Ferdinand III Habsburg ¹

  General Notes:

Holy Roman emperor (1637–57), king of Hungary (1626–57) and of Bohemia (1627–57), son and successor of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II.

After the dismissal and assassination (1634) of the imperial commander Wallenstein, Ferdinand became nominal leader of the imperial forces in the Thirty Years War, but it was the imperial general Gallas who was responsible for the successes that culminated in the victory of Nördlingen (1634). After Ferdinand’s accession, however, the war took a disastrous turn. Although anxious for peace, Ferdinand rejected the early peace proposals, but in 1648 he had to assent to the treaties negotiated at Münster and Osnabrück, which virtually ended the central power of the Holy Roman Empire. The emperor and his successors were left only the shadow of the imperial dignity, and their power was restricted to the hereditary Hapsburg dominions. In these dominions—a vast enough empire in themselves—Ferdinand devoted the rest of his reign to healing the wounds of war and to continuing administrative reforms. He was succeeded by his son, Leopold I.

Ferdinand married three times - first to his cousin, the Infanta Maria Anna of Spain, by whom he had two surviving sons - Ferdinand IV, his eldest, who predeceased him, and Leopold, who ultimately succeeded him. After Maria Anna's death in 1646, he married another cousin, Archduchess Maria Leopoldine, daughter of the ruler of Tirol. She died in 1649, and Ferdinand married a third time, to Eleonora Gonzaga, daughter of the Duke of Mantua. ^{2 3}

  Noted events in his life were:

• Acceded: Holy Roman Emperor, 1637.

Ferdinand married Maria Anna of Spain Habsburg, daughter of Philip III of Spain Habsburg and Margaret of Austria Habsburg, on 20 Feb 1631. (Maria Anna of Spain Habsburg was born in 1606 and died in 1646.)

Ferdinand next married Eleanora Gonzaga, daughter of Charles II Gonzaga and Unknown, in 1651. (Eleanora Gonzaga was born in 1630 and died in 1686.)