Maria Theresa ( ; 13 May 1717 – 29 November 1780)
was the only female ruler of the
Habsburg dominions and the last of the
House of Habsburg.
She was the sovereign
of Austria, Hungary, Croatia
, Bohemia, Mantua
, Milan
, Lodomeria and Galicia, the
Austrian Netherlands, and
Parma
. By marriage, she was Grand Duchess of
Tuscany, Duchess of Lorraine,
German
Queen and
Holy Roman
Empress.
She became sovereign when her father,
Emperor Charles VI, died in
October 1740. Charles VI paved the way for her accession with the
Pragmatic Sanction of
1713, as the Habsburg lands were bound by
Salic law which prevented female succession.
Upon the
death of her father, Saxony,
Prussia, Bavaria
and France
(the states
of Europe that had previously recognised the sanction) repudiated
it. Prussia proceeded to invade the affluent Habsburg
province of
Silesia, sparking an eight year
long conflict known as the
War of the Austrian
Succession.
Maria Theresa promulgated financial and educational reforms, with
the assistance of
Count Friedrich Wilhelm von
Haugwitz and
Gottfried van
Swieten, promoted commerce and the development of agriculture,
and reorganised Austria's ramshackle military, all of which
strengthened Austria's international standing, but refused to allow
religious toleration. In
addition, contemporary travellers thought her regime was bigoted
and superstitious.
Though she was expected to cede power to her husband
Francis I or son
Joseph II, both of whom were
officially her co-rulers in Austria and Bohemia, Maria Theresa was
the absolute sovereign of her dominions. She criticised and
disapproved of many of Joseph's actions. She vehemently resisted
the
First Partition of
Poland, but Joseph and her
Chancellor,
Prince Kaunitz, forced
her to authorise it. Maria Theresa oversaw the unification of the
Austrian and Bohemian chancellories. She had sixteen children by
Francis I, Holy Roman
Emperor, including a
queen of
France, a
queen of
Naples, a
duchess of Parma and two
Holy Roman Emperors. Maria Theresa was intellectually inferior to
her sons, but possessed qualities appreciated in a monarch: warm
heart, practical mind, firm determination, sound perception, and,
most importantly, readiness to acknowledge mental superiority of
her advisers. As a young monarch who had to fight two dynastic
wars, she believed that her cause should be the cause of her
subjects, but in her later years she came to understand that their
cause must be hers.
Birth and background
The second
but eldest surviving child of Charles VI, Holy Roman
Emperor, and Elisabeth
Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Maria Theresa was born
early in the morning of 13 May 1717 at the Hofburg Palace
, Vienna
, shortly
after the death of her elder brother Leopold. The least
inbred Habsburg ruler for centuries, she was christened
Maria Theresia Walburga Amalia Christina later
that day. Most descriptions of her baptism stress that the infant
was carried ahead of her cousins,
Maria Josepha and
Maria Amalia, the daughters of
Charles VI's elder brother and predecessor
Joseph, before the eyes of
Joseph's widow
Wilhelmina
Amalia of Brunswick, indicating that Maria Theresa would
outrank them even though their grandfather
Leopold had his sons sign the
decree which gave precedence to the daughters of the elder
brother.
Maria Theresa resembled her mother and a year-younger sister,
Archduchess
Maria Anna. She had large blue eyes, fair hair with a slight
tinge of red and wide mouth. Her body was large and notably
strong.
Her father, who ruled over vast areas of land in Central Europe,
needed a male heir; the
Habsburg dominions
were hindered by
Salic law which prevented
females from succeeding. Thus, the birth of Maria Theresa was a
great disappointment to him and the people of Vienna; Charles never
managed to overcome this feeling.
Heiress presumptive
Four years before the birth of Maria Theresa, Charles VI provided
for a male-line succession failure with the
Pragmatic Sanction of 1713. The
emperor favoured his own daughters over those of his elder brother
and predecessor,
Joseph
I, in the succession, ignoring the decree he had signed during
the reign of his father. Charles sought the other European powers'
approval. They exacted harsh terms: England demanded that Austria
abolish its
overseas trading company.
In total,
Great
Britain
, France
, Saxony-Poland, United Provinces, Spain
, Venice
, States of the
Church
, Prussia , Russia
, Denmark
, Savoy-Sardinia, Bavaria, and the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire
recognised the sanction. France, Spain, Saxony-Poland,
Bavaria and Prussia later reneged.
