Birthday Greetings #40

Happy birthday to Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor.  Ferdinand became emperor in 1637 on the death of his father, Ferdinand II.  From his father Ferdinand inherited Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Austria and the Thirty Years War.  The war had been going for nineteen years when Ferdinand gained responsibility for it and it is safe to say that by this time absolutely everybody was sick of it.  Despite this it took another eleven years before they finally managed to wind it up.

The war had started as an attempt by his ultracatholic father to slap down some dissident protestant nobility but had got way out of hand.  The entire empire had picked sides (although not consistently, one of the reasons why it dragged on so long) Spain being Catholic and Habsburg had backed their relatives in Vienna, Sweden had backed the protestant princes of the empire and France had bankrolled them because although the French were Catholic an opportunity to trash the Habsburgs was considered a little more important than any minor considerations of religion. 

With the death (by murder) of the top Habsburg general our boy (as heir to the throne) took over command of the imperial armies and actually won a victory or two.  Unfortunately it was downhill from there and the first eleven years of Ferdinand's reign were consumed by attempts to get out of the war.  Ultimately concessions had to be made.  The Habsburgs hadn't really lost the war but they hadn't won it either and if they wanted peace they would have to bend a little.  The bending consisted of freedom of confession for princes (their subjects had to follow their lead) and granting all the constituent states of the Holy Roman Empire the right to conduct their own foreign policy.

This replaced a united nation under the lead of a universally acknowledged emperor with a kaleidoscope of essentially independent nations some of which you could throw a handkerchief across.  Or it would have replaced such a united nation if it had existed in the first place.  The Thirty Years War pretty much proved that it didn't.  By signing off on the deal Ferdinand reduced the empire to a largely honorary irrelevance.  Actually the empire had been a largely honorary irrelevance for over a century but Ferdinand's signature made it official.  This actually affected Ferdinand and the succeeding Habsburg emperors less than you might think.  Being Holy Roman emperor brought the Habsburgs a lot of prestige and the highest secular title in Europe but their actual power was based in the lands they directly controlled and here there had been no diminution whatsoever.  As for the empire it was enough that a Habsburg had the title (or more accurately, that no one else had the title).

With the war finally disposed of Ferdinand proved the irrelevance of the empire in a somewhat more subtle way.  He spent the rest of his reign reorganising and improving the government machinery in his hereditary lands, his powerbase.  He formed the empire's (really the Habsburg family's) first standing army by keeping several mercenary regiments raised for the war on the books and paying them himself.  With his house more or less in order he started to reassert the somewhat battered prestige of the Habsburg family using his own army and the residual splendour of the imperial title to achieve his aims.

He also composed music.  A lot of the Habsburgs were musical although they tended to confine themselves to the appropriate role in music for monarchs ie, paying other talented people to do it for them.  Ferdinand certainly did this but he also wrote music himself, largely religious although there are a few secular pieces also attributed to his pen.  The general opinion of his work is that it was nowhere near as bad as one might expect of an emperor who thought he was musical.

Ferdinand should have been succeeded by his son Ferdinand IV and he spent a lot of money "persuading" the imperial electors to elect his son as King of the Romans which was a courtesy title given to the person who would be the next emperor.  Unfortunately Ferdinand IV inconsiderately died of smallpox before his father leaving Ferdinand III distraught.  So distraught in fact that it was almost disastrous.  Ferdinand had another son, Leopold and with the death of his eldest it should have been a simple matter for the coach to tap the substitute on the shoulder and send him out onto the field.  But Ferdinand was so upset by his eldest son's death that he didn't do any of the necessary political groundwork (bribery) to persuade the electors to pick Leopold instead.  The result was that when Ferdinand died the entire imperial succession was thrown open and with other candidates showing an interest Leopold had to pay quite staggering bribes to get the electors to vote for him.