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'Frederick V' (German: ''Friedrich V.'') (August 16 1596 – November 29 1632) was Elector Palatine (1610–23), and, as 'Frederick I' (Czech: ''Fridrich Falcký''), King of Bohemia (1619–20, for his short reign here often nicknamed the 'Winter King', Czech ''Zimní král''). He was the son and heir of Frederick IV and of Louise Juliana of Nassau, the daughter of William I of Orange and Charlotte de Bourbon-Monpensier.

Born at ''Jagdschloss'' (Hunting Lodge) Deinschwang near Amberg in the Upper Palatinate, Frederick V succeeded his father as Prince-Elector of the Rhenish Palatinate in the Holy Roman Empire in 1610. In 1619 the Protestant estates of Bohemia rebelled against the Roman Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II and offered the crown of Bohemia to Frederick, selecting him since he was an influential member of the Protestant Union, an organization founded by his father for the protection of Protestants in the Empire.
Frederick duly accepted the crown, an act that is frequently cited as the final impetus for the outbreak of the Thirty Year's War, but his allies in the Protestant Union failed to support him militarily by signing the Treaty of Ulm (1620). His brief reign as King of Bohemia ended with his defeat at the Battle of White Mountain on November 8, 1620—a year and four days after his coronation. This earned him the derisive nickname of 'the Winter King'. After this battle, the Imperial forces invaded Frederick's Palatinate lands and he had flee to Holland in 1622. An Imperial edict formally deprived him of the Palatinate in 1623. He lived the rest of his life in exile with his wife and family, mostly at the Hague, before passing away in Mainz in 1632.
His eldest surviving son Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine returned to power in 1648 with the end of the war.

Contents

Ancestry

Family and children

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Ancestry

Family and children

He married Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of James I of England and of Anne of Denmark in the Chapel Royal, Whitehall on February 14 1613 and had the following children:
# Frederick Henry (1614–1629)—(drowned)
# Charles Louis (1617–1680), became Elector Palatine in 1648
# Elisabeth (1618–1680)
# Rupert (1619–1682) of English Civil War fame.
# Maurice (1620–1652) who also served in the English Civil War.
# Louise Hollandine (1622–1709)
# Louis (1624–1625)
# Edward (1625–1663)
# Henrietta Maria (1626–1651)
# John Philip Frederick (1627–1650)
# Charlotte (1628–1631)
# Sophia (1630–1714), married Elector Ernest Augustus of Hanover; heiress of England by the Act of Settlement, 1701
# Gustavus Adolphus (1632–1641)

External links