The Habsburgs- The History of a Dynasty

by Benjamin Curtis

  Still, even Felipe by the last decade of his life felt that his monarchy was being bled dry by endless war. The goal with which Olivares had begun—restoring Spain’s reputation—was palpably lost by these last years. A symbolic moment in that loss was a diplomatic dispute at the London court in 1661. Contrary to a century’s practice of giving Spanish diplomats absolute precedence in protocol, on Louis XIV’s orders the French diplomatic corps insisted that France receive precedence. The Spanish diplomats protested, and a brawl broke out. Louis then gave Felipe an ultimatum, and since he could not risk a new war, Felipe had to acquiesce. Henceforth the Spanish would be demoted in favor of the French. This deepened the depression Felipe had felt since the mid-1640s, after his wife and son died in short order. By 1665 Felipe was mentally and physically exhausted, much like Castile itself. On his deathbed he expressed the guilt he felt about the crushing toll of taxes and war he had imposed on Castile, but praised what he called “the effort and offering of blood which the Castilians have made and continue to make every day in defense of the Catholic religion.”8 He died just a few weeks after the final, dismaying defeat at Villaviciosa that failed to retake Portugal. In Spanish historiography Felipe IV has sometimes been classed with Felipe III and Carlos II as one of the Austrias menores, or minor Spanish Habsburgs. But the pivotal events of his reign, and his attentive approach to kingship and governance, merit a position as one of the most complex of all Habsburg rulers—in part because so many of the decisions he took ultimately hurt his realms and his dynasty.

  Ferdinand II (1578–1637)

  Ferdinand II was a curious mixture of timidity and intransigence, of personal amiability coupled with near-fanatical intolerance of Protestants. Coming after the conflicted religious attitudes of Maximilian II and Rudolf II, Ferdinand launched the Austrian branch on a new course of aggressive and often single-minded Counter-Reformation. It is with him that the Austrian Habsburgs introduced the especially pompous Catholic piety that so defined the dynasty. He was not an especially astute ruler, but his many political failings were balanced by his decisive victory over the Bohemian rebellion. He came to the throne in August 1619 when he was 41. A small, chubby man, he affected a Spanish-style mustache and goatee. He was a hard worker and well-liked by many people who knew him, but he was no natural politician, owing to his dearth of imagination and excess of stubbornness. An intense, rather suffocating piety was the main element of his personality. He spent several hours a day in masses and prayer. Jesuits made a big impact on his upbringing and education, and continued to be influential in his court. He even said that he wished he had been a Jesuit. He may thus be the most priestly of all Habsburg rulers; despite his two marriages, he generally distanced himself from women and lustful temptations.

  His firm moral convictions reflected his strict adherence to Catholic doctrine, which in turn deeply shaped his rule. He was certain that upholding the Catholic Church was his and his dynasty’s God-given mission. This literal-minded devotion meant that Ferdinand rarely considered the broader implications of his policies. His inability or refusal to sacrifice dogma to pragmatism often proved counterproductive to his own ends. Apart from matters of religion, he was not particularly strong-willed, and in fact could be pliant and sluggish. His mother basically ruled him until he reached 30, even as he was already archduke of Styria. She pushed him to take a hard-line against Protestants in his lands, something to which he was already disposed after his vigorous Jesuit education at Ingolstadt in Bavaria. So with his mother pulling his strings, he began driving Protestants out of Inner Austria around 1600, trying to bring the province completely back to Catholicism. The Counter-Reformation became the guiding light for nearly all of Ferdinand’s politics. While its trends predated him, it was under his rule that more intensive re-Catholicization began.

  What he had started in Styria he then pursued aggressively throughout the Danubian domains when, after Matthias’s death, he became the head of the Austrian branch of the family. Starting in the 1620s, he burned books, expelled Protestants from his territories, appointed clerics to his ruling circle, and enlisted the Jesuits to convert high nobles in Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary back to Catholicism. The strength of the nobility in Hungary meant that they retained more religious freedom. Nonetheless, wherever he could, Ferdinand ordered churches built to promote cults of Catholic saints and the Virgin Mary. The Church gained a near monopoly on education, to the detriment of freer, nonconformist thinking. Similarly, censorship and a crackdown on book printing began to isolate the Habsburg domains from wider European intellectual trends. Ferdinand’s intolerance was not unusual in the context of the seventeenth century, when religious unity was regarded as essential to a well-ordered state. He was just more zealous than most rulers in enforcing religious orthodoxy. Interestingly, Ferdinand was never completely despotic in his Counter-Reformatory ardor, since he allowed some of the Lower Austrian nobility who swore loyalty to him in 1620 to continue to practice Protestantism. He also never hated Protestants personally—he persecuted them because he thought it was his duty.

