his enlightened patronage of art and science, his encouragement of commerce, and his toleration render him an honourable exception to the generality of Italian princes. At the same time his paternal despotism tended to emasculate the Tuscan character. He died in June 1824, and was succeeded by his son Leopold II. (q.v.).
Bibliography.—A. von Reumont, Geschichte Toscanas (Gotha, 1877); and “Federico Manfredini e la politica Toscana nei primi anni di Ferdinando III.” (in the Archivio Storico Italiano, 1877); Emmer, Erzherzog Ferdinand III., Grossherzog von Toskana (Salzburg, 1871); C. Tivaroni, L’ Italia durante il dominio francese, ii. 1-44 (Turin, 1889), and L’ Italia durante il dominio austriaco, ii. 1-18 (Turin, 1893). See also under Fossombroni; and Capponi, Gino.
FERDINAND, MAXIMILIAN KARL LEOPOLD MARIA, king of Bulgaria (1861– ), fifth and youngest son of Prince
Augustus of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, was born on the 26th of February 1861. Great care was exercised in his education, and every encouragement given to the taste for natural history which he exhibited at an early age. In 1879 he travelled with his brother Augustus to Brazil, and the results of their botanical
observations were published at Vienna, 1883–1888, under the
title of Itinera Principum S. Coburgi. Having been appointed
to a lieutenancy in the 2nd regiment of Austrian hussars, he
was holding this rank when, by unanimous vote of the National
Assembly, he was elected prince of Bulgaria, on the 7th of July
1887, in succession to Prince Alexander, who had abdicated on
the 7th of September preceding. He assumed the government
on the 14th of August 1887, for Russia for a long time refused
to acknowledge the election, and he was accordingly exposed to
frequent military conspiracies, due to the influence or attitude
of that power. The firmness and vigour with which he met all
attempts at revolution were at length rewarded, and his election
was confirmed in March 1896 by the Porte and the great powers.
On the 20th of April 1893 he married Marie Louise de Bourbon
(d. 1899), eldest daughter of Duke Robert of Parma, and in May
following the Grand Sobranye confirmed the title of Royal Highness
to the prince and his heir. The prince adhered to the
Roman Catholic faith, but his son and heir, the young Prince
Boris, was received into the Orthodox Greek Church on the
14th of February 1896. Prince Boris, to whom the tsar
Nicholas III. became godfather, accompanied his father to Russia in 1898, when Prince Ferdinand visited St Petersburg and Moscow, and still further strengthened the bond already existing between Russia and Bulgaria. In 1908 Ferdinand married Eleanor (b. 1860), a princess of the house of Reuss. Later in the year, in connexion with the Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the crisis with Turkey, he proclaimed the independence of Bulgaria, and took the title of king or tsar. (See Bulgaria, and Europe: History.)
FERDINAND, duke of Brunswick (1721–1792), Prussian
general field marshal, was the fourth son of Ferdinand Albert,
duke of Brunswick, and was born at Wolfenbüttel on the 12th
of January 1721. He was carefully educated with a view to a
military career, and in his twentieth year he was made chief of a
newly-raised Brunswick regiment in the Prussian service. He
was present in the battles of Mollwitz and Chotusitz. In succession
to Margrave Wilhelm of Brandenburg, killed at Prague
(1744), Ferdinand received the command of Frederick the
Great’s Leibgarde battalion, and at Sohr (1745) he distinguished
himself so greatly at the head of his brigade that Frederick
wrote of him, “le Prince Ferdinand s’est surpassé.” The height
which he captured was defended by his brother Ludwig as an
officer of the Austrian service, and another brother of Duke
Ferdinand was killed by his side in the charge. During the ten
years’ peace he was in the closest touch with the military work
of Frederick the Great, who supervised the instruction of the
guard battalion, and sought to make it a model of the whole
Prussian army. Ferdinand was, moreover, one of the most
intimate friends of the king, and thus he was peculiarly fitted
for the tasks which afterwards fell to his lot. In this time he
became successively major-general and lieutenant-general. In
the first campaign of the Seven Years’ War Ferdinand commanded one of the Prussian columns which converged upon Dresden, and in the operations which led up to the surrender of