As a youth, Maria Theresa greatly enjoyed singing and archery. She
was barred from horse riding by her father, but she would later
learn the basics for the sake of her
Hungarian coronation
ceremony. The imperial family staged opera productions which
she relished in participating in. Charles VI was in the habit of
conducting these shows. Her education was overseen by
Jesuits. Contemporaries thought her
Latin to be quite good, but in all else, the
Jesuits did not educate her well. Her spelling and punctuation were
offbeat. The lack of education resulted in the lack of formal
manner and speech which had characterised her Habsburg
predecessors. Maria Theresa developed a close relationship with
Countess
Marie Karoline
von Fuchs-Mollard who taught her etiquette. She was educated in
drawing and painting, music and dancing - the disciplines which
would have prepared her for the role of
queen consort. Even though he had spent the
last decades of his life securing Maria Theresa's inheritance,
Charles always expected a son and never had his daughter prepared
for her future role as sovereign.
Marriage
"She is a princess of the highest spirit and
regards her father's loses as her own. She sighs and pines
for her Duke of Lorraine all day and all night. If she
sleeps it is but to dream of him, if she wakes it is but to talk of
him to her lady-in-waiting." |
The writings of a British ambasador. |
The issue of Maria Theresa's marriage was raised early in her
childhood. She was first engaged to be married to Clement of
Lorraine, who was supposed to come to Vienna and meet Maria Theresa
in 1723. Instead, news reached Vienna that he had died of
smallpox, which upset Maria Theresa. Clement's
older brother,
Francis
Stephen, was invited to Vienna, but Maria Theresa's father
considered other possibilities (such as marrying her to the future
Charles III of Spain) before
announcing the engagement of the couple. France demanded that Maria
Theresa's fiancé surrender his ancestral
Duchy of Lorraine to accommodate the
deposed King of
Poland.
Maria Theresa married Francis III of Lorraine on 12 February 1736.
Francis was Emperor Charles VI's favourite candidate for Maria
Theresa's hand. Francis was to receive the
Grand Duchy of Tuscany, in exchange
for his renunciation of Lorraine, upon the incumbent, childless
Grand Duke's death. Until then, Maria Theresa was Duchess of
Lorraine. He tended to leave the day to day administration to Maria
Theresa. Unlike many princesses of her time, she married for love,
but the marriage suffered because of Francis's infidelity.
Francis III became grand duke of Tuscany on 9 July 1737, and Maria
Theresa its grand duchess. In 1738, following Francis's dismissal
from his military post, Charles VI sent the young couple to make
their formal entry into Tuscany. A triumphal arch was erected at
the Porta Galla in celebration, where it remains today.
Their stay
in Florence
was brief. Charles VI soon recalled them, as
he feared he might die while his heiress was miles away in Tuscany.
In the summer of 1738, Austria suffered defeats during the ongoing
Russo-Turkish
War.
The Turks reversed Austrian gains in Serbia
, Wallachia and Bosnia. The Viennese
rioted at the cost of the war. Francis Stephen was popularly
despised, as he was thought to be a cowardly French spy. The war
was concluded the next year with the
Treaty of Belgrade.
Accession
Charles VI
died on 20 October 1740 at the Favorita Palace
, Vienna. It is thought that his death was
caused by consumption of poisonous mushrooms. He left Austria in a
poorly state. It was bankrupted by the recent Turkish war and the
War of the Polish
Succession; the treasury contained only 100,000
florins. The army numbered only
80,000 men; most of whom had not been paid in months, but were
nevertheless remarkably loyal and devoted to their new
sovereign.
The new sovereign found herself in a difficult situation. She did
not know enough about matters of state and she was unaware of the
weakness of her father's ministers. She decided to rely on her
father's advice to retain his councillors and defer to her husband,
whom she considered to be more experienced, on other matters. Both
decisions, though natural, would prove to be unfortunate. Ten years
later, Maria Theresa bitterly recalls the circumstances under which
she had ascended in her
Political Testament:
I found myself without money, without credit, without
army, without experience and knowledge of my own and finally, also
without any counsel because each one of them at first wanted to
wait and see how things would develop.
