Although the Hungarian parliament offered Rákóczi the royal crown, he refused it, choosing instead the temporary title of the "Ruling Prince of Hungary".

By refusing the royal crown, he proclaimed to Hungary that it was not his personal ambition that drove the war of liberation against the Habsburg dynasty.

He was the richest landlord in the Kingdom of Hungary and the count (comes perpetuus) of the Comitatus Sarossiensis (in Hungarian Sáros), now in northeastern Slovakia, from 1694 on.

The family lived in the castle of Munkács (today Mukacheve, in Ukraine), Sárospatak and Regéc until 1680, when Ferenc's paternal grandmother, Sofia Báthory, died.

However, the failure of the Turks to capture the Habsburg capital in the Battle of Vienna in 1683 frustrated Thököly's plans to become King of Upper Hungary.

When the Turks began to grow suspicious of his intentions, Thököly proposed sending the young Rákóczi to Constantinople as a guarantee of his goodwill.

Relying on the prevalent anti-Habsburg sentiment, remnants of Thököly's peasant army started a new uprising in the Hegyalja region of Northeastern present-day Hungary, which was part of the property of the Rákóczi family.

They captured the castles of Tokaj, Sárospatak and Sátoraljaújhely, and asked Rákóczi to become their leader, but he was not eager to head what appeared to be a minor peasant rebellion.

Rákóczi then befriended Count Miklós Bercsényi, whose property at Ungvár (today Ужгород (Uzhhorod), in Ukraine), lay next to his own.

As a direct result of this, Rákóczi was arrested on 18 April 1700, and imprisoned in the fortress of Wiener Neustadt (south of Vienna).

With the aid of his pregnant wife Amelia and the prison commander, Rákóczi managed to escape and flee to Poland.

Three years later, the War of the Spanish Succession caused a large part of the Austrian forces in the Kingdom of Hungary to temporarily leave the country.

Rákóczi's proposed treaty with the French was stalled, so he became convinced that only a declaration of independence would make it acceptable for various powers to negotiate with him.

In 1706, his wife (whom he had not seen in 5 years, along with their sons József and György) and his sister were both sent as peace ambassadors, but Rákóczi rejected their efforts on behalf of the Emperor.

On Rákóczi's recommendation, and with Bercsényi's support, another meeting of the Diet held at Ónod (Borsod county) declared the deposition of the House of Habsburg from the Hungarian throne on 13 June 1707.

At the Battle of Trencsén (German: Trentschin, Latin: Trentsinium, Comitatus Trentsiniensis, today Trenčín in Slovakia), on 3 August 1708 Rákóczi's horse stumbled, and he fell to the ground, which knocked him unconscious.

Not trusting the word of János Pálffy, who was the Emperor's envoy charged with negotiations with the rebels, the Prince left the Kingdom of Hungary for Poland on 21 February 1711.

In Rákóczi's absence, Sándor Károlyi was named Commander-in-Chief of the Hungarian forces, and quickly negotiated a peace agreement with János Pálffy.

Under its provisions, 12,000 rebels laid down their arms, handed over their flags and took an oath of allegiance to the Emperor on 1 May 1711 in the fields outside Majtény, in Szatmár county.

He was assured clemency if he took an oath of allegiance to the Emperor, as well as the freedom to move to Poland if he wanted to leave the Kingdom of Hungary.

He did not accept these conditions, doubting the honesty of the Habsburg court, and he did not even recognize the legality of the Peace Treaty, as it had been signed after the death of the Emperor Joseph I on 17 April 1711, which terminated the plenipotential authority of János Pálffy.

On 27 April he handed a memorandum to Louis XIV reminding him of his past services to France and asking him not to forget Hungary during the coming peace negotiations for the War of the Spanish Succession.

But after the death of Louis XIV on 1 September 1715, he decided to accept the invitation of the Ottoman Empire (still at war with the Habsburgs) to move there.

He was received with honors, but his desire to head up a separate Christian army to help in the fight against the Habsburgs was not under serious consideration.

He adopted a set routine: rising early, attending daily Mass, writing and reading in the mornings, and carpentry in the afternoons; visited occasionally by his son, György Rákóczi.

After obtaining the permission of the Turkish authorities, Rákóczi's body was taken by his faithful chamberlain Kelemen Mikes to Constantinople on 6 July 1735 for burial in Saint-Benoît (then Jesuit) French church in Galata, where he was buried, according to his last wishes, next to his mother Ilona Zrínyi.

His remains were moved on 29 October 1906 to the St. Elisabeth Cathedral in Kassa, Hungary (today Košice, Slovakia), where he is buried with his mother Ilona and his son.

His equestrian statue with the famous motto Cum Deo Pro Patria et Libertate ("With God for Fatherland and Liberty") written on its red marble base was erected in front of the Hungarian Parliament Building on Lajos Kossuth Square in 1937, the work of János Pásztor.

The village of Zavadka, today in Ukraine next to the Veretski Pass (Hungarian: Vereckei-hágó) where Rákóczi arrived at Hungary in the beginning of the uprising in 1703 and where he said goodbye to his followers in 1711 going into exile was renamed Rákócziszállás in 1889.