Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor

Born in 1527 into the Austrian Habsburgs, Maximilian collected crowns in quick succession: Bohemia in Prague on 14 May 1562, Germany six months later on 24 November, Hungary and Croatia in Pressburg on 8 September 1563. He became Holy Roman Emperor on 25 July 1564 when his father Ferdinand I died. His reign unfolded in the wake of the 1555 Peace of Augsburg, and though Catholic himself, he reached toward the Lutheran estates hoping to close the denominational split - a strategy that failed. Meanwhile the Ottomans pressed from the east and friction with his Spanish Habsburg relatives mounted. He never rationalized the government, never unified Christianity, never drove the Turks from Hungary. But through religious tolerance and patronage of arts and sciences, he held a crumbling peace until his death in 1576.