The first display of the new queen's authority was the formal act
of
homage of the Lower Austrian
Estates to her on 22 November 1740. It was an elaborate public
event which served as a formal recognition and legitimation of her
accession. The
oath of fealty to
Maria Theresa was taken on the same day in Hofburg.
She dismissed the possibility that other countries might try to
seize her territories and immediately started ensuring the imperial
dignity for herself; since she was precluded from being elected
Holy Roman Empress, she wanted to secure the imperial office for
her husband whom she had already made co-ruler of the Austrian and
Bohemian lands on 21 November 1740. The main challenger to this
ambition, as well as to her inherited crowns, would prove to be
Charles Albert of
Bavaria, the husband of Maria Theresa's deprived cousin
Maria Amalia.
War of the Austrian Succession
"She has, as you well know, a terrible hatred
for France, with which nation it is most difficult for her to keep
on good terms, but she controls this passion except when she thinks
to her advantage to display it. She detests Your Majesty,
but acknowledges your ability. She cannot forget the loss
of Silesia, nor her grief over the soldiers she lost in wars with
you." |
Prussian ambasador's letter to Frederick the Great. |
George II of Great
Britain told Austria he would be honouring "the engagements I
am under".
Frederick II of
Prussia (The Great), whose father had recognised the Pragmatic
Sanction, assured Austria of the "purity of his intentions". He
even went as far as writing a letter of condolence to Francis that
assured him of Prussia's support of his imperial candidature. In
December, Frederick sent an envoy to Vienna to request the cession
of the
Duchy of Silesia, a
mineral-rich Austrian crownland on Prussia's border. Francis and
Maria Theresa blankly refused. At that stage, Prussia had already
invaded Silesia. Great Britain offered Maria Theresa the use of
12,000 troops if all attempts at mediation failed. General
Maximilian von Browne commanded
the Austrian troops against Frederick, managing to gather a force
of 6,000 men.
As Austria was short of experienced military commanders, Maria
Theresa released
Marshall
Neipperg from prison, having been imprisoned by her father for
his poor performance in the Turkish War. Neipperg took command of
the Austrian troops in March. The Austrians suffered a crushing
defeat that April at the
Battle of
Olmütz. France drew up a plan to partition Austria between
Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and Spain. The thought of this worried
England.
Marshall
Belle-Isle joined Frederick at Olmütz. Vienna was in a panic,
as none of Maria Theresa's advisors expected France to betray them.
Francis urged Maria Theresa to reach a
rapprochement with
Prussia, as did England. Maria Theresa reluctantly agreed to
negotiations.
George II, unbeknownst to Maria Theresa,
offered Frederick Glogau
, Schwiebus
and Grünberg.
Frederick rejected the offer, and aligned himself with France in
June.
By July, attempts at conciliation had completely collapsed.
Maurice de Saxe crossed the Rhine
frontier
into the Holy Roman Empire, and
Saxony abruptly abandoned Austria for the French. The
Electoral Palatinate combined
forced with the
Electorate of
Cologne and the
Electorate of
Bavaria. George II declared the
Electorate of
Brunswick-Lüneburg to be neutral.
Maria Theresa had herself crowned King of Hungary on 25 June 1741
after spending months honing the equestrian skills necessary for
the ceremony and negotiating with the
Diet.
On 26 October, Charles Albert of Bavaria
captured Prague
and declared
himself King of Bohemia.
Charles Albert sold Frederick the
County
of Glatz at a reduced price in exchange for his electoral vote
and was elected Holy Roman Emperor on 24 January 1742.
The same day,
Austrian troops under Ludwig Andreas von
Khevenhüller captured Munich
, the
Emperor's capital. The
Treaty
of Breslau of June 1742 ended hostilities between Austria and
Prussia. French troops fled Bohemia in the winter of the same year.
On 12 May
1743, Maria Theresa had herself crowned King of Bohemia in St. Vitus
Cathedral
.
Prussia became anxious at Austrian advances on the Rhine frontier,
and Frederick sacked Prague in August 1744. The plans of France
fell apart when Charles Albert died in January 1745. The French
over-ran the
Austrian
Netherlands in May.
Francis was elected Holy Roman Emperor on 13 September 1745.
Prussia recognised Francis as emperor, and Maria Theresa once again
recognised the loss in Prussia by the
Treaty of Breslau in December 1745.
