MARIA THERESA

EARLY LIFE Maria Theresa was the eldest daughter of the Holy Roman emperor Charles VI and
Elizabeth of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. The death of an only son prompted Charles, the only living prince
of his line, to promulgate the so-called Pragmatic Sanction, a royal act, eventually recognized by most
powers, whereby female issue was entitled to succeed to the domains of the Habsburgs. (Since nearly
every major European nation coveted some part of the Habsburg domains, their consent to the
Pragmatic Sanction must be taken as nothing more than an act of convenience.) Maria Theresa thus
became a pawn on Europe’s political chessboard. In 1736 she married Francis Stephen of Lorraine.
Because of French objections to the union of Lorraine with the Habsburg lands, Francis Stephen had to
exchange his ancestral duchy for the right of succession to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. The marriage
was a love match, and 16 children were born to the couple, of whom 10 survived to adulthood.

MARRIAGE The question of Maria Theresa's marriage was raised early in her childhood. Leopold
Clement of Lorraine was first considered to be the appropriate suitor, and he was supposed to visit
Vienna and meet the Archduchess in 1723. These plans were forestalled by his death from smallpox that
year. Leopold Clement's younger brother, Francis Stephen, was invited to Vienna. Even though Francis
Stephen was his favourite candidate for Maria Theresa's hand, the Emperor considered other
possibilities. Religious differences prevented him from arranging his daughter's marriage to the
Protestant prince Frederick of Prussia.

CHILDREN Maria Theresa gave birth to sixteen children in nineteen years from 1737 to 1756,
thirteen of whom survived infancy, but only ten survived into adulthood. The first child, Maria Elisabeth
(1737–1740), was born a little less than a year after the wedding. The child's sex caused great
disappointment and so would the births of Maria Anna, the eldest surviving child, and Maria Carolina
(1740–1741). While fighting to preserve her inheritance, Maria Theresa gave birth to a son, Joseph,
named 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 at Chotusitz. Five more children were born during the war: (the second)
Maria Elisabeth, Charles, Maria Amalia, Leopold and (the second) Maria Carolina (b. & d. 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, (the third)
Maria Carolina, Ferdinand and Maria Antonia. 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.

Smallpox was a constant threat to members of the royal family. In July 1749, Maria Christina survived a
bout of the disease, followed in January 1757 by Maria Theresa's eldest son Joseph.[80] In January 1761,
the disease killed her second son Charles at the age of fifteen. In November 1763, Joseph's first wife
Isabella died from the disease.[82] Joseph's second wife Empress Maria Josepha likewise caught the
disease in May 1767 and died a week later. Maria Theresa ignored the risk of infection and embraced her
daughter-in-law before the sick chamber was sealed to outsiders.

THE START OF HER REIGN The Emperor, who spent his entire reign securing the Pragmatic
Sanction, left Austria in an impoverished state, bankrupted by the recent Turkish war and the War of the
Polish Succession; the treasury contained only 100,000 florins, which were claimed by his widow. The
army had also been weakened due to these wars; instead of the full number of 160,000, the army had
been reduced to about 108,000, and they were scattered in small areas from the Austrian Netherlands to
Transylvania, and from Silesia to Tuscany. They were also poorly trained and discipline was lacking.

Maria Theresa 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 counselors and to defer to her husband, whom she considered to be more experienced, on
other matters. Both decisions later gave cause for regret. Ten years later, Maria Theresa recalled in her
Political Testament the circumstances under which she had ascended: "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.

REFORMS Realizing the need for a sizable standing army and in order to maintain one, Maria
Theresa accepted the plans of Count Friedrich Wilhelm Haugwitz—the first in a succession of remarkable
men of intellect she was to draw into her council. In the face of the opposition of many noblemen, she
managed to reduce drastically (except in Hungary) the powers of the various dominions’ estates, which
had held the monarchy’s purse strings since time immemorial. In the further process of abolishing tax
exemptions held by the great landowners, who dominated those assemblies, she hit on the notion of a
“God-pleasing equality.” Yet she did not question the justice of the manorial lord’s claim on the labour of
his hereditary subjects. Only many years later did peasant riots in famine-stricken Bohemia, as well as
the reported cruelty of Hungarian magnates, cause her to limit the use of forced labour. “The peasantry
must be able to sustain itself as well as pay taxes…,” she wrote.

