Maria Theresa

Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that on May 12, 1743, Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina was crowned Queen of Bohemia in Prague.
She 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, Transylvania, Mantua, Milan, Lodomeria and Galicia, the Austrian Netherlands, and Parma

Maria Theresa, Holy Roman Empress
Maria Theresa, Holy Roman Empress was one of the most powerful women in history. Her husband and son got to hold the title of Emperor but she was the real power. She reformed and modernized her empire all while having 16 children including Marie Antionette, Queen of France.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9BS7Imow4o

Images:
1. Portrait of Queen Maria Theresa by Martin van Meytens, 1742, the National Gallery of Slovenia
2. Portrait of Queen Maria Theresa, 1750s by Martin van Meytens. Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna
3. Maria Theresa Queen of Austria Hapsburg map
4. Maria Theresa as a widow in 1773, by Anton von Maron

Biographies:
1. departments.kings.edu/womens_history/mariatheres.html]
2. habsburger.net/en/persons/habsburg-emperor/maria-theresa

1. Background from {[http://departments.kings.edu/womens_history/mariatheres.html]}
Maria Theresa (1717-1780), archduchess of Austria, Holy Roman Empress, and queen of Hungary and Bohemia, began her rule in 1740. She was the only woman ruler in the 650 history of the Habsburg dynasty. She was also one of the most successful Habsburg rulers, male or female, while bearing sixteen children between 1738 and 1756.

Maria Theresa was the eldest daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI. In 1711, Charles VI found himself the sole remaining male Habsburg. An old European law, the Salic Law, prohibited a woman from inheriting her father's kingdom. Concerned that he may not father a son, Charles VI issued a decree in 1713, known as the Pragmatic Sanction. This document guaranteed the right of succession to his daughter. At this time, many of the great powers of Europe agreed to her succession of power, at a price. Upon the death of Charles VI in 1740, however, challenges to the Habsburg lands led to the War of the Austrian Succession.

During the last several years of her father's reign, two wars had already left the monarchy financially compromised, and the army weakened. And since Charles VI had believed that his daughter would surrender true power to her husband, Francis Stephen of Lorraine, he did not take the time to teach her the workings of the government. Without money, a strong army, and knowledge of state affairs, Maria Theresa knew she had to rely on her judgment and strength of character.

King Frederick II of Prussia was her first challenger, when he took the occasion of Charles VI's death to occupy Silesia, beginning the War of Austrian Succession (1740-1748). Bavaria and France joined in and invaded Maria Theresa's lands from the west. This challenge by Frederick II became the dominating element of Maria Theresa's long reign. The archduchess was determined that her internal and external policies would focus on the strengthening of her state and the creation of positive diplomacy in order to defeat the Prussian monarch. Maria Theresa was determined not to surrender to her enemies, but to reconquer all of her lands. She began by initiating reforms. Maria Theresa strengthened the army by doubling the number of troops from her father's reign, reorganized the tax structure to insure a predictable annual income to support the costs of the government and army, and centralized an office to assist in the collection of the taxes. Economic reform fueled prosperity for her empire. The war ended with the loss of Silesia, but her state intact, and her husband recognized as Holy Roman Emperor.

In 1756, Maria Theresa felt that Austria was strong enough to renew her conflict with Frederick II. With the direction of her state chancellor, Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz, the empress reorganized Austria's foreign policy in the so-called Diplomatic Revolution." On the advice of Kaunitz, Maria Theresa abandoned its accord with Great Britain and secured an alliance with France and Russia. Yet, Frederick II surprised everyone when he attacked first, invading one of Austria's allies, Saxony. This conflict began what is known as the Seven Years' War (which combined with the French & Indian war in the American Colonies). In 1763, after much bloodshed, Maria Theresa signed the Treaty of Hubertusberg, ending all hostilities and recognizing Prussian possession of Silesia once and for all.

Two years later, Maria Theresa suffered a great personal loss, the unexpected death of her husband, Francis Stephen of Lorraine. Her love for him was so deep that from the day of his death until her own death in 1780, she dressed in mourning. After Francis Stephen's death, Maria Theresa became increasingly withdrawn. She continued reforms, but they came at a slower and more systematic pace. She changed her foreign policy from vigorously trying to regain Silesia to maintaining peace. After fifteen years of war and frustration, Maria Theresa was reluctant to get involved in conflicts that might prove unsuccessful. After the death of Francis Stephen, Maria Theresa recognized the eldest of her sixteen children, Joseph II, as emperor and coregent. Joseph II's many fundamental differences in beliefs with his mother, caused anxiety and arguments. Periodically, Maria Theresa considered abdication of the throne. However, she never did abdicate. Instead, she allowed Joseph II only limited powers, since she felt his judgment too rash.