England and France were determined to end the war. It dragged on
for another three years, with fighting in Northern Italy and the
Austrian Netherlands. The
Treaty of Aix-La-Chapelle,
which concluded the 8-year long conflict, recognised Prussia's
possession of Silesia and Maria Theresa ceded the
Duchy of Parma to King
Charles VII of Naples.
Seven Years War
Frederick's invasion of Saxony in August 1756 began the
Seven Years' War. Empress Maria Theresa and
Kaunitz wished to exit the war with possession of Silesia. Austria
was aligned with France and Russia; England with Prussia and
Portugal. Giving Austria huge subsidies came back to haunt France.
She could
not bolster defences in New France; the
British easily captured Louisbourg
in 1758, and went on to conquer all of New
France.
Maximilian von Browne
commanded the Austrian troops.
Following the indecisive Battle of
Lobositz
in 1756, he was replaced by Prince Charles of Lorraine, Maria
Theresa's brother-in-law. Frederick was startled by
Lobositz; he eventually re-grouped for another attack in June 1757.
The
Battle of
Kolin
that followed was a decisive victory for
Austria. Frederick lost one third of his troops, and before
the battle was over, he had fled the scene.
Maria Theresa openly bemoaned French losses in 1758. France, having
secured the Anglo-Hanoverian neutrality for the rest of the
conflict, in September 1757, lost it in January of the next year.
France
suffered a crushing defeat at Krefeld
that June. French forces withdrew to the
Rhine.
In 1759,
peace negotiations at The
Hague
came to nothing. The series of
Franco-Austrian losses were reversed until, in 1762, the Empress
Elizabeth of Russia died. Her
successor
Peter III greatly
admired Frederick, and at once withdrew Russia's support from the
French coalition. Prussia proceeded to kick the Austrians out of
Saxony, and the French out of
Hesse-Kassel. Naturally, it was feared that
Frederick would now invade Austria and France, and they
capitulated. The peace treaties,
Hubertusburg and
Paris, exacted harsh terms on France,
as she was forced to relinquish most of her American colonies. For
Austria, though, it was
status
quo ante bellum.
Family life
Over the course of twenty years, Maria Theresa gave birth to
sixteen children, thirteen of whom survived infancy. The first
child, Maria Elisabeth (1737-1740), came a little less than a year
after the wedding. Again, the child's gender caused great
disappointment and so would the next two births, for the first
three children born to Maria Theresa were female, including
Maria
Anna, the eldest surviving child of Maria Theresa, and Maria
Carolina (1740-1741). While fighting to preserve her inheritance,
Maria Theresa gave birth to
a son and named him after
Saint Joseph to whom she had repeatedly
prayed for a male child during the pregnancy.
Maria Theresa's
favourite child, Maria
Christina, was born on her 25th birthday, four days before the
defeat of the Austrian army in Chotusitz
. Five more children were born during the
war:
Maria
Elisabeth,
Charles,
Maria Amalia,
Leopold and Maria
Carolina (1748-1748). During this period, there was no rest for
Maria Theresa during pregnancies or around the births; the war and
child-bearing were carried on simultaneously. Five children were
born during the peace between the
War of the Austrian
Succession and the
Seven Years'
War:
Maria Johanna,
Maria Josepha,
Maria Carolina,
Ferdinand and
Maria Antonia (future "Marie Antoinette").
She delivered her last child,
Maximilian Francis,
during the Seven Years' War, aged 39. Maria Theresa asserted that,
had she not been almost always pregnant, she would have gone into
battle herself.
Maria Theresa's mother, Empress
Elisabeth
Christine, died in 1750. Four years later, Maria Theresa's
governess,
Marie
Karoline von Fuchs-Mollard, died.
The Empress showed
her gratitude to Countess Fuchs by having her buried in the
Imperial
Crypt
along with the members of the imperial
family.
Shortly after finishing giving birth to the younger children, Maria
Theresa was confronted with the task of marrying off the elder
ones. She led the marriage negotiations along with the campaigns of
her wars and the duties of state. She treated her children with
affection but used them as pawns in dynastical games and sacrificed
their happiness for the benefit of state. A devoted but
self-conscious mother, she wrote to all of her children at least
once a week and believed herself entitled to exercise authority
over her children regardless of their age and rank.
