Kinlight · The House of Habsburg

Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor

1608 – 1657 · Generation XII · Holy Roman Emperor (r. 1637–1657) · Austrian Habsburgs

Portrait of Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor

Ferdinand (1608 – 1657). Holy Roman Emperor (r. 1637–1657). Married Maria Leopoldine in 1648. Married Eleonora in 1651. Married Maria Anna in 1631. Husband of his first cousin Maria Anna of Spain; father of Mariana and Leopold I. He earned his standing as a commander: after Wallenstein’s assassination he took personal charge of the imperial army and shared in the decisive victory at Nördlingen in 1634, which drove the Swedes from southern Germany. Emperor for the war’s last decade, he inherited lands exhausted and depopulated, and — setting aside the divine-right absolutism his father had insisted on — accepted concession after concession in the drawn-out bargaining that finally produced the Peace of Westphalia. In Bohemia his Revised Land Ordinance reserved the raising of soldiers to the crown alone, and though the war cost the imperial office much of its weight, at home in Austria, Bohemia and Hungary he wielded firmer authority than his forebears had before 1618. He is also remembered as the first Habsburg monarch recognised as a composer.

Place in the family

  • Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor was a great-grandfather of Maria Theresa.
  • The archive records 31 of his descendants, across 12 generations.

One of 24 people of Austrian Habsburgs (1527–1754) in this archive. The Vienna line, which held the Holy Roman crown almost without a break.

Line of descent: Rudolf I of Germany → Albert I of Germany → Albert II, Duke of Austria → Leopold III, Duke of Austria → Ernest, Duke of Austria → Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor → Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor → Philip I of Castile → Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor → Charles II, Archduke of Austria → Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor → Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor.

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Life

  • 1608 — Born
  • 1631 — Married Maria Anna
  • 1648 — Married Maria Leopoldine
  • 1651 — Married Eleonora
  • 1657 — Died

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