Maria Theresa was courageous, generous and kind. She respected the rights of others and expected others to respect her rights. In the later part of her rule, the empress focused more on human concerns, and less on financial and administrative improvements. She became increasingly involved with the problem of serf reform. Throughout the empire, the peasants were obligated to pay monetary and work dues to their lords. In 1771, Maria Theresa issued the Robot Patent, the serf reform designed to regulate the peasants' labor payments in all of the Habsburg lands.

The empress had a long reign which spanned forty years. She died on November 29, 1780. Some historians have termed Maria Theresa as the savior of the Habsburg Dynasty. Her efforts to transform her empire into a modern state solidified the Habsburg rule. Although when she came to the throne, her state appeared on the brink of dismemberment, Maria Theresa provided a strong foundation for the continuation of the Habsburg Dynasty into the modern era."

2. Background from {[https://www.habsburger.net/en/persons/habsburg-emperor/maria-theresa]}
Maria Theresa – the heiress
engraving, after 1740
Maria Theresa was the elder daughter of Emperor Charles VI and Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. However, she was not brought up as a future ruler, since the couple kept on hoping for a long time that they might still have a son.
Maria Theresa received the upbringing and education typical of a daughter of dynastic lineage, focusing on courtly deportment, music, dancing and languages. Even the choice of languages – exclusively the Romance languages of Latin, French, Italian and Spanish, but not the tongues of the Crown Lands such as Hungarian and Czech, as was otherwise customary for heirs to the throne – shows that she was not originally prepared for a future role as ruler. Apart from this she was given an ordinary basic classical education on strictly Jesuit principles. She received no instruction in political theory, military science or diplomacy.
When it became certain that no male heir could be expected any longer the search began at the Viennese Court for a capable husband for the heiress who would rule in her name. In 1736 she was married to Franz Stephan of Lorraine, who had arrived at the Viennese court at a young age and been groomed systematically as the son-in-law and successor of Charles VI.
However, Charles’s daughter developed an astonishingly forceful demeanour, refusing to become merely the passive object of her father’s schemes. In the introduction to one of his reports the English envoy Thomas Robinson wrote that the archduchess admired the emperor’s virtues but criticized his behaviour, regarding him as it were as the administrator of the lands that she would one day possess.
Here brief mention should be made of the role played by the Pragmatic Sanction, which is often interpreted wrongly as ‘ad hoc legislation’ for the assumption of power by Maria Theresa. In fact, this agreement regulated the succession within the House of Habsburg. At that time, female succession represented a worst-case scenario, since the Sanction was promulgated as early as 1713: hopes for a male heir to the throne were still very much alive, and Maria Theresa had not even been born at this point.
The main aim of the Pragmatic Sanction was to provide a basic legal framework that would unify the Habsburg Monarchy. This heterogeneous complex of territories with different constitutional traditions that had come into being over the centuries and was only united at the top by the dynasty that ruled over them was now to be unified as a nation state and become ‘indivisible and indissociable’.
When Maria Theresa assumed the reins of government following the sudden death of her father in 1740 it was soon obvious that Charles’s lifelong efforts to secure the continuation of the Habsburg Monarchy through diplomatic agreements had had little success. No adequate provision had been made to prepare the Monarchy to defend its existence by force of arms. In the eyes of its adversaries the House of Austria was seen as extinct, not least because the first three births resulting from the marriage of Maria Theresa and Franz Stephan had been girls, which additionally weakened the position of the young monarch. The first boy was born as their fourth child. The birth of Joseph in 1741 came at just the right time.
The War of Austrian Succession
the Pragmatic Army near Heidelberg in 1745, painting
The Habsburg Monarchy was on the brink of disaster. Maria Theresa’s claim to her inheritance had not been recognized by some of the European Powers. In 1740 the Prussian king Frederick the Great invaded Silesia, firing the starting shot in the War of the Austrian Succession. Until peace was concluded at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 the country was in a state of war.
Soon after her father’s death Maria Theresa found herself confronted with the claims of German princely dynasties who saw themselves as having equal rights as heirs to the Habsburg dynasty through marriage to the daughters of Emperor Joseph I – that is, Maria Theresa’s cousins.
As the husband of Maria Josepha, elder daughter of Joseph I, Elector Friedrich August of Saxony represented the claims of his wife. Elector Karl Albrecht of Bavaria made demands in the name of his wife Maria Amalie, Joseph’s younger daughter. An anti-Habsburg alliance formed between Bavaria, Saxony and France with the aim of partitioning the Monarchy.
