Frederick V

Elector of the Palatinate (1610-1623) and king of Bohemia (r. 1619-1620)

• Born: August 26, 1596
• Birthplace: Amberg, Upper Palatinate (now in Germany)
• Died: November 29, 1632
• Place of death: Mainz (now in Germany)

Though an effective ruler in the Palatinate, Frederick’s decision to accept the offer of the Bohemian Estates to become the first Protestant king of Bohemia in 1619, and his flight from Prague a year later, triggered the opening stage of the Thirty Years’ War.

Early Life

Frederick was the first-born son of Elector Palatine Frederick IV and his wife, Luisa Juliana, the daughter of William of Orange, leader of the United Provinces of the Netherlands. The Palatinate (Pfalz in German), was an important principality in the Holy Roman Empire with about 600,000 inhabitants. It was divided into the fertile Lower Palatinate, which stretched between the Moselle and Neckar Rivers, and the mineral-rich Upper Palatinate, located to the north of Bavaria; the two were separated by the territories of Württemberg and Bamberg.

The elector was second only to the emperor in authority and was one of seven men responsible for electing each new emperor. Frederick was raised Calvinist and educated in the courtly arts and Latin at Sedan with his uncle Henry de La Tour, duke of Bouillon, and academically at the University of Heidelberg, a city that served as the capital of the Lower Palatinate. His father died when Frederick was fourteen (1610), and Frederick took full control of his territories four years later. On February 14, 1613, he married Elizabeth Stuart , daughter of King James I of England. While in London, James made Frederick a Knight of the Garter. During the next nineteen years, Elizabeth would bear thirteen children in a marriage that was by all accounts genuinely loving.

Life’s Work

As elector palatine, Frederick was a fair and tolerant ruler in an often intolerant age. Though a Calvinist, he tried to foster good relations among all Protestants, retaining members of several denominations at his court. Tied by birth and marriage to the two major Protestant powers outside the empire, he was a kind of natural confessional linchpin.

From his father he inherited leadership of the Protestant Union , a loose defensive alliance of Lutheran and Calvinist German states, England, and the United Provinces, which sought to protect Protestant liberties in the empire and foil the power of the antagonistic Roman Catholic Austrian and Spanish Habsburg Dynasty . In response, the Austrian Habsburgs and Maximilian I Wittelsbach of Bavaria formed the Catholic League to protect their religious and dynastic interests. On May 23, 1618, the Protestant estates in Bohemia openly rebelled against the Habsburg king of Bohemia, Ferdinand II (elected in 1617), in the Defenestration of Prague , the third such revolt in a decade.

Though desirous of peace, Frederick did not want it to be at the price of Protestant liberties or the extension of Habsburg power. With financial help from Charles Emmanuel I, the duke of Savoy, Frederick sent troops to aid the insurgents. Led by Count Peter Ernst von Mansfeld, this army drove Ferdinand’s forces from Bohemia and neighboring Austria, and the estates formally deposed Ferdinand in August of 1619. Six days later they elected Frederick their new king (as Frederick I).

Frederick pondered the honor for nearly a month. The idea was enthusiastically supported by Christian of Anhalt, one of his closest advisers, a fine general, and the administrator of the Upper Palatinate. The Bohemian king was also an imperial elector, and at the next election Frederick would have two votes, which, combined with those of the Calvinist elector of Brandenburg and Lutheran elector of Saxony, would ensure a Protestant emperor.

Even so, the risks were great. Ferdinand had just been elected Holy Roman Emperor (August 28), and without doubt would reject his deposition as Bohemian king and attack his erstwhile successor. Spain would certainly aid the imperial cause, as would powerful Catholic Bavaria. Frederick, like other Protestant princes and rulers, feared an all-out war within the empire, but feared and detested Habsburg power even more. Frederick could expect little aid from the Protestant Union, while his powerful father-in-law offered nothing beyond a few thousand men to help defend the Palatinate itself. Nonetheless, feeling that God was calling him to his destiny, Frederick accepted the offer in late September, 1619. Escorted by 800 cavalrymen, the elector, his family, and a baggage train of some 153 wagons left Heidelberg and arrived in Prague on October 31. Frederick was crowned the first Protestant king of Bohemia four days later, on November 4. With this he assumed leadership of the Bohemian rebellion, which had been successful to that point.

In the dead of winter, he traveled throughout his new territories, introducing himself to his more powerful subjects and extracting promises of support and loyalty. He was able to procure little else in the way of military aid from the estates of Lusatia, Moravia, and Upper and Lower Austria. As in the Palatinate, he was evenhanded and professed tolerance of all types of Christianity. He demanded the reformation of only one Catholic church in his new capital, the palace church of St. Vitus. He did, however, expel the Catholic Jesuits from Bohemia, since he saw them as the main agents provocateurs of the pope and militant Catholicism. He favored Protestant Bohemian leaders for local positions, but little else changed.

With the spring of 1620 came little in the way of good news for Frederick. Despite his successful installation, none of Europe’s Protestant powers offered support for the Bohemian cause, and the Protestant Union, at a meeting in Nuremberg, formally rejected military aid. The Dutch, however, did plan to send troops to help defend the Lower Palatinate when the time came. European princes of all stripes called on Frederick to abandon the Bohemian cause, and Ferdinand threatened the imperial ban, which would formally label Frederick an outlaw who forfeited all of his rights to titles and property and even the safety of himself and his family. Strengthened by his faith in God, Frederick persevered, even as the ban went into effect on June 1. He felt that he could fight its legality, but Emperor Ferdinand had other ideas.

The emperor had informally promised Maximilian the Palatinate and its electorship and placed him in command of the Catholic League’s multinational army. Led by Flemish general Johan Tserclaes, count of Tilly, they cleared the Bohemian and allied rebel forces from Austria and much of Bohemia in the summer of 1620 and approached Prague in the fall. In August, Italian general Ambrosio de Spínola, in Spanish service, marched 25,000 Spanish troops from Brussels across the Rhine River into the Palatinate to secure it for the emperor. Frederick joined his Bohemian army, but had little to offer beside moral support. General Tserclaes smashed this army at White Mountain on November 8, causing Frederick to flee Prague with his family the very next day. In their haste they left behind virtually everything, including state and personal papers and even the crown jewels. His short reign earned him the derisive nickname the Winter King.

For the next dozen years, Frederick and his family lived as exiles at various Protestant courts, as Frederick sought to regain what he had lost. Maximilian replaced him as elector in 1623, and Ferdinand reasserted his authority in Bohemia. Frederick, however, never lost hope in his cause. During his last years, he clung to the successful King Gustavus II Adolphus of Sweden, who might have been able to reinstate Frederick in the Palatinate. Frederick died of plague in 1632, only thirty-six years old.

Significance

Historians have generally been harsh with Frederick’s legacy, blaming his obstinacy or foolishness for triggering one of Europe’s most devastating wars. His utter defeat and the Spanish occupation of the Palatinate could not go unanswered, and soon the conflagration began. Frederick’s motives were mixed, and they included the defense of imperial constitutionalism and Protestantism, both of which he saw threatened by Habsburg control of Bohemia. To many he became a romantic martyr for a lost but just cause, to others simply an egotistic failure.

Bibliography

Clasen, Claus-Peter. The Palatinate in European History, 1559-1660. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell, 1963. A close study of Frederick’s territory.

Parker, Geoffrey. The Thirty Years’ War. 2d ed. New York: Routledge, 1988. The fullest treatment of the political and diplomatic aspects of the entire war, including Frederick’s participation in its opening phase.

Pursell, Brennan. The Winter King: Frederick V of the Palatinate and the Coming of the Thirty Years’ War. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2003. A detailed narrative and analysis of Frederick’s role in the early stages of the Thirty Years’ War. This work is the only monograph on Frederick in English.

Sutherland, N. M. “The Origins of the Thirty Years’ War and the Structure of European Politics.” English Historical Review 107 (1992): 587-625. A succinct discussion of the broader context of Frederick’s decision to aid Bohemia.

Wedgwood, C. V. The Thirty Years’ War. New York: Methuen, 1982. A classic narrative treatment of the war and Frederick’s early adventure.