General Notes

Ferdinand III (Holy Roman Empire) (1608-1657), Holy Roman emperor (1637-1657),
king of Hungary (1625-1657), and king of Bohemia (1627-1657). He was born in
Graz, Austria, the son of Emperor Ferdinand II. He was educated by Jesuits and
was a noted scholar and musician. Two years after being crowned king of
Hungary, Ferdinand was made king of Bohemia. He became the nominal commander
of the imperial armies fighting the Thirty Years' War after the Austrian
general Albrecht von Wallenstein was assassinated in 1634. In that capacity he
headed the forces that defeated the Swedes at Nördlingen later in the year.
Ferdinand became Holy Roman emperor upon his father's death in 1637. He was
willing to end the Thirty Years' War but he did not want to proceed without
his ally, Spain. He refused to accept the proposal made by the diet of
Regensburg in 1640 for a general amnesty to Protestants. In 1648, however, he
signed the Peace of Westphalia, which decreed that the prevailing religion in
each part of the empire should be determined by the ruler of that part. This
solution was based on the Peace of Augsbury (1555), which helped to resolve
religious conflict by recognizing Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism and
allowing states to decide which religion could be practiced. The Peace of
Westphalia considerably weakened the Holy Roman Empire because it recognized
the sovereignty and independence of the individual states. Because Ferdinand
was a Roman Catholic, and his religion was permitted by the terms of the peace
to dominate in his hereditary dominions, the Protestants there were not
accorded religious freedom. In 1656 he dispatched an army to Italy to aid
Spain against France and in the following year entered into an alliance with
Poland against Sweden.