Ferdinand II
Ferdinand II.
Holy Roman Emperor · King of Bohemia · King of Hungary · Archduke of Austria
1578 – 1637
Biography
Architect of the Counter-Reformation in Habsburg lands and the imperial protagonist of the Thirty Years' War. His Jesuit-formed conviction that he must extirpate Protestantism from his realms made compromise impossible; the war his policy unleashed devastated Germany and killed perhaps a quarter of its population. He died with the conflict still unresolved.
Events
On 23 May 1618 a delegation of Bohemian Protestant nobles threw two imperial regents and their secretary out of a third-story window of Prague Castle. All three survived the seventy-foot fall, landing in a dung heap. The act was the opening provocation of the Thirty Years' War — Europe's longest, most destructive religious conflict, which killed perhaps a quarter of the population of Germany.
Also there: Matthias
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