Maria Theresa

"The successor culture to Baroque was the age of Enlightenment. And one of the best books on that—or at any rate the most enjoyable—is by Edward Crankshaw. It’s a biography of Maria Theresa, who was very remarkable both as a person and as a ruler. First of all, she was astonishingly talented. Indeed, she was such a gifted singer that they wanted her to join the opera, but royalty didn’t do that kind of thing, so she just sang at court, at receptions. Maria Theresa’s correct title was Archduchess because her father had not managed to establish that there should be inheritance in the female line. He touted something called ‘the Pragmatic Sanction’ around Europe, which everyone hastened to sign while he was still alive and discarded as soon as he died. Rival claimants invaded Austria, and Maria Theresa was put under enormous pressure. She complained that her cabinet, such as it was, all looked as if they’d escaped from the Capuchin Crypt. She had to replace them, which she did with great acuteness, bringing in people from abroad. Her personal doctor, Gerard van Swieten, was Dutch and the founder of a health service in Austria. Joseph von Sonnenfels was a converted Jew (his father had been a Rabbi), which was a rarity for the times, and was instrumental in the abolition of judicial torture. She also cleaned up the wretched army. I quote her in my book, but it comes from Crankshaw: “Who would believe that there was not the slightest attempt to achieve uniformity among my troops? Every regiment had its own separate drill on the march, on manoeuvres, on deployment. One fired in quick time, another in slow time. The same terms and words of command meant different things to different regiments.”—which became a great problem also later with the Austro-Hungarian Empire . “No wonder the Emperor was beaten all the time during the ten years before my accession, no wonder the state in which I found my army was indescribable.” The mixture of extravagance, inattention, and incompetence had made the Austrians very vulnerable, and she was nearly overwhelmed. It was the only time—between the mid-15th century and 1806—that the Habsburgs did not obtain the title of Holy Roman Emperor for some five years. Maria Theresa did have the advantage that she ruled for 40 years. Frederick III had done the same in the 15th century. You simply outlived all your enemies, and when they had satisfactorily died, you could regain lost lands or titles. Maria Theresa married Franz Stephan of Lorraine and it was a love match. Lorraine was originally heir to the rich Lorraine territories, which, however, he exchanged for the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in a deal with the French. A gifted administrator, he rescued the finances of Austria. Indeed, he made himself so rich that he more or less propped up the notoriously rickety Habsburg finances. He was also elected Holy Roman Emperor and the Habsburg dynasty became that of Habsburg-Lorraine, Maria Theresa being able thereby to assume the title Empress as his consort. He himself hardly intervened in ruling her Empire but concentrated on cultivating his scientific interests and on finance. Actually not, but of course they’ll be more up to date with new research. Currently in Vienna there is even a forthcoming Maria Theresa musical being advertised! However I chose this biography because it is extremely readable and entertaining—like, for instance, the descriptions of the extravagance at court that she tried to rein in. She herself was eating too much and getting larger and larger. Her physician, van Swieten, said, ‘I can do something about this.’ He sat with her as she had her dinner, placed a pail beside her chair, and for every course that she took, he put the same amount in the pail. After about an hour, she’d finished her supper, and he held up the pail and said, ‘This is why Your Majesty is ill.’ It was a very tactful way of telling her to rein in her appetite. Remarkably, Maria Theresa had 16 children, one of whom was the unlucky Maria Antonia, better known as Marie Antoinette, who ended up on the guillotine. France was still the great enemy. The English were paying subsidies to the Austrians through the early 19th century, to try and keep the French down—the traditional English policy. Later, Marie Louise, the daughter of Francis I of Austria, became the wife of Napoleon in 1810 as a way of satisfying Napoleon’s dynastic ambitions. But back to Maria Theresa, who initiated a period of political and social reform. For example, she reformed education so that there was obligatory primary school education for the first time. Her son Joseph was an even more zealous reformer. He was co-regent with his mother after Francis Stephen died in 1765, and was then sole Emperor after her death in 1780. Traditionally, one of the great missions of the Habsburgs was to oppose Protestantism, but Joseph II, recognizing the futility of endless religious strife, promulgated an Edict of Tolerance. You were now allowed to profess your own religion. This even included, to a certain extent, the Jews, who had a long history of persecution, although they still faced discriminatory taxation and other obligations (such as taking Christian names). Earlier, Leopold I had expelled all the Jews from Vienna in 1670 simply for dogmatic reasons. This was probably a policy urged on him by Spanish advisors, and particularly his devout wife, who’d been brought up in Spain. The Jews were blamed for all sorts of things, including that part of the Hofburg had burned down shortly after it had been rebuilt. The Jews were all cleared out from what is now the second district of Vienna, called the Leopoldstadt. There’s a big church there, which is built on the site of the destroyed synagogue. There is a lot of literature on the history of the Jews in Austria, their periodic expulsions and return, which I summarise in my book ."