Maria Theresa came down with a severe attack of
smallpox shortly after her fiftieth birthday in May
1767, caught from her daughter-in-law and empress,
Maria Josepha of Bavaria. Maria
Theresa survived, but the new empress did not.
Maria Theresa forced
her daughter Archduchess Maria
Josepha to pray with her in the Imperial Crypt
next to the unsealed tomb of Empress Maria
Josepha. Maria Josepha started showing smallpox rash two
days after visiting the crypt and soon died.
Maria Carolina was to replace her
as the pre-determined bride of King
Ferdinand IV of Naples.
Maria Theresa blamed herself for her daughter's death for the rest
of her life because, at the time, the concept of an extended
incubation period was largely unknown and it was believed that
Maria Josepha had caught smallpox from the body of the late
empress.
In April 1770, Maria Theresa's youngest daughter,
Maria Antonia, married
Louis,
Dauphin of
France, by proxy in Vienna.
Maria Antonia's education was neglected, and
when the French showed an interest in her, her mother went about
educating her as best she could about the court of
Versailles
and the French. Maria Theresa kept up a
fortnightly correspondence with Maria Antonia, now called Marie
Antoinette, in which she often reproached her for laziness and
frivolity and scolded her for failing to conceive a child. She
disliked Leopold's reserve and often blamed him for being cold. She
criticised Ferdinand's lack of organisation, Maria Amalia's poor
French and haughtiness, and Maria
Carolina for her political activities. The only child she did not
constantly scold was Maria Christina, who enjoyed her mother's
complete confidence, though she failed to please her mother in one
aspect: she did not produce any surviving children. One of Maria
Theresa's greatest wishes was to have as many grandchildren as
possible, but she had only about two dozen at the time of her
death, of which all the eldest surviving daughters were named after
her.
Issue
Children of Maria Theresa of
Austria
Name |
Birth |
Death |
Notes |
Archduchess Maria Elisabeth of Austria |
5 February 1737 |
6 June 1740 |
died in childhood, no issue |
Archduchess
Maria Anna |
6 October 1738 |
19 November 1789 |
died unmarried, no issue |
Archduchess Maria Carolina of Austria |
12 January 1740 |
25 January 1741 |
died in childhood, no issue |
Joseph II |
13 March 1741 |
20 February 1790 |
married 1) Princess
Isabella of Parma (1741-1763), married 2) Princess Maria Josepha of Bavaria
(1739-1767), had issue (line extinct) |
Archduchess
Maria Christina of Austria |
13 May 1742 |
24 June 1798 |
married Prince Albert of
Saxony, Duke of Teschen (1739-1822), had issue (one short-lived
daughter) |
Archduchess Maria Elisabeth of Austria |
13 August 1743 |
22 September 1808 |
died unmarried, no issue |
Archduke Charles Joseph of Austria |
1 February 1745 |
18 January 1761 |
died of smallpox, no issue |
Archduchess
Maria Amalia of Austria |
26 February 1746 |
9 June 1804 |
married Ferdinand, Duke of
Parma (1751-1802), had issue. |
Leopold II |
5 May 1747 |
1 March 1792 |
married Infanta Maria Louisa of Spain
(1745-1792), had issue. |
Archduchess Maria Carolina |
17 September 1748 |
17 September 1748 |
short-lived |
Archduchess Maria
Johanna of Austria |
4 February 1750 |
23 December 1762 |
died of smallpox, no issue |
Archduchess
Maria Josepha of Austria |
19 March 1751 |
15 October 1767 |
died of smallpox, no issue |
Archduchess Maria Carolina
of Austria |
13 August 1752 |
7 September 1814 |
married King Ferdinand IV of Naples and
Sicily (1751-1825); had issue |
Archduke
Ferdinand of Austria, Duke of Breisgau |
1 June 1754 |
24 December 1806 |
married Maria Beatrice Ricciarda
d'Este, heiress of Breisgau and of Modena , had issue
(Austria-Este) |
Archduchess Maria Antonia of
Austria |
2 November 1755 |
16 October 1793 |
married Louis XVI of France
(1754-1793), had issue (line extinct) |
Archduke
Maximilian Franz of Austria |
8 December 1756 |
27 July 1801 |
Archbishop-Elector of
Cologne, no issue |
Religious views and policies
Like all members of the
House of
Habsburg, Maria Theresa was a
Roman
Catholic, and a devout one as well. She believed that religious
unity was necessary for a peaceful public life and explicitly
rejected the idea of
religious
toleration. However, she never allowed the Church to interfere
with what she considered to be prerogatives of a monarch and kept
Rome at arm's length. She controlled the selection of archbishops,
bishops and abbots.
