FERDINAND II. (1578-1637), Roman emperor, was the eldest son of Charles, archduke of Styria (d. 1590), and a grand son of the emperor Ferdinand I. Born at Gratz on July 9, 1578, he was trained by the Jesuits, finishing his education at the uni versity of Ingolstadt, and became the pattern prince of the coun ter-reformation. In 1J96 he undertook the government of Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, and after a visit to Italy began an organ ized attack on Protestantism which under his father's rule had made great progress in these archduchies. About 1615 it was agreed that Ferdinand, who already had two sons by his marriage with his cousin Maria Anna (d. 1616), daughter of William V., duke of Bavaria, should succeed Matthias in the elective king doms of Hungary and Bohemia and should be the next German emperor. (See HABSBURG: Genealogy.) The elder archdukes renounced their rights in the succession; the claims of Philip III. and the Spanish Habsburgs were bought off by a promise of Alsace ; and the emperor consented to his supersession during his lifetime in Hungary and Bohemia. In 1617 Ferdinand, who was just concluding a war with Venice, was chosen king of Bohemia, and in 1618 king of Hungary; but his election as German king, or king of the Romans, delayed owing to the anxiety of Melchior Klesl (q.v.) to conciliate the Protestant princes, had not been accomplished when Matthias died in March 1619. Before this event, however, an important movement had begun in Bohemia. The Bohemian Protestants suddenly realized that their religious, and possibly their civil liberties, were seriously menaced by the choice of Ferdinand as king. They declared Ferdinand deposed, and elected the elector palatine of the Rhine, Frederick V., in his stead ; and the struggle between the rivals was the beginning of the Thirty Years' War. At the same time Bethlen Gabor, prince of Transylvania, invaded Hungary, while the Austrians rose and joined the Bohemians; but having seen his foes retreat from Vienna, Ferdinand hurried to Frankfort, where he was chosen emperor on Aug. 28, 1619.
To deal with the elector palatine and his allies the new em peror allied himself with Maximilian I., duke of Bavaria, and the Catholic League, who drove Frederick from Bohemia- in 1620, while Ferdinand's Spanish allies devastated the Palatinate. Peace having been made with Bethlen Gabor in December 1621, the emperor could turn his attention to crushing the Protestants. In 1623 the Protestant clergy were expelled from Bohemia; in 1624 all worship save that of the Roman Catholic church was forbid den; and in 1627 an order of banishment against all Protestants was issued. A new constitution made the kingdom hereditary in the house of Habsburg, gave larger powers to the sovereign, and aimed at destroying Bohemian nationality. A fresh rising in Austria was put down by the aid of the Bavarians in 1627, and Ferdinand could fairly claim that in his hereditary lands at least he had rendered Protestantism innocuous.
The renewal of the Thirty Years' War in 1625 was caused mainly by the emperor's vigorous championship of the cause of the counter-reformation in northern and north-eastern Germany.
(See THIRTY YEARS' WAR.) In March 1629 Ferdinand and his ad visers felt themselves strong enough to take the important step towards which their policy in the Empire had been steadily tend ing. Issuing the famous edict of restitution, the emperor ordered that all lands which had been secularized since 1552, the date of the peace of Passau, should be restored to the church, and prompt measures were taken to enforce this decree. The result was the outbreak of the third period of the war. The comparative failure of the imperial arms was due, in the initial stages of the campaign, to Ferdinand's weakness in assenting in 1630 to the demand of Maximilian of Bavaria that Wallenstein should be deprived of his and also to the genius of Gustavus Adolphus; and in its later stages to his insistence on the second removal of Wallenstein, and to his complicity in the assassination of the general (see WALLENSTEIN) . The peace of Prague, concluded in 1635, marks the definite failure of Ferdinand to crush Protestantism in the Em pire, as he had already done in Austria and Bohemia. The em peror, however, refused to allow the inhabitants of his hereditary dominions to share in the benefits of the peace. During these years Ferdinand had also been menaced by the secret or open hostility of France. The last important act of the emperor was to secure in 1636 the election of his son Ferdinand as king of the Romans. A few weeks afterwards, on Feb. 15, 1637, the emperor died at Vienna, leaving, in addition to the king of the Romans, a son Leopold William (1614-1662), bishop of Passau and Stras bourg.