriel Bethlen. Following his victory Ferdinand negotiated with Bethlen and secured the title of king of Hungary. The imperial forces, commanded by the count of Tilly and Albrecht von Wallenstein, were successful in the war against the Protestant forces in Germany in 1625.

By 1627 Ferdinand had outlawed all religions but Roman Catholicism and had banished the Protestant laity and clergy from Bohemia. In 1629 the Edict of Restitution empowered the Roman Catholic church to recover all property seized by Protestants since the Treaty of Passau had imposed a religious settlement on Germany in 1552. The edict, however, alienated some of Ferdinand's allies, and this, together with the assumption of Protestant King Gustav II Adolph of Sweden and the assassination of Wallenstein, weakened the imperial authority. Although his armies won the Battle of Nördlingen in 1634, Ferdinand was unable to carry out his plan to repress Protestantism throughout the empire. The termination of the Thirty Years' War was left to his son Ferdinand III.