Her approach to religious piety differed from the approach of her
predecessors, as she was influenced by
Jansenist ideas. The empress actively supported
conversion to
Roman Catholicism by
securing pensions to the converts. She tolerated
Greek Catholics and emphasised their
equal status with Roman Catholics.
Besides her devotion to Christianity, she was widely known for her
ascetic lifestyle, especially during her 15-year-long
widowhood.
Jesuits
Her relationship with the
Jesuits
was of complex nature. Members of this order educated her, served
as her confessors and supervised the religious education of her
eldest son. The Jesuits were powerful and influential in the early
years of Maria Theresa's reign. However, the queen's ministers
managed to convince her that they posed a danger to her monarchical
authority. Not without much hesitation and regret, she issued a
decree which removed them from all the institutions of the monarchy
and carried it out thoroughly. She forbade the publication of
Pope Clement XIII's bull which was
in favour of the Jesuits and promptly confiscated their property
when
Pope Clement XIV suppressed
the order.
Jews and Protestants
Though she eventually gave up trying to convert her non-Catholic
subjects to Roman Catholicism, Maria Theresa regarded both the
Jews and
Protestants
as dangerous to the state and actively tried to suppress them. The
empress was probably the most
anti-Semitic monarch of her day, having
inherited all traditional prejudices of her ancestors and acquired
new ones. This highly personal feature was a product of deep
religious devotion and was not kept secret in her time. In 1777,
she wrote of the Jews:
I know of no greater plague than this race, which on
account of its deceit, usury and avarice is driving my subjects
into beggary.
Therefore as far as possible, the Jews are to be kept
away and avoided.
She imposed extremely harsh taxes on her Jewish subjects and, in
December 1744, she proposed expelling the Jews from her hereditary
dominions to her ministers. Her first intention was to expel all
Jews by 1 January, but accepted the advice of her ministers who
were concerned by the number of future expellees and had them
expelled by June. She also transferred Protestants from Austria to
Transylvania and cut down the number of
religious holidays and monastic orders. In 1777, Maria Theresa
abandoned the idea of expelling Moravian Protestants after Joseph,
who was opposed to her intentions, threatened to abdicate as
emperor and co-ruler. Finally, the empress was forced to grant them
some toleration by allowing them to worship privately. Joseph
regarded his mother's religious policies as "unjust, impious,
impossible, harmful and ridiculous".
In the third decade of her reign, influenced by her Jewish courtier
Abraham Mendel Theben, Maria Theresa issued edicts which offered a
sort of protection to the Jews. She forbade forceful conversion of
Jewish children to Christianity in 1762. The next year, the empress
forbade Catholic clergy to extract
surplice
fee from the Jews. In 1764, she ordered the release of those Jews
who had been jailed for a
blood libel in
the village of Orkuta. Notwithstanding her strong
Judeophobia, Maria Theresa supported Jewish
commercial and industrial activity.
Reforms
Maria Theresa was as conservative in manners of state as in those
of religion, but implemented significant reforms to strengthen
Austria's military and bureaucratic efficiency. She employed
Count Friedrich
Wilhelm von Haugwitz to modernise her empire. Haugwitz created
a standing army of 108,000 men, paid for with 14 million
gulden extracted from each crown-land of the empire.
The central government was responsible for the army. Haugwitz
instituted taxation of the nobility, who never before had to pay
taxes. The Austrian and Bohemian chancelleries were merged in May
1749.
Maria Theresa doubled the state revenue between 1754 and 1764,
though her attempt to tax clergy and nobility was only partially
successful. These financial reforms greatly improved the
economy.
In 1760, Maria Theresa created the council of state, composed of
the state chancellor, three members of the high nobility and three
knights, which served as a committee of experienced people who
advised her. The council of state lacked executive or legislative
authority, but nevertheless showed the difference between the forms
of government employed by Maria Theresa and
Frederick II of Prussia. Unlike the
latter, Maria Theresa was not an autocrat who acted as her own
minister. Prussia would adopt this form of government only after
1807.