After the smallpox epidemic of 1767, she promoted inoculation, which she had learned of through her
correspondence with Maria Antonia, Electress of Saxony (who in turn probably knew of it through her
own correspondence with Frederick the Great). Maria Theresa obtained information on current practices
of smallpox inoculation in England. She overrode the objections of Gerard van Swieten (who doubted the
effectiveness of the technique), and ordered that it be tried on thirty-four newborn orphans and sixty-
seven orphans between the ages of five and fourteen years. The trial was successful, establishing that
inoculation was effective in protecting against smallpox, and safe (in the case of the test subjects). The
empress therefore ordered the construction of an inoculation centre, and had herself and two of her
children inoculated. She promoted inoculation in Austria by hosting a dinner for the first sixty-five
inoculated children in Schönbrunn Palace, waiting on the children herself. Maria Theresa was responsible
for changing Austrian physicians' negative view of inoculation. In 1770, she enacted a strict regulation of
the sale of poisons, and apothecaries were obliged to keep a poison register recording the quantity and
circumstances of every sale. If someone unknown tried to purchase a poison, that person had to provide
two character witnesses before a sale could be effectuated. Three years later, she prohibited the use of
lead in any eating or drinking vessels; the only permitted material for this purpose was pure tin.

Maria Theresa is credited, however, in ending the witch hunts in Zagreb, opposing the methods used
against Magda Logomer (also called Herrucina), who was the last prosecuted witch in Zagreb following
her intervention.

She was particularly concerned with the sexual morality of her subjects. Thus, she established a Chastity
Commission (Keuschheitskommission) in 1752 to clamp down on prostitution, homosexuality, adultery
and even sex between members of different religions. Commission cooperated closely with the police,
and the Commission even employed secret agents to investigate private lives of men and women with
bad reputation. They were authorised to raid banquets, clubs, and private gatherings, and to arrest those
suspected of violating social norms. The punishments included whipping, deportation, or even the death
penalty.

Maria Theresa's reform established secular primary schools, which children of both sexes from the ages
of six to twelve were required to attend. The curriculum focused on social responsibility, social discipline,
work ethic and the use of reason rather than mere rote learning. Education was to be multilingual;
children were to be instructed first in their mother tongue and then in later years in German. Prizes were
given to the most able students to encourage ability. Attention was also given to raising the status and
pay of teachers, who were forbidden to take on outside employment. Teacher training colleges were
established to train teachers in the latest techniques

WARS On October 20, 1740, Charles VI died, and the war of succession he had striven so hard to
forestall broke out before the end of the year. Charles left the Habsburg state at the lowest point of its
prestige, its coffers empty, its capital beset by unrest. The naive courage with which Maria Theresa
assumed her heritage (and made her husband co-regent) astounded Europe’s chancelleries. Her refusal
to negotiate with Frederick II (later the Great) of Prussia, who had invaded Silesia, her most prosperous
province, appalled the senescent councillors of her late father. Her successful appearance before the
refractory Hungarian Estates, ending with an appeal for a mass levy of troops, gave her a European
reputation for diplomatic skill. When the elector Charles Albert of Bavaria—one of the princes who had
joined Frederick in assaulting Habsburg territories—was elected emperor, Maria Theresa was mortified;
that dignity, little more than titular by then, had in practice been hereditary in her family for 300 years.
Upon the death of Charles Albert (1745), she secured for her husband, Francis, the imperial crown,
which the law denied to women.

After the defeat in Torgau on 3 November 1760, Maria Theresa realised that she could no longer reclaim
Silesia without Russian support, which vanished after the death of Empress Elizabeth in early 1762. In
the meantime, France was losing badly in America and India, and thus they had reduced their subsidies
by 50%. Since 1761, Kaunitz had tried to organise a diplomatic congress to take advantage of the
accession of George III of Great Britain, as he did not really care about Germany. Finally, the war was
concluded by the Treaty of Hubertusburg and Paris in 1763. Austria had to leave the Prussian territories
that were occupied.[73] Although Silesia remained under the control of Prussia, a new balance of power
was created in Europe, and Austrian position was strengthened by it thanks to its alliance with the
Bourbons in Madrid, Parma and Naples. Maria Theresa herself decided to focus on domestic reforms and
refrain from undertaking any further military operations.