Hungary - Ferdinand II King of Hungary 1618-1625 A.D.
Kremnitz Mint: 1620 Silver Denar 15mm (0.5 grams)
Obverse: 1620 Around Shield of Arms.
Reverse: •PATRONA•••VNGARIE• (Patron of Hungary) Madonna and Child. The K
and B flanking the Madonna is the Mark of the Kremnitz Mint.
The Madonna and Child and Legend Patron of Hungary which is so prevalent on
the coinage of Hungary was first placed there by Matthias Corvinus 1458 – 1490.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured,
provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of
Authenticity.
Ferdinand
II (July 9, 1578 – February 15, 1637), of the House of
Habsburg, was Holy Roman Emperor (1619–1637),
King of Bohemia (1617–1619, 1620–1637), King of
Hungary
(1618–1625).[1][2]
Life
He was born at Graz,
the son of
Charles II, Archduke of Austria, and
Maria Anna of Bavaria. He was educated by the Jesuits and later frequented
the
University of Ingolstadt. After completing his studies in 1595, he acceded
to his hereditary lands (where his older cousin, Archduke
Maximilian III of Austria, had acted as regent between 1593 and 1595) and
made a pilgrimage to
Loreto and Rome. Shortly afterwards, he began to suppress non-Catholic faith
in his territories.
In 1617, he was elected
King of Bohemia by the Bohemian diet. He was also able to obtain the support
of the Spanish Habsburgs in the succession of his cousin
Matthias, who was heirless, as Holy Roman Emperor, in exchange for Alsace
and other imperial fiefs in Italy.
His ultracatholicism caused immediate turmoil in his non-Catholic subjects,
especially in Bohemia. He did not respect the religious liberties granted by the
Letter of Majesty conceded, signed by the previous emperor,
Rudolph II, which had guaranteed the freedom of religion to the nobles and
the inhabitants of the cities. Additionally, Ferdinand was an absolutist monarch
and infringed several historical privileges of the nobles. Given the relatively
great number of Protestants in the kingdom, including some of the nobles, the
king's unpopularity soon caused the
Bohemian Revolt. The
Defenestration of Prague of 22 May 1618 is considered the first step of the
Thirty Years'
War.
In the following events he remained one of the staunchest backers of the
Anti-Protestant
Counter Reformation efforts as one of the heads of the
German Catholic League. Ferdinand succeeded Matthias as Holy Roman Emperor
in 1619. Supported by the Catholic League, including the Kings of Spain,
Bavaria and
Poland,
Ferdinand decided to reclaim his possession in Bohemia and to quench the rebels.
On 8 November 1620 his troops, led by the Belgian general
Tilly, smashed the rebels of
Frederick V of Palatinate, who had been elected as rival King in 1618. After
Frederick's flight to the Netherlands, Ferdinand ordered forced conversion to
Catholicism in Bohemia and Austria, causing Protestantism to nearly disappear in
the following decades, and reduced the Diet's power.
In 1625, despite the subsidies received from Spain and the Pope, Ferdinand
was in a bad financial situation. In order to muster an imperial army to
continue the war, he applied to
Albrecht von Wallenstein, one of the richest men in Bohemia: the latter
accepted on condition that he could keep total control over the direction of the
war, as well as over the booties taken during the operations. Wallenstein was
able to recruit some 30,000 men (later expanded up to 100,000), with whom he was
able to defeat the Protestants in
Silesia,
Anhalt and
Denmark. In
the wake of the overwhelming Catholic military successes, in 1629 Ferdinand
issued the
Edict of
Restitution, by which all the land stripped to the Catholics after the
Peace of Passau
of 1552 would be returned.
His new ultracatholic demands caused the tottering Protestants to call in
Gustavus II Adolphus, King of Sweden. Further, some of Ferdinand's Catholic
allies started to complain about the excessive power gained by Wallenstein, as
well as of the ruthless method he used to finance his huge army. Ferdinand
replied by firing the Bohemian general in 1630. The lead of the war thenceforth
was assigned to Tilly, who was however unable to stop the Swedish march from
northern Germany towards Austria. Some historians directly blame Ferdinand for
the large civilian loss of life in the
Sack of
Magdeburg in 1631: he had instructed Tilly to enforce the edict of
Restitution upon
Saxony, his orders causing the Belgian general to move the Catholic armies
east, ultimately to
Leipzig,
where they suffered their first substantial defeat at
First Breitenfeld.
Tilly died in 1632. Wallenstein was recalled, being able to muster an army in
only a week, and to expel the Sweden from Bohemia. In November 1632 the
Catholics were defeated in the
Battle of Lützen, but Gustavus Adolphus died. A period of minor operations
followed, perhaps because of Wallenstein's ambiguous conduct, which ended with
his assassination in 1634, perhaps ordered by Ferdinand himself.
Despite Wallenstein's fall, the imperial forces recaptured
Regensburg
and were victorious in the
Battle of Nördlingen. The Swedish army was substantially weakened, and the
fear that the Habsburgs' power could at that point become overwhelming in the
empire triggered France, led by
Cardinal
Richelieu, to enter the war on the Protestant side. In 1635 Ferdinand signed
his last important act, the
Peace of Prague, which however did not end the war.
He died in 1637, leaving to his son
Ferdinand III an empire still entangled in a war and whose fortunes seemed
to be increasingly fading away..
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