  Ferdinand was elected king of Bohemia in 1617 and king of Hungary in 1618. In both cases, the crown was soon contested, in Bohemia by Friedrich V of the Palatinate, and in Hungary by the Transylvanian prince Gábor Bethlen. But Ferdinand had enough support in the Empire that he was elected there in March 1619 after Matthias died. The decades of weak rule by Rudolf II and Matthias had let more of the emperor’s authority drift away, and confessional splits made collaboration with the princes yet more difficult. The confessional splits tended to mirror geopolitical ones, which formed along pro-Habsburg and anti-Habsburg lines. Those in the latter camp feared the concentration of power in the combined Spanish and Austrian branches of the family (since both branches had territory within the Empire), and so sought out the French and later the Swedes as counterweights.

  All of these splits played into the disastrous Thirty Years’ War, which consumed all of Ferdinand’s reign and much of his son’s. This conflict began in Habsburg lands and usually centered on the Habsburgs’ position in Europe. The dynasty at times collaborated quite closely, but at other times saw its interests diverge. Spain provided consistent subsidies and troops to the Austrian branch, even though Felipe IV was much more pragmatic on the confessional issues than was Ferdinand II. Most of the fighting took place in Germany and Bohemia; Austria and Hungary saw little actual combat, but Austria suffered most from the attendant economic collapse and disease outbreaks. The war can be divided into four broad phases: the initial conflict over Bohemia and the Palatinate to 1625, a less intense period of Danish involvement to 1629, then a hard-fought Swedish invasion to 1635, followed by a direct confrontation between the Habsburgs and France to 1648.

  Tensions between Protestants and Catholics in Bohemia had been escalating already in Matthias’s last years. Matthias drastically curtailed Protestants’ rights to build churches, and their freedom to assemble. Ferdinand, once he became king, had promised to respect the tolerant terms of the Letter of Majesty from Rudolf’s time, but began undermining it nonetheless. Protestants’ anger at their persecution provoked the famous defenestration of Prague of 23 May 1618. A group of Protestant nobles burst into governmental chambers in Prague Castle and tossed the king’s servants, two Catholic nobles—Martinic and Slavata—as well as a secretary, out a window. This was the spark for the Bohemian rebellion and the entire Thirty Years’ War. Ferdinand considered from the beginning that the resistance to his authority was not confined to Bohemia, and that other powers were involved, particularly the militant Calvinists of the Palatinate. He commented darkly, “This alarm bell did not ring itself, but was pulled from other places.”9 These forces of resistance combined openly in 1619 when the rebellious Bohemian nobles invalidated their prior election of Ferdinand and instead chose the Calvinist Friedrich V, the Elector Palatine, as their new king.

  Friedrich was the headstrong and politically inept son-in-law of James I of England, on whom he was cou
nting for support in his grab for Bohemia. Some of the Austrian estates also rebelled, supporting Friedrich, as did Gábor Bethlen, who now made a move on Habsburg Hungary. One of the rebel Bohemian nobles raised an army of 20,000 and quickly marched on Vienna, intending to link up with Bethlen’s troops. Although he was in dire straits at this point, Ferdinand refused any compromise, insisting that God would protect him. He prostrated himself in front of a crucifix and prayed for hours. His salvation came from more earthly sources, however, namely the alliances he forged with Maximilian of Bavaria, Felipe III of Spain, and the Saxon Elector Johann Georg, who though a Protestant, objected to Friedrich’s usurpation of legitimate authority. Where the Spanish Habsburgs provided money and troops, Maximilian really assumed leadership, rallying the Catholic League to defend Ferdinand’s power and prerogatives. Ferdinand stayed safely in Vienna while his allies led the war against Friedrich and the Bohemian rebels.