The start of hostilities was marked by the invasion of Silesia by Prussian troops in December 1740. Having only recently come to power, the young King Frederick II of Prussia took advantage of the situation and occupied the province in the north-east of the Monarchy without declaring war.
Other powers followed suit and invaded Habsburg territories. The War of the Austrian Succession had broken out. In July 1741 allied French and Bavarian troops occupied Upper Austria and Bohemia. The Elector of Bavaria then received the homage of the Bohemian Estates as King of Bohemia. No actual coronation took place as the insignia had already been taken to safety in Vienna.
In the search for allies Maria Theresa managed to bring Britain, Russia and the Netherlands onto her side. In retrospect, the struggle with Prussia for Silesia was the decisive conflict, but constituted only a part of the War of the Succession, which took place in many different theatres of war. At first hostilities broke out on Austrian territory against Bavarian invaders. Soon the action moved to Bavaria, and from there to the Rhine, where Habsburg troops fought side by side with their allies against France.
Maria Theresa’s position was strengthened by her coronation in Hungary in June 1741. This was an important event that had great symbolic effect: Maria Theresa was now a rightfully crowned monarch and was able to secure the loyalty of the Hungarian Estates.
Nonetheless, in the Holy Roman Empire the Austrians suffered a setback: Maria Theresa’s husband Franz Stephan was unsuccessful in his bid to become a candidate for election as emperor. In 1741 the electors chose the Wittelsbach prince Charles VII as head of the empire. The House of Austria thus lost a title that it had retained uninterruptedly from the middle of the fifteenth century and which had constituted the foundation of the special standing of the Habsburgs in Europe.
In the meantime however the tide had turned: while Charles VII was being crowned in Frankfurt Austrian troops occupied Bavaria, and Bavarian power in Bohemia began to totter.
In July 1742 peace was concluded with Prussia, thus ending the First Silesian War. For Maria Theresa this meant ceding most of Silesia together with the county of Glatz (Kladsko; a fiefdom of the Kingdom of Bohemia). Only parts of south-eastern Silesia (Teschen and parts of the duchies of Troppau, Jägerndorf and Neisse) remained under Austrian rule.
In May 1743 Maria Theresa was crowned Queen of Bohemia in Prague, an event that symbolized the successful recovery of power in Bohemia.
However, the peace was short-lived. In August 1744 Prussia once again invaded Bohemia, triggering the Second Silesian War. This was in reaction to Maria Theresa’s successes in pressing her claims against Bavaria and Saxony. The attack on Bohemia was intended to involve Austria in a war on two fronts and thus force her to conclude peace from a weaker position.
In the meantime Emperor Charles VII had died in exile in 1745, after Austrian troops had occupied Bavaria. His successor sued for peace and was restored as ruler of Bavaria. In return Bavaria also pledged to support the election of Franz Stephan as Holy Roman Emperor, which was sealed with his coronation at Frankfurt in September 1745.
In December 1745 the Peace of Dresden was signed, thus ending the Second Silesian War. Prussia’s possession of Silesia was confirmed, and in return it recognized Franz Stephan as Holy Roman Emperor.
The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, concluded in October 1748, brought international recognition of Maria Theresa as ruler over the Monarchy and ended the conflict over the Austrian Succession.
The result from the point of view of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty was that Maria Theresa had successfully defended the majority of her claims, with the exception of Silesia. Prussia’s new status as a rival power in Central Europe had to be acknowledged. The Holy Roman Empire had diminished in importance; although Maria Theresa’s husband had been recognized as emperor, the empire no longer played as great a part in defining the identity of the dynasty as it had in preceding generations.
Maria Theresa and her reforms
The War of the Austrian Succession had laid bare the weaknesses of the Habsburg Monarchy, revealing it as a Great Power with feet of clay. The antiquated administration of state and army together with the growing economic deficit demonstrated the urgent necessity of reforms.
After the continuation of the Monarchy and the international recognition of Maria Theresa as ruler had been guaranteed by the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, systematic reform of the state administration was undertaken from 1749 under the supervision of Friedrich Wilhelm von Haugwitz (1702–1765).
The Geheime Haus-, Hof- und Staatskanzlei having already been established in 1742 for the spheres of foreign policy and dynastic affairs, the focus was now on the internal administration. The aim was to create a modern and effective state bureaucracy. The administrations of the various different territories of the Monarchy were to be unified and the autonomy of the individual Crown Lands curtailed in favour of a centralized administrative machinery controlled from Vienna.
