FERDINAND

ex-Tsar of Bulgaria born in Vienna 26th Feb., 1861, the son of the Prince of Saxe-Coburg Goth a and the Prince of Orléans. He was chosen Prince of Bulgaria in. July, 1887, but when Austria seized Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1908, Ferdinand declared the complete independence of Bulgaria and a umed the title of Tsar of the Bulgars, Closely allied with Austria and Germany, he at first observed a strict neutrality at the beginning of the Kuropean War, but in October, 1915, joined the Central Powers. After the final defeat of Germany, and at the outbreak of revolution in his own country, he abdicated the throne on 4th Oct., 1918, in favour of his son, Boris. He was married twice, his first wife being Prince Marie-Louise of Bourbon- Parma, by whom he had four children, and his second, Prince Hleonora of Reu , who died in 1916, FER’DINAND, German emperors; —1. Ferdinand I, brother of Charles V, and born at Alcala, in Spain, 10th March, 1503. In 1522 he recetved the Austrian lands of the House of 411 FERDINAND Habsburg from the emperor, to which were afterwards added the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia in right of his wife, Anna of Hungary. On the abdication of Charles he succeeded to the imperial;title. He died 25th July, 1564. 2. Ferdinand If was born in 1578, and succeeded his uncle Matthias as Emperor of Germany in 1619. He was of a dark and reserved character, and had been brought up by his mother and the Jesuits bitterly to hate Protestant ism. The result was a quarrel with his Bohemian subjects, who openly revolted and offered the Bohemian crown to the LHlector Palatine, a step which led in 1619 to the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War. With the help of the Catholic League and John George, Hlector of Saxony, he was placed firmly on the throne of Bohemia, where he relentle ly persecuted the Protestants. He died 15th Feb., 1637. 3. Ferdinand WI, son of the preceding, was born in 1608, and succeeded his father in 1637. He had served in the Thirty Years’ War, and had seen the miseries which it occasioned, and was reluctant to continue it. There were eleven years more of it, however, before the Peace of Westphalia was concluded in 1648. Ferdinand died in 1657.