A Spanish-raised prince who barely spoke German ended up building Habsburg Austria
Ferdinand I grew up in Castile as his Spanish grandfather's favourite and did not learn German until adulthood. Yet he became the Habsburg who ruled Austria, won the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary, held off an Ottoman siege of Vienna, and finally succeeded his far more famous brother, Charles V, as Holy Roman Emperor.
Born in 1503 at Alcalá de Henares, Ferdinand shared a name and a birthday with his grandfather Ferdinand II of Aragon, who raised him after his father died in 1506. Music filled his childhood: his grandmother Isabella ordered that four of the 24 servants attending the infant be musicians. When his brother Charles became emperor in 1519, Ferdinand was handed the family's Austrian lands. He adopted German language and customs, and grew close to the German princes.
His big break came from disaster. In 1526 his brother-in-law, King Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia, died fighting the Ottomans at Mohács. Both crowns were elective, and Ferdinand campaigned at once. Bohemia's nobles chose him that October, though they refused to make the title hereditary. Hungary split, with one faction crowning the Transylvanian magnate John Zápolya and another electing Ferdinand. Ferdinand beat Zápolya in battle, but Zápolya turned to Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.
The result was the most dangerous moment of his life: the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1529, which sent him to refuge in Bohemia. The siege failed, and so did another invasion in 1532, but money was desperately short. Even with a special tax for the Turkish war, his annual revenue could hire just 5,000 mercenaries for two months, so he borrowed heavily from the Fugger bankers. The Ottoman pressure also pushed him to grant German Protestants a religious truce at Nuremberg in 1532.
Ferdinand was no general, but historians credit him as an inventive organiser who built central institutions for Austria, Hungary and Bohemia, including a war council aimed at the Ottoman threat. Elected King of the Romans in 1531, he took over the empire when Charles abdicated in 1556, and ruled until 1564.
Source: Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor
