Ferdinand III (Ferdinand Ernest; 13 July 1608 – 2 April 1657) was Archduke of Austria, King of Hungary and Croatia from 1625, King of Bohemia from 1627 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1637 to his death.
Ferdinand ascended the throne at the beginning of the last decade of the Thirty Years' War and introduced lenient policies to depart from the old ideas of divine right held by his father, as he wished to end the war quickly. After military defeats and against a background of declining power, Ferdinand was compelled to abandon the political stances of his Habsburg predecessors in many respects to open the long road towards the much-delayed Peace of Westphalia. Although his authority as emperor was weakened after the war, his position in Bohemia, Hungary and Austria was stronger than that of his predecessors before 1618.
Ferdinand was the first Habsburg monarch to be recognised as a musical composer.
Ferdinand was born in Graz as the third son of Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor of Habsburg and his first wife, Maria Anna of Bavaria, and was baptised as Ferdinand Ernst. He grew up in Carinthia with loving care from his parents and developed great affection for his siblings and his father, with whom he always found a consensus in future disagreements. At his father's court, he received religious and scholarly training from Jesuits. The Teutonic knights Johann Jacob von Dhaun (member of the Lower Austrian estate, a union of the local nobility) and Christoph Simon von Thun (the head of Ferdinand's Imperial court and household) had greatly influenced the education of the young archduke. Simon von Thun instructed Ferdinand in military matters. Ferdinand is said to have spoken several languages, but how many and to what degree is unclear. After the deaths of his brothers Karl (1603) and Johann Karl (1619), he was designated as his father's successor and systematically prepared to take over the reign. Like his father, he was a devout Catholic, but he had a certain aversion to the influence of the Jesuits, who had ruled his father's court.
Ferdinand became Archduke of Austria in 1621. On 8 December 1625, he was crowned King of Hungary and on 27 November 1627, King of Bohemia. Ferdinand enhanced his authority and set an important legal and military precedent by issuing a Revised Land Ordinance, which deprived the Bohemian estates of their right to raise soldiers and reserved that power for the monarch. His father was unable to secure him the election as king of the Romans at the Diet of Regensburg of 1630. After he had unsuccessfully applied for the supreme command of the Imperial army and to participate in campaigns of Albrecht von Wallenstein, he joined Wallenstein's opponents at the Imperial court in Vienna and was involved in the arrangements for his second deposition in early 1634.
He married the Spanish Infanta, his cousin Maria Anna of Spain, after years of negotiations with Spanish relatives in 1631. Although it was in the middle of the war, the elaborate wedding was celebrated over fourteen months. The marriage produced six children, including his successors, Ferdinand IV of Hungary and Emperor Leopold I. His loving and intelligent wife and her brother, the Spanish Cardinal Infante Ferdinand, had a great influence on Ferdinand and formed the most important link between the Habsburg courts in Madrid, Brussels and Vienna in the difficult period of the war for the Habsburgs after the death of Wallenstein.
After Wallenstein's assassination, Ferdinand III personally took command of the Imperial army on 2 May 1634 and was supported by the generals Matthias Gallas and Ottavio Piccolomini, the military adviser Johann Kaspar von Stadion and the political adviser Obersthofmeister (Lord Chamberlain) Maximilian von und zu Trauttmansdorff. He achieved his first major military successes in July 1634 by regaining the city of Regensburg, which had been captured and occupied by the Swedish Empire in November 1633. In August 1634, the city of Donauwörth was recaptured, which had been occupied by Sweden since April 1632. In September 1634, those successes were surpassed by the decisive victory of the Battle of Nördlingen, a joint effort with the help of the Spanish forces under Cardinal Infante Ferdinand.
As a consequence, the Swedes lost control over southern Germany and retreated to northern Germany. Ferdinand gained a wider political influence even if his personal contribution in Nördlingen had been rather limited. His influence increased further after the fall of the powerful Imperial minister, Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg, who had dominated the politics of Ferdinand II.
In 1635, Ferdinand III worked as Imperial commissioner in the negotiations for the Peace of Prague, as he tried to persuade the prince electors to adopt the idea of concerted warfare. He also advocated the inclusion of the still-reluctant Protestant estates into the peace process. Even after the resignation of the supreme command, Ferdinand continued to occupy himself with theoretical military issues. Raimondo Montecuccoli later dedicated one of his works to him.
Ferdinand III was elected as King of the Romans at the Diet of Regensburg on 22 December 1636. Upon the death of his father on 15 February 1637, Ferdinand became emperor. His political adviser Trauttmansdorff advanced to the position of Prime Minister of Austria and chief diplomat, but was replaced by John Louis of Nassau-Hadamar in 1647 because of health, which had begun to deteriorate. Trauttmansdorff was succeeded as Obersthofmeister by the later Prime Minister Johann Weikhard of Auersperg, who also taught the royal heir, Ferdinand IV. Unlike his father, Ferdinand III employed no spiritual counsellor.
When Ferdinand became emperor, vast sections of the imperial territories had been absolutely devastated by two decades of war. The population was completely exhausted and massively diminished; countless people were impoverished, disabled, sick or homeless; and many had lost their families and had abandoned all moral standards. Ferdinand did not endeavour to continue the war, but the momentum of the war, the political circumstances and his reluctance to act prevented a quick end to the war. Any hope to make early peace with France and Sweden did not materialise.
With the intervention of France in 1635, the war flared up again. After initial success and a combined Spanish-Imperial campaign into the heart of France in 1636, the military situation of the emperor sharply deteriorated. The Swedes regained initiative with victory at the Battle of Wittstock in 1636 and threatened his recently gained allies: Brandenburg-Prussia and Saxony. Ferdinand reacted by redirecting his main army under Gallas from France to northern Germany in 1637. Gallas could contain the Swedes in Pomerania until a severe lack of supplies forced him to retreat back to Bohemia in late 1638. At the same time, Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, a German Protestant in French service, took the Habsburg possessions in Alsace and the stronghold of Breisach after a long siege. To check the advance of Swedish General Johan Banér, who invaded Bohemia via Saxony in 1639, Ferdinand had to recall Piccolomini's army from the Spanish Netherlands, which largely ended direct military co-operation with Spain. Although Piccolomini and the emperor's brother Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, as the new Imperial commander, could repel Banér back to the Weser river in 1640, the Bohemian lands now underwent continuous threat, and the emperor permanently lost control over northern Germany.
An Imperial Diet was arranged for 1641 in Regensburg, where the estates discussed possible peace arrangements. It turned out to be problematic that the Emperor had excluded princes, who had previously been on the opposing side, as well as the Protestant administrators of various princes of the Imperial Diet. However, it finally succeeded in making all imperial estates agree, with the exception of the Electoral Palatinate, the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg and Hesse-Kassel to the resolutions of the Diet. In 1641, a preliminary peace was signed in Hamburg between Ferdinand, Spain, France and Sweden, and a final peace congress was to convene in Osnabrück and Münster. An alliance between Sweden and France was fully effective since 1642. The Swedes won the Battle of Breitenfeld in 1642. One year later, France decisively defeated Spain at the Battle of Rocroi and could now dedicate more troops to the German theatre.