In order to effect this, the powers of the Estates within the individual Crown Lands had to be limited. The Estates represented the Crown Land in its dealings with the sovereign. However, they were not a truly representative institution in the modern sense; the diets of the feudal age contained only representatives of the nobility, the Church and privileged towns who exercised local dominion over their feudal subjects.
As a consequence of the lack of state administration on a local level the sovereign relied on the cooperation of the Estates in many important areas such as the collection of taxes or jurisdiction. Steps now had to be taken to curtail the monopoly of these feudal overlords on local administration. Special rights and privileges such as the exemption of the nobility and the Church from tax were abolished.
The various different administrative structures in the Crown Lands were harmonized and unified. An orderly administrative hierarchy was established, with new local authorities forming the lowest tier of state administration on a local level. Above these were the administrative bodies of the Land, which were in turn subject to directives from a central authority, the ‘Directorium in publicis et cameralibus’; in terms of modern ministerial bureaucracy this was equivalent to the domain of home affairs and finances.
However, this applied only to the Austrian and Bohemian Lands. In 1750 in a handwritten document Maria Theresa defined the core lands of the Monarchy, which consisted of the Austrian Lands (Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, the various territories on the Upper Adriatic as well as Tyrol and the Habsburg Swabian territories) and the Bohemian Lands (Bohemia, Moravia and the parts of Silesia that remained under Austrian rule). The implementation of these reforms proved a lengthy process, but resulted in a strengthening of the core Lands of the Monarchy, which were unified by the administrative reforms. However, the latter did not apply to Hungary with its associated territories, the Austrian Netherlands or Lombardy, in which separate administrations continued to exist.
Another aim was the professionalization of the civil service, with intake of middle-class professionals being increased to replace the aristocratic functionaries for whom leading positions had hitherto been reserved.
In the sphere of military administration the Court Council of War remained in place but other reforms were implemented. A decisive part in these reforms was played by Count Leopold von Daun, on whose initiative the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt was established to train a new generation of officers on the most up-to-date principles. The decisive victory won by the Austrian army at Kolín in 1757 confirmed the success of these changes. In commemoration of this event the grateful empress founded the Order of Maria Theresa, its first recipient being Count von Daun.
Economic reforms were also introduced. These included the abolition of internal tariffs with the goal of joining the individual Lands of the Monarchy in a large-scale economic area with unitary rules. The first statistics, censuses and tax cadastres were introduced, enabling the state to gain an insight into the inner structures of the land so that specific economic measures could be implemented.
One of the most important aims of Maria Theresa’s reforms was to increase the population, as it was thought that a larger number of inhabitants would bring about an economic upswing. An increase in population would also provide more soldiers for the army. One of the demands of this economic doctrine, known as physiocracy, was an improvement in the situation of the peasants, specifically the limitation of obligatory labour for feudal overlords. Sparsely inhabited areas such as the Banat region in southern Hungary were systematically settled with colonists from overpopulated areas in a programme of internal colonization. Although some of these individuals moved on a voluntary basis, others, for example Protestants or social outsiders who were not tolerated by the state in the central parts of the Monarchy, were relocated by force.
In the educational sector the ‘Studien- und Bücher-Zensur-Hofkommission’, established in 1760, marked the beginning of a centrally administered educational policy. The most well-known of Maria Theresa’s reforms in this field was the introduction in 1774 of compulsory schooling for children in all the Habsburg hereditary lands. This was the first step towards compulsory universal primary education for broad sectors of the population. The actual implementation of this measure was a long-term project, as the necessary infrastructure and teaching staff were lacking. Well into the nineteenth century levels of illiteracy were still high in the Habsburg Monarchy, with strong regional variations.
Within the university system the influence of the Church was curtailed. This development was symbolized by the building of the new auditorium of the University of Vienna (today the seat of the Austrian Academy of Sciences), which was decorated programmatically with allegories of Maria Theresa’s reformist activities in the field of education.
The dark side of Maria Theresa