  Friedrich in fact did not have much support, since England and France kept their distance so as not to side with a usurper of royal authority. The Evangelical Union of Protestant German princes also resisted taking a side in this fight. Thus when it came to the conclusive clash between Friedrich and Ferdinand, the rebels could mount only a small, amateurish force. The Battle of White Mountain, fought near Prague in November 1620, was momentous only in its consequences; the battle itself lasted barely an hour, after which Friedrich and his routed forces fled. Thus Friedrich became known as the “Winter King,” since his reign lasted only one winter. With his convincing victory, Ferdinand set about rooting out all rebellion, which meant hunting down the revolt’s leaders, then eliminating the treasonous and heretical strands of Protestantism from Bohemia. The first goal was accomplished quickly: in June 1621, 27 rebel leaders were executed on Prague’s Old Town Square, their bodies left to rot on Charles Bridge as a warning.

  The fierce, subsequent reintegration of Bohemia took a number of years, but it gave the dynasty greater control over the kingdom than it had ever had before. Protestantism was outlawed; those who would not convert to Catholicism were forced into exile. Bohemia lost some 200,000 of its population over the next few decades partly for this reason. Ferdinand with his own dagger tore up Rudolf’s toleration letter. Rebellious nobles’ property was confiscated and awarded to other nobles who had been loyal to the crown. The kingdom was given a new constitution in 1627, known as the Verneuerte Landesordnung. It made the Habsburgs hereditary rather than elective monarchs, gave the king sole authority over all civil servants in the country, and moved the main governmental office (the Bohemian chancellery) to Vienna. It also significantly weakened the power of the estates as an institution, though they did retain some authority over taxes. German was made equal with Czech as the administrative language. Though Habsburg control over Bohemia still had enough limitations that it was never truly absolutist, the changes after White Mountain were of immense importance. The kingdom was henceforth fused together with the Austrian Hereditary Lands, royal power was expanded, and religious unity restored under Catholicism.

  Overconfident from the victory in Bohemia, Ferdinand determined to stamp out resistance in his other domains, including the Empire. For a time, it seemed as if he would become the most powerful emperor in generations. But the gains he made so alarmed the states surrounding the Empire that they intervened. The Swedish invasion in particular tumbled Ferdinand from his peak and brought an even more destructive phase of the war. By 1623, the imperial and Bavarian armies had occupied much of the Palatinate, chasing out Friedrich V, and were assisting Felipe IV against the Dutch. In gratitude for Maximilian of Bavaria’s vital aid against the rebels, Ferdinand granted him rule of the Palatinate for his life’s duration. This arrogation of imperial and Catholic power antagonized rulers inside and outside Germany. In Germany, Maximilian’s takeover of the Palatinate was resented as a violation of the Empire’s law. The other princes were particularly alarmed by the precedent of the emperor deposing one prince for another. Encouraged by England and France, King Christian IV of Denmark marched into Lower Saxony and Westphalia in 1625 to defend the Protestant cause. Ferdinand now had to fight in northern and western Germany, and to guard his eastern flank against Bethlen in Hungary. He needed a larger army, and so he turned to Albrecht von Wallenstein, the Bohemian aristocrat who became Ferdinand’s gifted but devious warlord.

  Wallenstein repeatedly saved Ferdinand’s monarchy, yet Ferdinand once dismissed and often distrusted him. Ferdinand, the rather dull, churchly ruler, sometimes actually feared his energetic and audacious general. Wallenstein knew that he was indispensable to Ferdinand and made him pay for that indispensability. A Spanish envoy, describing the relationship between the two men, wrote that “Wallenstein is the sole lord, and leaves the emperor little more than the title.”10 In 1625 Wallenstein raised an army and joined it with that led by the general Tilly, the victor of White Mountain. Together they smashed the Danish king’s forces and Wallenstein pushed further into northern Germany. By 1628, thanks to Wallenstein’s success, Ferdinand named him “General of the Oceans and the Baltic.” Felipe IV and Olivares endorsed a plan to use Ferdinand’s now-commanding position in northern Germany to strangle Dutch trade in the Baltic.

  In 1629 Ferdinand made a grave mistake that earned him a host of new enemies. Without consulting the imperial diet, the electoral princes, or even some of his close advisors, Ferdinand announced the Edict of Restitution. This edict declared that some 500 abbeys, two archbishoprics, and two bishoprics that had been “secularized” by German princes since 1552 would now suddenly revert to the Catholic Church. Such a reversal threatened the Protestant princes who had seized church land, but also antagonized the Catholic princes because they regarded it as a dangerous overstep for the emperor’s authority. The Habsburg presence on the Baltic, coupled with the assault on Protestant princes, induced Gustav Adolf [Gustavus Adolphus] of Sweden to invade Germany in 1630, his army buoyed by huge subsidies from France.

