He lived the rest of his life in exile with his wife and family, mostly at The Hague, and died in Mainz in 1632. An Imperial edict formally deprived him of the Palatinate in 1623. His brief reign as king of Bohemia ended with his defeat at the Battle of White Mountain on 8 November 1620 – a year and four days after his coronation.Īfter the battle, the Imperial forces invaded Frederick's Palatine lands, forcing him to flee to his uncle Prince Maurice, Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic in 1622. However, James opposed his son-in-law's takeover of Bohemia from the Habsburgs and Frederick's allies in the Protestant Union failed to support him militarily by signing the Treaty of Ulm. The estates chose Frederick because he was the leader of the Protestant Union, a military alliance founded by his father, and hoped for the support of Frederick's father-in-law, James VI of Scotland and I of England. He accepted the offer and was crowned on 4 November 1619, as Frederick I. Frederick was asked to assume the crown of Bohemia. In 1618 the largely Protestant Czech nobility of Bohemia rebelled against their Catholic king, Ferdinand II, beginning a conflict that would become the Thirty Years' War. He was responsible for the construction of the famous Hortus Palatinus gardens in Heidelberg.

An intellectual, a mystic, and a Calvinist, he succeeded his father as Prince-Elector of the Rhenish Palatinate in 1610. He was the son of Frederick IV and of Louise Juliana of Orange-Nassau, the daughter of William the Silent and Charlotte de Bourbon-Montpensier. He was forced to abdicate both roles, and the brevity of his reign in Bohemia earned him the derisive sobriquet ' the Winter King' ( Czech: Zimní král German: Winterkönig).įrederick was born at the hunting lodge ( German: Jagdschloss) in Deinschwang, Palatinate (present-day Lauterhofen, Germany). Frederick V (German: Friedrich 26 August 1596 – 29 November 1632) was the Elector Palatine of the Rhine in the Holy Roman Empire from 1610 to 1623, and reigned as King of Bohemia from 1619 to 1620.

The winter king epix