Torture by rope, illustration from the *Constitutio Criminalis Theresiana*
Maria Theresa’s reign has always been celebrated as a heyday of the Monarchy. However, the sovereign, whose name is associated with the Austrian Age of Reform, was a reformer against her will.
Maria Theresa took a thoroughly pragmatic approach to the reforms. What counted for her was practical applicability rather than the pursuit of a philosophical concept. While she made use of a number of Enlightenment ideas, the idealistic basis of this philosophical current always remained alien to her.
Maria Theresa was not concerned to liberate her people from ecclesiastical or feudal tutelage. Her reforming zeal was intended to bring about the greatest possible benefit for the state and the dynasty. Her aim was to secure Habsburg dominion and to develop military and political capability so that Austria should not fall behind the other European Great Powers. The consideration that these innovations might make an individual’s life easier was of only secondary importance. Maria Theresa was not addressing her measures to politically aware and responsible citizens: wholly in keeping with the paternalistic thinking of her times and rank, she wanted to alleviate the hard lives of her virtuous subjects as a just ‘mother of the nation’. This pre-modern view of monarchical power has come to be known by the term ‘enlightened Absolutism’.
Maria Theresa had a conservative understanding of monarchical rule, seeing herself as having been entrusted with her office as ruler by divine right. Thus it was to God and not her people that she had to justify her actions. She was guided not by reason, belief in progress and tolerance or the principles of just rule as demanded by the Enlightenment, but strove to fulfil the task with which she had been entrusted by divine providence according to the best of her knowledge and belief.
She recognized the necessity of these changes but in many instances became a reformer against her will. An important role in these reforms was played by her advisors, who had been influenced by Enlightenment ideas. Individuals such as van Swieten, Sonnenfels, Bartenstein and also her son and later co-regent Joseph II were often the force behind many of the more important reforms that have gone down under her name in history.
Thus although Maria Theresa was convinced of the necessity of unifying the various legal traditions of the Crown Lands and placed the judicial system under the supervision of a supreme judicial office, the separation of the judiciary and the executive authorities as demanded by the representatives of the Enlightenment was not realized. Today in Austria these two spheres are administered separately by the Ministry of Justice and the Supreme Court of Justice.
The Constitutio Criminalis Theresiana, a criminal code that was binding across the entire Monarchy, typifies Maria Theresa’s fundamentally conservative attitude. What was important was the creation of a unified legal framework rather than the modernization of legal practice as such; torture continued to be a legal means of finding the truth, despite vehement criticism from representatives of the Enlightenment. It was not until 1776 with Joseph II’s support that torture was finally abolished.
Another area in which Maria Theresa’s pre-modern cast of mind manifested itself was in her religious understanding: she remained a pre-Enlightenment Catholic throughout her life. This resulted in continued intolerance towards non-Catholics. Under Maria Theresa’s rule Protestants continued to be persecuted, and an inglorious climax was reached when the Jews were expelled from Prague in 1744. The largest Jewish community at that time in the Monarchy was dissolved and 20,000 individuals had to leave the city within a short space of time.
However, her deep attachment to the Catholic faith did not stop the empress from taking measures to limit the influence of the Catholic Church on the state. These included restricting papal authority to theological matters and bringing the organisation of ecclesiastical structures under state control. This represented the first step towards the state church realized by her successor Joseph II.
In conclusion, mention should be made of Maria Theresa’s much-vaunted love of peace, which constituted an important element in the way the empress presented herself and is still associated with her today. The major military conflicts of her reign, the War of the Austrian Succession and to some extent the Seven Years‘ War, were indeed defensive wars. The annexation by Prussia of Silesia, the re-conquest of which was to remain an unachieved objective of the empress, was in her eyes a violation of divinely ordained monarchical rule. Maria Theresa had a completely different approach to politics from Frederick the Great, who acted tactically and without scruple, making the most of every opportunity to ensure his country became one of the Great Powers of Europe. Nonetheless, she herself at times went against her own belief in the necessity of preserving the system of rule ordained by divine right: the annexation of Galicia in 1772 constituted the first step towards the destruction of the Polish kingdom and a massive attack on the traditional European community of states. ‘She wept, but she took nonetheless’, was Frederick the Great’s sarcastic comment on Maria Theresa’s inconsistency in this matter.
In the latter years of her reign the preservation of peace became the supreme reason of state. Representing a policy that sought to preserve a balance of power within Europe, she viewed the aggressive foreign policy (annexation of Bukovina in 1775; the War of the Bavarian Succession 1778–1779) pursued by her co-regent Joseph II with great anxiety.
Maria Theresa: Europe’s mother-in-law