In 1771, she and Joseph issued the
Robot
Patent, a reform that regulated a serf's labor payments in her
lands, which provided some relief. Financially, in 1775, the budget
was balanced for the first time in memory.
Medicine
Gerard van Swieten, whom Maria Theresa
recruited following the death of her sister Archduchess Maria
Anna, founded the Vienna General Hospital
, revamped Austria's educational system and served
as the Empress's personal physician.
Infant mortality was a big problem in Austria. After calling in van
Swieten, she asked him to study the problem, then followed his
recommendation and made a decree that autopsies would be mandatory
for all hospital deaths in the city of Graz, Austria's second
largest city. This law, still in effect today, combined with the
relatively stable population of Graz, has resulted in one of the
most important and complete autopsy records in the world. Her
decision to have her children
inoculated
after the epidemic of 1767 was responsible for the change of
physicians' negative view of inoculation.
The empress herself
inaugurated inoculation in Austria by hosting a dinner for the
first sixty-five inoculated children in Schönbrunn
Palace
, waiting on the children herself.
Civil rights
Among other reforms was the
Codex Theresianus, begun in
1752 and finished in 1766, that defined civil rights. In 1776,
Austria outlawed
witch burnings and
torture, and, for the first time in Austrian history, took capital
punishment off the penal code, as it was replaced with forced
labor. It was later reintroduced, but the progressive nature of
these reforms remains noted. Much unlike Joseph, Maria Theresa was
opposed to the abolition of torture and was supported by religious
authorities. Born and raised between
Baroque
and
Rococo eras, she was not able to fully
overcome inherited and developed prejudices. She found it hard to
fit into the intellectual sphere of the
Enlightenment, which is why she only
slowly followed humanitarian reforms on the continent.
Church
"She is most unusually ambitious and hopes to
make the House of Austria more renowned than it has ever
been." |
Prussian ambasador's letter to Frederick II of Prussia. |
"That woman's achievements are those of a
great man." |
The writings of Frederick II of Prussia. |
Main reforms concerning the
Roman
Catholic Church were initiated and carried out under Maria
Theresa, while the reforms under her son concerned their
non-Catholic subjects. The ecclesiastic policies of Maria Theresa,
like those of her devout predecessors, were based on primacy of
government control in the relations between the Church and the
State, but not of organization of the Church. Maria Theresa banned
the creation of new burial grounds without the prior permission of
the government, thus deploring the wasteful and unhygienic burial
customs.
Education
Maria Theresa was aware of the inadequacy of bureaucracy in Austria
and, in order to improve it, reformed education in 1775. All
children of both
genders from the ages of
six to twelve had to attend school. The new school system was based
on the Prussian one. Education reform was met with hostility from
many villages; Maria Theresa crushed the dissent by ordering the
arrest of all those opposed to the reforms. Although the idea was
good, the reforms were not as successful as they were expected to
be; in some parts of Austria, half of the population was still
illiterate in the 19th century.
The empress permitted non-Catholics to attend university and
allowed the introduction of secular subjects (such as law) into the
universities which influenced the decline of
theology as the main foundation of university
education.
Late reign
Emperor
Francis I died on 18 August 1765, while he and the court were in
Innsbruck
celebrating the wedding of his second son Leopold. Maria Theresa
was devastated. Their eldest son,
Joseph, was elected Holy Roman
Emperor. Maria Theresa abandoned all ornamentation, had her hair
cut short, painted her rooms black and dressed in mourning for the
rest of her life. She completely withdrew from court life, public
events, and theater. Throughout her widowhood, she spent the whole
August and the eighteenth of each month alone in her chamber, which
negatively affected her mental health. She described her state of
mind shortly after Francis's death:
I hardly know myself now, for I have become like an
animal with no true life or reasoning power.
She declared Joseph to be Francis's successor as co-ruler of her
realms. From now on, mother and son had frequent ideological
disagreements. The 22 million gulden that Joseph inherited from his
father was injected into the treasury. Maria Theresa had another
loss in February 1766: Haugwitz died. She gave her son absolute
control over the military following the death of
Count Leopold Joseph von Daun.
