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Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor

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Ferdinand I Habsburg

Ferdinand I (10 March 1503 – 25 July 1564), Holy Roman Emperor (1556–1564), was born in Madrid, the son of Juana the Mad, Queen of Castile (1479–1555), and Philip I the Handsome, King of Castile (1478–1506), who was heir to Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I of Habsburg.

Ferdinand was the younger brother of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who entrusted him with the government of the Habsburg hereditary lands (roughly modern-day Austria and Slovenia). In 1531 Ferdinand was elected King of the Romans, making him Charles's designated heir as emperor. He deputised as ruler during his brother's many absences from imperial lands.

After Charles's abdication as emperor in 1556, Ferdinand assumed the title of Holy Roman Emperor, Charles having agreed to exclude his own son Philip from the German succession, which instead passed to Ferdinand's eldest son Maximilian (1527–1576).

Hungary and the Ottomans

After Suleiman the Magnificent defeated Ferdinand's brother-in-law Louis II, King of Bohemia and of Hungary, at the battle of Mohács on 29 August 1526, Ferdinand was elected King of Bohemia in his place. The throne of Hungary became the subject of a dynastic dispute between Ferdinand and John Zápolya, voivode of Transylvania. Each was supported by different factions of the nobility in the Hungarian kingdom; Ferdinand also had the support of Charles V, and Zápolya, after defeat by Ferdinand at the Battle of Tokaj in 1527, the support of Suleiman. Ferdinand was able to win control only of western Hungary because Zápolya clung to the east and the Ottomans to the conquered south. In 1554 Ghiselin de Busbecq was sent to Istanbul by Ferdinand to discuss a border treaty over disputed land with the Sultan, Suleiman I.

The most dangerous moment of Ferdinand's career came in 1529 when he took refuge in Bohemia from a massive but ultimately unsuccessful assault on his capital by Suleiman and the Ottoman armies at the Siege of Vienna. A further Ottoman attack on Vienna was repelled in 1533. In that year Ferdinand signed a peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire, splitting the Kingdom of Hungary into a Habsburg sector in the west and John Zápolya's domain in the east, the latter effectively now a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire.

In 1538, by the Treaty of Nagyvárad, Ferdinand became Zápolya's successor, but he was unable to enforce this agreement during his lifetime because in 1540 John II Sigismund Zápolya, infant son of John Zápolya and Isabella Jagiełło, was elected the new king of Hungary. He was initially supported by King Sigismund II Augustus of Poland and Lithuania, his mother's brother, but in 1549 a treaty was signed between the Habsburgs and the Polish ruler as a result of which Poland became neutral in the conflict, Sigismund Augustus marrying Elisabeth von Habsburg, Ferdinand's daughter.

Government

The western rump of Hungary over which Ferdinand retained dominion became known as Royal Hungary. As the ruler of Austria, Bohemia and Royal Hungary, Ferdinand adopted a policy of centralization and, in common with other monarchs of the time, the construction of an absolute monarchy. In 1527 he published a constitution for his hereditary domains (Hofstaatsordnung) and established Austrian-style institutions in Pressburg for Hungary, in Prague for Bohemia, and in Wrocław (Breslau) for Silesia. Opposition from the nobles in those realms forced him in 1559 to concede the independence of these institutions from supervision by the Austrian government in Vienna.

In 1547 the Bohemian Estates rebelled against Ferdinand when he ordered the Bohemian army against the German Protestants. After suppressing Prague with the help of his brother's Spanish forces, he retaliated by limiting the privileges of Bohemian cities and inserting a new bureaucracy of royal officials to control urban authorities. Ferdinand was a supporter of the Counter-Reformation and helped lead the Catholic fight-back against what he saw as the heretical tide of Protestantism. For example, in 1551 he invited the Jesuits to Vienna and in 1556 to Prague; and in 1561 he revived the archbishopric of Prague.

Ferdinand died in Vienna and is buried in St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague.

Names in other languages: German, Czech, Slovak, Croatian: Ferdinand I.; Hungarian: I. Ferdinánd

Marriage and Children

On 25 May 1521 in Linz, Austria, Ferdinand married Anna of Bohemia and Hungary (1503–1547), daughter of Vladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary and his wife Anne de Foix. They had fifteen children:

Ancestors

Ferdinand's ancestors in three generations
Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor Father:
Philip I of Castile 		Paternal Grandfather:
Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor 		Paternal Great-Grandfather:
Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor
Paternal Great-grandmother:
Eleanor of Portugal, Empress
Paternal Grandmother:
Mary of Burgundy 		Paternal Great-Grandfather:
Charles the Bold
Paternal Great-Grandmother:
Isabella of Bourbon
Mother:
Joanna of Castile 		Maternal Grandfather:
Ferdinand II of Aragon 		Maternal Great-Grandfather:
John II of Aragon
Maternal Great-Grandmother:
Juana Enriquez
Maternal Grandmother:
Isabella I of Castile 		Maternal Great-grandfather:
John II of Castile
Maternal Great-Grandmother:
Infanta Isabel of Portugal

Template:Commons2

Preceded by:
Louis II 		King of Hungary
King of Bohemia 		Succeeded by:
Maximilian II
Preceded by:
Charles V 		King of Germany
Also Holy Roman Emperor-Elect
Archduke of Austria
ruler of Inner Austria (Styria, Carinthia and Carniola) Succeeded by:
Archduke Charles II
ruler of Further Austria including Tirol Succeeded by:
Archduke Ferdinand II
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