ria Theresa aged around 35; on the table are the Hungarian Crown of St Stephen, the Bohemian Crown of St Wenceslas and the
The ‘renversement des alliances’, the rapprochement of the Habsburg Monarchy with France, constituted the diplomatic revolution of the 1750s: the hostile dynasties of Bourbon and Habsburg united to take on their mutual enemies Prussia and Britain.
In order to strengthen the alliance between the dynasties marriages were arranged with the various lines of the Bourbons who ruled in Parma, Naples and Spain as well as France.
This change had been wrought by State Chancellor Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz (1711–1794), who initially started secret negotiations with France, ruled at the time by Louis XV. Maria Theresa found an important point of contact in the king’s mistress of several years, Madame de Pompadour, who had great influence over the monarch. Although the circumstances at the court of Versailles were deeply abhorrent to the puritanically inclined Maria Theresa, she was pragmatic enough to overlook them.
The new policy of alliance was to be tested in 1756, when the Seven Years’ War broke out, a conflict between the leading powers of Europe that assumed the dimensions of a global war through the spread of hostilities between France and Britain to their overseas colonies. From Maria Theresa’s point of view the object of contention was Silesia, the war a last attempt at re-conquering the wealthy province.
In 1760, as a sign of the new unity between Austria and France, while the Seven Years’ War raged in Europe, the first of the Bourbon-Habsburg marriages was celebrated, between Maria Theresa’s eldest son and heir Joseph and Isabella of Bourbon-Parma. The bride was from a collateral northern Italian line of the royal French dynasty but was a granddaughter of Louis XV on her mother’s side.
In 1765 a second marriage followed: Maria Theresa’s second-eldest son Leopold married Maria Luisa, the daughter of Charles III, the Bourbon king of Spain. The wedding celebrations in Innsbruck were overshadowed by the sudden death of Franz Stephan.
The death of Franz Stephan removed a major opponent of the rapprochement with France. Maria Theresa’s husband greatly mistrusted France and what he saw as an ‘unnatural’ alliance. He resisted the marriage schemes of his wife for their children and thus became increasingly isolated from the political arena. Following his death in 1765 Kaunitz was now free to act, and a whole series of marriages with members of the Bourbon dynasty took place.
Archduchess Maria Josepha was chosen as the bride for King Ferdinand of Naples and Sicily. The bridegroom was considered unprepossessing and described as uncouth and mentally retarded. The bride escaped her fate by dying suddenly of smallpox shortly before the wedding was due to take place. Fearing that this important match might otherwise be lost, Maria Theresa offered her next-eldest daughter Maria Karolina as a replacement. The Bourbon king accepted the proposal and thus Maria Karoline moved to Naples in 1768.
Yet another union with the Bourbon dynasty was forged with the marriage of Archduchess Maria Amalie to Ferdinand of Bourbon-Parma in 1769. However, the most important of these unions and at the same time the crowning of Maria Theresa’s endeavours to establish a dynastic network in Europe, was the marriage of her youngest daughter, Maria Antonia, to the future king of France Louis XVI, in 1770.
Maria Theresa as wife and mother
rchduchess Isabella: Distribution of gifts on the Feast of St Nicholas, gouache, 1762
Maria Theresa liked to present herself as a devoted wife and mother. This clichéd image has to a certain extent determined the way she has been perceived right up to the present day.
Maria Theresa, the mater familias surrounded by a cheerful brood of children, provides for the well-being of husband and offspring. Invigorated by the warm domestic atmosphere she devotes herself to the affairs of state and holds sway with a benignly maternal gaze. Thus might one summarize the image of Maria Theresa propagated in popular accounts to this day.
It is undisputed that the marriage of Maria Theresa and Franz Stephan was astonishingly harmonious. The two had known each other since childhood, and the young Maria Theresa conceived an early affection for the Lotharingian prince who was nine years her senior and who had been chosen as her future husband when she was only six.
It was a love match, and as such untypical of the aristocratic court milieu, where unions were concluded between dynasties rather than individuals. Franz Stephan called his wife Chère Mitz or Reserl, while she called him Mäusel (little mouse), as attested by their many letters to each other. They made a point of demonstrating the harmonious nature of their life together, as an account by the Prussian Grand Chancellor Baron von Fürst-Kupferberg shows: ‘Few private individuals live in such heartfelt concord as the Emperor and Empress’.
Maria Theresa’s concept of married life was occasionally derided as bourgeois by her contemporaries. Her strict interpretation of Catholic sexual morals with regard to conjugal fidelity frequently led to considerable conflict with her husband Franz Stephan, who had a very liberal attitude in this respect and few inhibitions about acting upon his desires.
Maria Theresa’s family increased rapidly and flourished. She bore sixteen children within the space of nineteen years, giving birth to her first child at twenty and her last at thirty-nine. All of these were single births.
Only ten of the sixteen children born to the imperial couple lived into adulthood. Infant mortality was generally very high, even in the imperial family, where privation was unknown and the very latest in contemporary medical care was available. Three children, a son and two daughters, died of smallpox in adolescence. Two daughters died at birth and another daughter in infancy.
