Leopold III of Austria

Rudolf I of Habsburg was the first member of his family to be elected King of the Romans, ruling the German kingdom from 1273 until 1291. Born into a comital family with scattered lands in the Aargau, Swabia and Alsace, he was chosen by the prince-electors partly because he seemed a modest, unthreatening figure after the long interregnum that followed the collapse of Hohenstaufen power. He proved otherwise. After defeating Ottokar II of Bohemia on the Marchfeld in 1278 he took possession of Austria and Styria and, in 1282, granted them to his sons, shifting the family's centre of gravity from the Swiss lands to the Danube. Married to Gertrude of Hohenberg, he was the father of Albert I and the ancestor of every later Habsburg ruler.

Maximilian I, the only surviving son of Emperor Frederick III and Eleanor of Portugal, transformed the Habsburgs from an Alpine dynasty into the leading power of Europe. His marriage in 1477 to Mary of Burgundy, heiress of Charles the Bold, brought him the wealthy Low Countries and Franche-Comte, which he defended against France for the rest of his life. German king from 1486 and emperor from 1508, he reformed imperial administration and the army, and was a lavish patron of art and printing. Above all he was a matchmaker: the marriages he arranged for his son Philip the Handsome and his grandchildren with the ruling houses of Spain, Bohemia and Hungary delivered Spain and central Europe to his descendants.

Philip the Handsome, son of Maximilian I and Mary of Burgundy, ruled the Burgundian Netherlands from 1482 and became the first Habsburg king in Spain. His marriage in 1496 to Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, was intended only as an anti-French alliance, but the deaths of Joanna's brother and elder sister made her heiress of Castile, and in 1506 Philip was proclaimed king alongside her as Philip I. His Spanish reign lasted a matter of months before his death at Burgos in the same year, at the age of twenty-eight. Through his sons Charles V and Ferdinand I, he stands at the point where the Spanish and Austrian Habsburg lines both begin.

Charles V, eldest son of Philip the Handsome and Joanna of Castile, ruled the largest collection of territories any European sovereign had yet held: the Burgundian Netherlands from 1506, Spain with Naples, Sicily and the American possessions from 1516 as Charles I, the Austrian hereditary lands from 1519, and the Holy Roman Empire from his election in the same year. His reign was defined by wars with France over Italy, by the Ottoman advance on Vienna and the Mediterranean, and by the Protestant Reformation, which he confronted at the Diet of Worms in 1521 and failed to reverse. Exhausted, he abdicated between 1555 and 1556, dividing his inheritance between his son Philip II and his brother Ferdinand I, and retired to the monastery of Yuste.

Philip II, son of Charles V and Isabella of Portugal, ruled Spain, the Netherlands, Naples, Sicily, Milan and the Spanish empire in the Americas and the Philippines from 1556, and added Portugal and its possessions in 1580, briefly uniting the whole Iberian peninsula under one crown. Working from the vast monastery-palace of El Escorial that he built outside Madrid, he governed through paper and councils in an age of Spanish cultural ascendancy. His reign saw the naval victory over the Ottomans at Lepanto in 1571, the long revolt of the Dutch provinces, and the failure of the Armada sent against England in 1588. He married four times, and by his last wife, Anna of Austria, was the father of Philip III.

Ferdinand II, son of Archduke Charles II of Inner Austria and Maria Anna of Bavaria, was educated by the Jesuits at Ingolstadt and ruled Inner Austria from 1590 before becoming King of Bohemia and Hungary and, in 1619, Holy Roman Emperor. His determination to restore Catholicism in his lands provoked the Bohemian revolt of 1618 that opened the Thirty Years' War; his victory at the White Mountain in 1620 broke the Bohemian estates and made the crown hereditary in his house. Relying on the armies of Wallenstein and the Catholic League, he issued the Edict of Restitution in 1629 at the height of his power, then saw the war turn with Swedish and French intervention. He was the father of Ferdinand III.

Philip IV ruled Spain from 1621 to 1665, through the years in which Spanish military power was broken and Spanish art reached its height. Guided for two decades by the Count-Duke of Olivares, he committed Spain to the Thirty Years' War, and the reign brought the loss of Portugal in 1640, revolt in Catalonia, recognition of Dutch independence at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, and the surrender of border territories to France at the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. He was the most discerning royal patron of his century, employing Diego Velazquez as court painter for more than thirty years. Son of Philip III, he married first Elisabeth of France and then his niece Mariana of Austria, and was the father of Charles II.

Ferdinand III, son of Emperor Ferdinand II and Maria Anna of Bavaria, took command of the imperial armies in 1634 and won the battle of Nordlingen in the same year before succeeding his father as emperor in 1637. Less doctrinaire than his father and convinced that the Thirty Years' War could not be won, he opened negotiations that produced the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, accepting a settlement that confirmed the religious division of Germany and limited imperial authority over the princes, but preserved Habsburg rule in Austria, Bohemia and Hungary. He was a trained composer whose works were performed at court. By Maria Anna of Spain he was the father of Leopold I and of Mariana of Austria, queen of Spain.

Charles II was the last Habsburg king of Spain, the only surviving son of Philip IV and Mariana of Austria. He succeeded at the age of three in 1665 under his mother's regency and reigned in his own name from 1675 until 1700, over an empire still vast in extent but weakened by decades of war with France, in which Spain lost Franche-Comte and further ground in the Netherlands. Government rested largely with ministers and with a court split into French and Austrian parties over who should inherit. He married Marie Louise of Orleans and then Maria Anna of Neuburg, and left no children; his will naming Philip of Anjou as heir brought on the War of the Spanish Succession and ended Habsburg rule in Spain.

Maria Theresa, daughter of Emperor Charles VI and Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, was the only woman to rule the Habsburg lands in her own right, succeeding in 1740 as Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary and Bohemia. Her accession was immediately challenged, and the War of the Austrian Succession cost her Silesia to Prussia, a loss she failed to recover in the Seven Years' War. She responded with a thorough overhaul of the monarchy: central administration, taxation, the army, the courts and compulsory primary schooling were all reorganised in her forty-year reign. Married to Francis I Stephen of Lorraine, she founded the House of Habsburg-Lorraine and was the mother of Joseph II, Leopold II and Marie Antoinette.

Joseph II, eldest son of Maria Theresa and Francis I Stephen, became Holy Roman Emperor in 1765 and co-regent of the Habsburg lands with his mother, ruling alone from her death in 1780 until his own in 1790. He is the archetype of the enlightened absolutist: in a decade he issued thousands of decrees, granting toleration to Protestants, Orthodox Christians and Jews in 1781, abolishing serfdom in the same year, dissolving contemplative monasteries, ending censorship of much of the press, and replacing Latin with German as the language of administration. The pace and centralism of the reforms provoked revolt in the Netherlands and Hungary, and several were withdrawn. He was the elder brother of Leopold II and of Marie Antoinette.