the Saxon army at Pirna (1756), and at the battle of Lobositz,
he led the right wing of the Prussian infantry. In 1757 he was
present, and distinguished himself, at Prague, and he served also
in the campaign of Rossbach. Shortly after this he was appointed
to command the allied forces which were being organized
for the war in western Germany. He found this army dejected
by a reverse and a capitulation, yet within a week of his taking
up the command he assumed the offensive, and thus began the
career of victory which made his European reputation as a soldier. His conduct of the five campaigns which followed (see Seven Years’ War) was naturally influenced by the teachings of Frederick, whose pupil the duke had been for so many years. Ferdinand, indeed, approximated more closely to Frederick in his method of making war than any other general of the time. Yet his task was in many respects far more difficult than that of the king. Frederick was the absolute master of his own homogeneous army, Ferdinand merely the commander of a group of
contingents, and answerable to several princes for the troops placed under his control. The French were by no means despicable
opponents in the field, and their leaders, if not of the first
grade, were cool and experienced veterans. In 1758 he fought
and won the battle of Crefeld, several marches beyond the
Rhine, but so advanced a position he could not well maintain,
and he fell back to the Lippe. He resumed a bold offensive in
1759, only to be repulsed at Bergen (near Frankfort-on-Main).
On the 1st of August of this year Ferdinand won the brilliant
victory of Minden (q.v.). Vellinghausen, Wilhelmsthal, Warburg
and other victories attested the increasing power of Ferdinand
in the following campaigns, and Frederick, hard pressed in
the eastern theatre of war, owed much of his success in an almost
hopeless task to the continued pressure exerted by Ferdinand in
the west. In promoting him to be a field marshal (November
1758) Frederick acknowledged his debt in the words, “Je n’ai
fait que ce que je dois, mon cher Ferdinand.” After Minden,
King George II. gave the duke the order of the Garter, and the
thanks of the British parliament were voted on the same occasion
to the “Victor of Minden.” After the war he was honoured by
other sovereigns, and he received the rank of field marshal and
a regiment from the Austrians. During the War of American
Independence there was a suggestion, which came to nothing, of
offering him the command of the British forces. He exerted
himself to compensate those who had suffered by the Seven
Years’ War, devoting to this purpose most of the small income he
received from his various offices and the rewards given to him
by the allied princes. The estrangement of Frederick and
Ferdinand in 1766 led to the duke’s retirement from Prussian
service, but there was no open breach between the old friends,
and Ferdinand visited the king in 1772, 1777, 1779 and 1782.
After 1766 he passed the remainder of his life at his castle of
Veschelde, where he occupied himself in building and other improvements,
and became a patron of learning and art, and a
great benefactor of the poor. He died on the 3rd of July 1792.
The merits, civil and military, of the prince were recognized by
memorials not only in Prussia and Hanover, but also in Denmark,
the states of western Germany and England. The Prussian
memorials include an equestrian statue at Berlin (1863).
See E. v. L. Knesebeck, Ferdinand, Herzog von Braunschweig und Lüneburg, während des Siebenjährigen Kriegs (2 vols., Hanover, 1857–1858); Von Westphalen, Geschichte der Feldzüge des Herzogs Ferdinands von Braunschweig-Lüneburg (5 vols., Berlin, 1859–1872); v. d. Osten, Tagebuch des Herzogl. Gen. Adjutanten v. Reden (Hamburg, 1805); v. Schafer, Vie militaire du maréchal Prince Ferdinand (Magdeburg, 1796; Nuremberg, 1798); also the Œuvres of Frederick the Great, passim, and authorities for the Seven Years’ War.
FERDINAND (1577–1650), elector and archbishop of Cologne, son of William V., duke of Bavaria, was born on the 7th of October 1577. Intended for the church, he was educated by the Jesuits at the university of Ingolstadt, and in 1595 became coadjutor archbishop of Cologne. He became elector and archbishop in 1612 on the death of his uncle Ernest, whom he also succeeded as bishop of Liége, Munster and Hildesheim. He