This was accepted as ordained by God, for the death of infants and small children was a frequent occurrence. This attitude can also be discerned in the way the names were handed on in Maria Theresa’s family: when a child died, the next one was given the same name. Three daughters, one after the other, were baptized Maria Karolina, while two others bore the name Maria Elisabeth. It should be borne in mind that these were significant names: Karl/Karoline/Charlotte recalled the father of Maria Theresa, Charles VI, while Elisabeth commemorated the mothers of Maria Theresa and Franz Stephan, who both bore this name.
In time this large brood produced an even larger number of grandchildren: Maria Theresa became the proud grandmother of 56 grandchildren, although not all of them were to survive into adulthood.
Maria Theresa deliberately exploited her role as mother. One particularly telling example was the incident when she appeared before the Hungarian Diet with her small son Joseph, presenting herself as a young wife and mother who needed the support of the Hungarian nobility. Numerous reports compiled by ambassadors to the court contain accounts of how Maria Theresa was fond of presenting herself surrounded by her children. Marie Antoinette also told her confidantes of her mother’s calculating manner: ‘As soon as news arrived of the arrival of a foreigner of importance in Vienna, the Empress surrounded herself with her family, brought him to the table and by means of this calculated demonstration of closeness evoked the belief that she herself supervised her children’s upbringing’.
Maria Theresa was a strict mother, and her offspring in the imperial nursery were certainly not spoiled. Isabella of Parma credited her mother-in-law with loving her children, but (…) ‘her love is never free of mistrust and a noticeable coolness (…) As far as her children are concerned, the Empress does indeed love them, but she proceeds from a false precept, which consists in a strictness of all too great severity’.
The children suffered from their mother’s capricious nature; she was susceptible to flattery and often doled out her affection in a very inequitable manner, having clear favourites among her children. Maria Theresa was very free with often scathing and hurtful comments on the behaviour of her children, who were still subject to her strict control even when they had grown up and left the court. The empress saw them primarily as representatives of the dynasty who in the limelight of public life at court must always keep in mind their high birth and behave in keeping with the standards that were applied to them on account of their high-ranking social position.
This can be illustrated by an extract from the instructions in conduct sent by Maria Theresa to her daughter Maria Amalia: Your manner of speaking (…) is anything but good, especially when you are speaking French. That is not my fault; how often have I harangued you and shown you how better to make progress, but in vain (…) The less you speak the better (…) For I know the manner in which you chatter away and must tell you as a friend that it is very tedious and larded with all sorts of platitudes (…).
Maria Theresa’s children
llegorical glorification of Maria Theresa's fecundity, copperplate engraving
The fact that Maria Theresa gave birth to sixteen children is a well-known part of her life story. Of her eleven daughters and five sons ten survived into adulthood.
Maria Theresa’s first child, a daughter named Maria Elisabeth (1737–1740), died while still a young child. The eldest of the surviving children was Maria Anna (1738–1789), who developed strong intellectual interests and was very similar in character to her father. Afflicted by a deformation of the ribcage, she was not considered marriageable and remained with her mother until the latter’s death in 1780. Subsequently Maria Anna spent her remaining years as abbess of the St Elizabeth convent in Klagenfurt, to which she left her considerable estate.
The third daughter, Maria Karolina (b. 1740), died in infancy.
The arrival of Joseph (1741–1790) put an end to the long wait for a male heir. As emperor and successor to Maria Theresa and ruler of the Habsburg Monarchy he has his own biography on this website.
Maria Christina (1742–1798) was Maria Theresa’s favourite daughter but was not particularly popular with her siblings. She was the only child allowed to marry for love rather than political considerations. Her husband was Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen (1738–1822), a non-ruling member of the widely ramified Saxon Wettin dynasty, whose mother was Archduchess Maria Josepha, a cousin of Maria Theresa, and who was thus fairly closely related to his bride.
According to contemporary accounts, Maria Elisabeth (1743–1808) was very pretty and thus chosen to play a leading role in her mother’s marriage schemes. However, her looks were destroyed by a bout of smallpox and she remained unmarried, later becoming rather eccentric and cantankerous.
The second boy Karl Joseph (1745–1761) was Maria Theresa’s favourite son: intelligent and charming, he was more likable than the rather withdrawn Crown Prince Joseph, with whom his relationship was one of fraternal rivalry. His early death at the age of just sixteen, when a smallpox epidemic carried off several members of the family, was a particularly heavy blow for his parents.
Maria Amalie (1746–1804) was married off to Duke Ferdinand of Parma against her express will as part of the rapprochement with the Bourbons. Determined and forceful, she never forgave her mother and their relationship remained cool for the rest of their days.