  In the early 1630s nearly all the gains Ferdinand had made in Germany were wiped away. Several former allies among the German princes deserted him to make league with the Swedes and the Protestant coalition. At the Battle of Breitenfeld in September 1631 the Catholic forces suffered a significant defeat, with the result that a Saxon army overran Bohemia and Prague, and the Swedes swept into the Rhineland. In 1632 Tilly again lost to the Swedes, and he died in action. Gustav Adolf took Bavaria and came within striking distance of Vienna. Ferdinand had dismissed Wallenstein in 1630 for fear that he was plotting a coup in the Empire, but now desperately needed his leadership and recalled him. The great condottiere quickly reassembled his army, beat back the Saxons, and then did battle with the Swedes at Lützen in November of 1632. Wallenstein was defeated, but Gustav Adolf was killed. The Swedish involvement in Germany nonetheless continued, fueled by ongoing French subsidies. Not long thereafter, Wallenstein began making secret, unauthorized diplomatic contacts with the Protestants and the French. He was seeking perhaps to arrange peace, though rumors swirled that he might even have himself crowned king of Bohemia. He also made his generals swear allegiance to himself, Wallenstein, rather than to Ferdinand. This double-dealing on Wallenstein’s part strengthened the case of his many enemies in Ferdinand’s court, who now pressed the emperor to remove Wallenstein from the scene. A morally conflicted Ferdinand agreed to Wallenstein’s murder, which took place in February of 1634.

  Ferdinand now named his son, Ferdinand III, as supreme general, and the heir apparent combined forces with the Cardinal-Infante of Spain, Felipe IV’s brother (and Ferdinand III’s brother-in-law), in a joint Habsburg attack at the Battle of Nördlingen in September 1634. They won an overwhelming victory, which forced most of the Protestant princes to negotiate for peace, and sharply curtailed Swedish influence. Prodded by Felipe IV, Ferdinand II signed the Peace of Prague in 1635. He proved that he could compromise: he retreated from the Edict of Restitution, and even gave some of his land in Lusatia to Saxony as a price for the armis
tice. This was a victory for moderates, but it did not end the strife. There was no settlement with Sweden, and the Habsburg victory compelled Richelieu’s France to declare war. Ferdinand II did not have long to live by this time. In his last years he experienced major highs and lows, depressed by his many defeats but giddy after the news of Gustav Adolf’s death at Lützen. Before his death in 1637, he used a temporary lull in the conflict in Germany to get his son elected King of the Romans, and thereby secured the Habsburg succession in the Empire. That success alludes to Ferdinand II’s importance within the historical context. For all his blunders and provocations, he continued to represent the legitimate authority of the Catholic emperor and the Habsburg dynasty. That the imperial office and the dynasty retained any such authority owed much to Ferdinand’s stubborn pugnacity.

  Ferdinand III (1608–57)

  Ferdinand III was a fairly interesting man, but not an interesting ruler. The mind behind his reign is something of a cipher. The most important ideas and actions came from several of his ministers, particularly the great diplomat Maximilian Trautmansdorff, or Johann Weikhard Auersperg later. Compared with his father, Ferdinand III achieved very little other than a final peace to the Thirty Years’ War, which itself should perhaps be enough. In general his politics followed trends laid down during Ferdinand II’s reign, including the furtherance of the Counter-Reformation in his own realms, the wearying but close alliance with Felipe IV, and the near-constant threat of Swedish armies. In all these events, Ferdinand III’s hand is barely visible. In one recent biography, Ferdinand himself hovers at the edges but is rarely the central player in anything.11 It is almost as if he were an only intermittently influential spectator at the momentous events that took place while he wore the crown. The picture of Ferdinand’s personality is only a little clearer. Here, he was noticeably more intelligent and complex than his father. Though still deeply pious, he was also more pragmatic on religious politics. Ferdinand III’s outlook was less clouded by stultifying dogma. He was more curious—he conducted his own chemistry experiments, for example—and well-rounded. Besides being a reasonably competent military commander, he was a gifted composer. Yet despite the major changes that affected the dynasty during his time, he remains among the most indistinct of all modern Habsburgs.