The relationship between Maria Theresa and Joseph was complicated
and their personalities clashed. The latter was intellectually
superior to the former, but the mother's force of personality often
made Joseph cower. Sometimes, she openly admired his talents and
achievements, but criticised him behind his back. She wrote:
We never see each other except at
dinner...
His temper gets worse every day...
Please burn this letter...
I just try to avoid public scandal.
In another letter, also addressed to Joseph's companion, she
complained:
He avoids me...
I am the only person in his way and so I am an
obstruction and a burden...
Abdication alone can remedy matters.
Of course, after much contemplation, she chose not to abdicate.
Joseph himself often threatened to resign as co-regent and emperor,
but he, too, was induced not to do so. Her threats of abdication
were rarely taken seriously; Maria Theresa believed that her
recovery from smallpox in 1767 was a sign that God wished her to
reign until death. It was in Joseph's interest that she remains
sovereign, for he often blamed her for his failures and thus
avoided taking on responsibilities of a monarch.
Joseph and Prince Kaunitz arranged the
First Partition of Poland despite Maria
Theresa's protestations. Her sense of justice pushed her to reject
the idea of partition which would hurt the
Polish
people. The duo argued that it was too late to abort now.
Besides, Maria Theresa herself agreed with the partition when she
realised that
Frederick II of
Prussia and
Catherine II of
Russia would do it with or without Austrian participation. As
sovereign of Hungary, Maria Theresa claimed and eventually took
Galicia and
Lodomeira which Hungarian monarchs claimed since the 13th
century; in the words of Frederick, "the more she cried, the more
she took".
Death and aftermath

Maria Theresa and her husband are
interred in the double tomb which she had inscribed as a
widow.
"She never bothers about her health, but
relies entirely upon her vigorous body for strength and
endurance. She is warm-blooded and, even in the middle of
winter, often sits by an open window... Her physician
scolds her dreadfully about this, but she only laughs at
him." |
Prussian ambasador's letter to Frederick the Great, c. 1748. |
It is unlikely that Maria Theresa ever completely recovered from
the
smallpox attack in 1767, as
18th-century writers asserted. She suffered from
shortness of breath,
fatigue,
cough,
distress,
necrophobia and
insomnia. She later developed
edema.
The empress fell ill on 24 November 1780, ostensibly of a chill.
Her physician Dr. Störk thought her condition serious. By 28
November, she was asking for the
last rites, and the
next day, at about nine o'clock in the evening, she died surrounded
by her remaining children. With her, the
House of Habsburg died out and was
replaced by the
House of
Habsburg-Lorraine. Joseph, already co-sovereign of the Habsburg
dominions, succeeded her.
Maria Theresa left a revitalised empire that influenced the rest of
Europe throughout the 19th century. Her descendants followed her
example and continued reforming the empire. The acquisition of the
Kingdom of Galicia and
Lodomeria gave the empire an even more multinational character
that would ultimately lead to its destruction.
Her introduction of compulsory schooling, as a means of
Germanisation, eventually triggered the
revival of the Czech culture.
The
empress is buried in the Imperial Crypt
in Vienna next to her husband in a coffin she had
had inscribed during her lifetime.
Full title
Her title after the death of her husband was:
Maria Theresa, by the Grace of
God, Dowager Empress of the Romans, Queen of Hungary, of
Bohemia, of Dalmatia, of Croatia, of Slavonia, of Galicia, of
Lodomeria, etc; Archduchess of Austria; Duchess of Burgundy, of
Styria, of Carinthia and of Carniola; Grand Princess of
Transylvania; Margravine of Moravia; Duchess of Brabant, of
Limburg, of Luxemburg, of Guelders, of Württemberg, of Upper and
Lower Silesia, of Milan, of Mantua, of Parma, of Piacenza, of
Guastalla, of Auschwitz and of Zator; Princess of Swabia; Princely
Countess of Habsburg, of Flanders, of Tyrol, of Hennegau, of
Kyburg, of Gorizia and of Gradisca; Margravine of Burgau, of Upper
and Lower Lusatia; Countess of Namur; Lady of the Wendish Mark and
of Mechlin; Dowager Duchess of Lorraine and Bar, Dowager Grand
Duchess of Tuscany.
Ancestry
See also
References
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External links