Ferdinand III of Tuscany

Ferdinand succeeded his father Leopold as regent in Tuscany in 1791, after the latter became emperor. His life was dominated by the political upheavals in the wake of the French Revolution. Driven out of Tuscany by French troops, he became a pawn of the Great Powers, before the Congress of Vienna finally re-installed him – as a declared opponent of the ideals of the French Revolution – as regent of Tuscany. He was the progenitor of a widely ramified collateral branch of the Habsburgs known as the Habsburg-Tuscan line.