The third son Peter Leopold (1747–1792) initially had little chance of inheriting the throne. Following the early death of his brother Karl he became next in line to succeed his father as Grand Duke of Tuscany. When his elder brother Joseph II died without issue he became his successor on the imperial throne, an office that he held for only two years.
He was followed by two girls, who both died young: Maria Karoline, born in 1748, died shortly after birth, while Johanna, born in 1750, died from smallpox at the age of twelve.
Another smallpox victim was Maria Josepha (1751–1767), who died shortly before she was due to marry the Neapolitan crown prince.
Her place was taken by the next eldest daughter, Maria Karolina (1752–1814), who as controversial queen of Naples and Sicily would prove to be a true daughter of Maria Theresa. She was even more prolific than her mother, giving birth to a total of eighteen children.
Ferdinand Karl Anton (1754–1806) was a rather nondescript character. He married the heiress to the d’Este dynasty, which ruled over the northern Italian principality of Modena, and founded the collateral Habsburg-Modena line.
The best known daughter of Maria Theresa was Maria Antonia (1755–1793), who as Marie Antoinette would become queen of France and eventually meet her end under the blade of the guillotine.
Maximilian Franz (1756–1801), Maria Theresa’s youngest offspring, was a sickly child and thus destined for a career in the Church. He became archbishop and elector of Cologne, and was appointed Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights.
Maria Theresa’s final years: widowhood and death
nd Franz I in the Imperial Crypt, photograph, 1910
The sudden death of her husband in 1765 in Innsbruck, where the imperial family was staying to celebrate the marriage of Archduke Leopold and Luisa of Bourbon-Spain, was a severe shock to Maria Theresa and was to have an enduring effect on her life and personality.
Maria Theresa’s immediate reaction to the death of Franz Stephan was one of profound grief. From then on she appeared in widow’s weeds, cutting her hair short and wearing a widow’s veil. She observed the Catholic Church’s catalogue of virtues for widows, which required the renunciation of worldly pleasures. Pomp and circumstance were not deemed becoming for a grieving widow. In her youth Maria Theresa had been all for courtly amusements; now she was transformed into a priggish matron.
The main purpose of her life became the preservation of Franz Stephan’s memory. She developed a veritable cult of grieving focused on her late husband. After her death a scrap of paper was found in her prayer book on which she had calculated the exact duration of her marriage: ‘29 years, 6 months, 6 days; that makes 29 years, 335 months, 1540 weeks, 10,781 days, 258,744 hours’.
The grieving widow withdrew increasingly from public life, becoming a myth in her own lifetime. However, in the background she still retained her firm grip on the reins of power. Although she made her eldest son, who as Joseph II had succeeded his father as Holy Roman Emperor, co-regent of the Habsburg Monarchy, she remained the determining element. This constellation is unique in the history of Habsburg rule.
The joint regency was marred by the difficult relationship between mother and son. Maria Theresa’s disposition became increasingly conservative, and she had lost much of her earlier vigour. Her fundamentally pessimistic attitude made her fear that her life’s work was being endangered by her son’s plans, and she thus opposed many of Joseph’s reforms. She saw herself as a steward of her realm, with a sense of what was actually possible, something that the ‘revolutionary on the imperial throne’ in his reforming zeal at times appeared to lack.
Joseph on the other hand felt that he was being confined in his actions by his ageing mother. He criticized the conservative opposition within the family that centred on Maria Theresa. He mockingly described the Viennese court as a ‘henhouse’, an assemblage of a dozen old women, three or four old maids and twenty young girls who are called ladies of court. Seven archduchesses, an empress, two archdukes and one emperor all live under the same roof. Nonetheless there is not a trace of companionship, no sensible or pleasant point in common. Each tries to win the other over to his side. Gossip, the tormenting of one lady by another, of one archduchess by another, is confined to a “Would you believe it?”
Increasingly the empress’s age began to make itself felt. We have a description of the ageing Maria Theresa written by her son Leopold, who visited his mother in Vienna in 1778. Her health was comparatively good for her age, although owing her age and her corpulence she is beginning to have great difficulty in walking; she starts breathing very heavily as soon as she walks or moves, and since she is embarrassed about this and tries to walk very quickly, she becomes ever more bad-tempered and disconsolate. Her memory has deteriorated considerably and she fails to remember many things or orders she has given, frequently repeating herself, which creates much confusion. She is starting to become somewhat hard of hearing (…) She has qualms about many things and constantly mistrusts herself and everybody else. She never enjoys anything and is constantly alone and melancholic, as she never has company and is always fretting about everything.
Maria Theresa died of pneumonia in the Vienna Hofburg on 29 November 1780. In her last hours she wore her beloved husband’s dressing gown. She is buried in the crypt of the Church of the Capuchin Friars in Vienna, where the double sarcophagus of Maria Theresa and Franz Stephan of Lorraine forms a dominant focal point."



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Interesting.

Thank you!