Leopold I was trained for the Church and ended up fighting Louis XIV for decades
Leopold I was meant to be a churchman, schooled by Jesuits and steeped in theology. His elder brother's death in 1654 made him heir instead, and he went on to rule the Holy Roman Empire for almost 47 years, recovering Hungary from the Ottomans while spending most of his reign locked in rivalry with his cousin Louis XIV.
Born in Vienna on 9 June 1640, the second son of Emperor Ferdinand III, Leopold was educated in the liberal arts, history, natural science and astronomy, and spoke Latin, Italian and Spanish as well as German. Italian was the everyday language of his court, and he set up an academy for Italian letters in his capital in 1656. Like his father he loved music, composing and patronising it generously. His Jesuit tutors left him unusually learned in theology, law and science for a monarch, along with a lingering interest in astrology and alchemy.
Contemporaries were less kind about his presence. He was short, thin and sickly, with the pronounced Habsburg jaw, and appeared cold and awkward in public, though friendlier in private. The historian Spielman argues that growing up expecting a supporting clerical role left him without the military ambition of most rulers, so his reign was defensive and conservative from the start. He became king of Hungary in 1655 and was elected emperor at Frankfurt in July 1658, defeating Cardinal Mazarin's effort to crown a non-Habsburg.
War filled his reign anyway. His general Raimondo Montecuccoli beat the Ottomans at Saint Gotthard in 1664, though the truce that followed was surprisingly generous. He went to war with France three times. The last of those conflicts, over the Spanish succession, he launched to claim the whole Spanish inheritance for his younger son Charles after Charles II of Spain left his crown to a grandson of Louis XIV. Early victories at Schellenberg and Blenheim did not bring a decisive outcome, and the conflict outlived him until 1714. In the east he fared far better: in the Great Turkish War of 1683 to 1699, Prince Eugene of Savoy's generalship helped win back nearly all of Hungary under the Treaty of Karlowitz.
His rule had harsh sides. He tried to suppress Protestantism in Hungary, fuelling repeated revolts that were put down severely, and he expelled Vienna's Jewish community, whose district was renamed Leopoldstadt. He died on 5 May 1705, the second-longest-reigning Habsburg emperor.
Source: Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor
