ABSTRACT
In 1637, two years after the Peace of Prague, Ferdinand II died without having secured the election of his son Ferdinand as king of the Romans and so without ensuring continuity within the Empire. He had left a deep impression upon the destiny of the Austrian monarchy, bestowing upon it its character as the champion of Catholicism, which it maintained right until the end, and he had saved it from chaos and anarchy. It would never, for sure, have become a noble republic like Poland, yet his efforts at reorganizing the Empire ended in defeat. By his obstinacy, the late emperor had plunged Central Europe into a civil war which, at the time of his death, was in the process of expanding into a European war. It fell upon his successor to put an end to the conflict, but Ferdinand III's determination not to make concessions made the task all the more arduous and it took a crushing military defeat to bring him to compromise.
