take up the cause of the infant prince, John Sigismund, and under the pretext of keeping Hungary in trust for him, occupied Buda, the capital of the country. He pursued the war against Ferdinand until 1547, when a truce was bought from Soleyman at the price of a tribute. The war was renewed again in 1552, and terminated by a second truce, but the Turks had gained the lower tierce of Hungary, and the sovereignty over Transylvania. Though Ferdinand's cautious policy had such deplorable results in Hungary, it met with greater success in Germany. Charles V., involved in continuous struggles with France and the Italian powers, had in Germany to encounter the religious reformation and the attempts of the princes to weaken the bonds which bound them to the empire. Unable to surmount these difficulties single-handed, he had his brother Ferdinand in 1531 elected Roman king. In this capacity Ferdinand succeeded in negotiating the treaty of Passau between Charles V. and the elector Maurice of Saxony. In 1556 he was elected emperor, and the monetary reforms at the imperial diet of 1559, the organization of the judiciary, and the toleration displayed towards the protestants, made him popular in Germany. Ferdinand died in 1564, having divided his hereditary possessions among his younger sons.—F. P., L.
Ferdinand II., Emperor of Germany, son of the Archduke Charles of Styria, was born in 1578 at Gratz in Styria. His mother imbued him with the most fanatical hatred against the Reformation, which the jesuits, who educated him, did their best to inflame. Having, in 1600, made a solemn vow to make Roman Catholicism at any sacrifice the dominant faith in his dominions, he at once entered the path of religious persecution, and actually suppressed protestantism in Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola by the sword and the axe. At the failure of the elder Austrian line, Ferdinand was elected king of Bohemia in 1618, and in the following year king of Hungary, but only after having formally guaranteed the rights of the protestants in both countries. However, he did not feel himself bound by these promises; and even before the death of the Emperor Matthias, though legally forbidden to exercise supreme power, he began the work of oppression by imprisoning Cardinal Klesel, the minister of the emperor. The Bohemians rose in arms against the invader of their religious and constitutional rights, and marched upon Vienna. The Emperor Matthias died brokenhearted in 1619; the Viennese rose now against Ferdinand, and were insisting, with threats against his person, that he should sign a decree recognizing religious liberty, when the timely arrival of General Boucquoi's army saved him. Ferdinand, attributed this rescue to the miraculous interference of the Virgin. He now succeeded likewise in Germany in obtaining the imperial election; but the estates of Bohemia, Silesia, Moravia, and both Lusatias, gave their crown to the Elector-palatine Frederic V. The independence of Bohemia, however, lasted only for a short time, though Gabriel Bethlen, rising about the same time in Hungary against Ferdinand, seriously endangered the position of the emperor. Bethlen conquered Hungary without meeting with serious resistance, and being elected king at the diet of Pressburg in 1620, he entered into an alliance with Bohemia. Ferdinand, however, was supported even by the protestant elector of Saxony, and thus his army was able to defeat the king of Bohemia in the battle on the White Mountain, on the 8th of November, 1620. Frederic lost his crown and even his hereditary possessions; Bohemia forfeited her constitutional freedom; but Hungary held out, and enabled Gabriel Bethlen, on the 31st of December, 1621, to conclude a peace with Ferdinand, which secured religious liberty to the protestants of Hungary, and one half of the country to the prince of Transylvania. Ferdinand's fanatical spirit, however, remained unbroken; he could not reconcile religious toleration with his vow, and he had the protestant Bohemians imprisoned and executed, their property confiscated, and their children brought up by the jesuits. In Hungary he had to modify this system, for Prince Gabriel Bethlen headed two other insurrections against him, and up to his death successfully maintained the rights of the protestants. The emperor's great difficulty lay, however, in Germany, whither his religious persecutions had transferred the war from Bohemia. The protestants, disheartened by the emperor's easy conquest of Bohemia, found no lasting support in King Christian IV. of Denmark, who was soon defeated by Wallenstein, Ferdinand's great general. Thus the emperor thought himself powerful enough to annul in 1629, all the rights and privileges of the protestants in Germany by the so-called "edict of restitution." His success began to alarm the Roman catholic powers themselves; the German princes insisted upon the dismissal of Wallenstein, since the exactions of the imperial army had become a curse to allies as well as enemies. Cardinal Richelieu promised aid to the protestants, and King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden came over with a powerful well-disciplined army to protect liberty in Germany, and at the same time to establish the preponderance of Sweden. All the advantages won by Ferdinand were now lost, his armies were defeated, and even Wallenstein could not stay the victorious career of the king of Sweden. The bullet which pierced Gustavus Adolphus in 1632, relieved the emperor of a great anxiety; but soon after Wallenstein himself became suspected, and was assassinated by Ferdinand's command. Though General Gallas defeated the Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar at Nördlingen in 1634, the cause of protestantism remained successful, supported as it was by the statesmanship of the great Oxenstierna, by the gallantry of the Generals Banner and Torstenson, and by the diplomatic assistance of Cardinal Richelieu. Ferdinand finding now that his endeavours to crush protestantism in Germany were of no avail, continued the war without the hope of success, and his only object in life was to have the succession of his son Ferdinand secured. The emperor lived to see this wish accomplished; Ferdinand III. was elected to the throne of Hungary in November, and of Germany in December, 1636. Ferdinand II. died in February, 1637, after a bloody and disastrous reign of nineteen years, spent in religious wars and cruel persecutions.—F. P., L.
Ferdinand III., Emperor of Germany, son of the Emperor Ferdinand II., was born in 1608. Though brought up by jesuits, he did not inherit the dark fanaticism of his father. The general ruin of Germany, of which he was an eye-witness, made a deep impression on him; but when he ascended the throne in 1637, he saw that it was beyond his power to put a stop to a struggle which had disturbed and complicated all the relations of the German princes with each other, and through which France and Sweden found it their interest to weaken Germany. Ferdinand had, therefore, not only to continue the war, but even to witness its horrors increased by the growing demoralization of the armies. By and by, however, the emperor prepared a peaceful solution of his own difficulties and those of the empire, by granting amnesties to some of the compromised princes, even before the uniform success of the Swedish armies had broken the stubbornness of the Roman catholic German princes. But although diplomatic conferences promised a general settlement of affairs long before, the war raged at intervals until, in 1648, the peace of Westphalia was concluded, the basis of religious liberty in Germany up to our day. By this treaty freedom of worship for the Lutheran and Calvinist churches, was unreservedly acknowledged. With Hungary, where Prince George Rákóczy had risen in aid of his persecuted co-religionists, Ferdinand made peace in 1647, guaranteeing the constitution to the country and religious liberty to the protestants. These events disposed Hungary and Germany so favourably towards the emperor, that the election of his son Ferdinand to the throne met with no opposition, but the archduke died in 1654. In the same year the emperor presided at the German diet, reorganizing the judiciary, which, during the anarchy of the Thirty Years' war, had gone from bad to worse. The last years of Ferdinand were devoted to diplomatic negotiations for checking the ambition of Sweden. He died in April, 1657.—F. P., L.
Ferdinand I., Emperor of Austria, the son of Francis II., emperor of Germany, was born at Vienna, April 19, 1793. Subject to epileptic fits, neglected in his education, and treated with disrespect by the court of his father, he still enjoyed considerable popularity for h's natural benevolence. His constitutional complaint increased with his years, and lamentably weakened all his mental faculties. Still the Emperor Francis had him crowned (in September, 1830) junior king of Hungary, in order to show Europe that the loyalty of Hungary remained unshaken by the revolution of Paris. After the death of his father in 1835 the business of government was carried on in the name of Ferdinand by the Archduke Louis, by Count Kollowrat, and principally by Prince Metternich. The mitigation of the punishment of the political prisoners in the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom at his accession, and the complete amnesty granted in 1838, on the occasion of his assuming the iron crown at Milan, were universally ascribed to the benevolence of the emperor himself. The
