The New International Encyclopædia/Maria Theresa

​MARIA THERESA, mȧ-rī′ȧ t𝑒-rē′sȧ (1717–80). Queen of Hungary and Bohemia and Archduchess of Austria, and wife of the German Emperor, Francis I. She was the daughter of the Emperor Charles VI. (q.v.), and was born at Vienna, May 13, 1717. By the Pragmatic Sanction (q.v.) her father sought to secure from the European powers her undisputed succession to the Hapsburg dominions. On February 12, 1736, she married Francis Stephen, Duke of Lorraine (soon after Grand Duke of Tuscany), and on the death of her father, October 20, 1740, she succeeded to the hereditary possessions of the House of Austria, which, in addition to the German, Hungarian, and Slavic lands, included Lombardy and the Belgian Netherlands. She found the monarchy exhausted, the finances embarrassed, the people discontented, and the army weak; while Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Naples, and Sardinia, stirred up by France, put forward claims to portions of her dominions, chiefly ​founded on the extinction of the male line of the House of Hapsburg and in contravention of the Pragmatic Sanction. The War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48) ensued, in which England supported Austria. (See Succession Wars.) Frederick II. of Prussia soon made himself master of Silesia; Spain and Naples laid hands on the Austrian dominions in Italy; and the French, Bavarians (whose ruler was elected Holy Roman Emperor as Charles VII. in 1742), and Saxons overran the hereditary Austrian territories. The young Queen was in the utmost danger of seeing her realms dismembered, but was saved by the chivalrous fidelity of the Hungarians, the assistance of England, and most of all by her own resolute spirit. Her enemies quarreled among themselves; and the war of the Austrian Succession was terminated by the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. Maria Theresa lost Silesia and Glatz and the duchies of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla. In 1745 her husband (Francis I.) had been raised to the Imperial throne of Germany on the death of Charles VII. During the period of peace that followed she initiated great financial reforms; agriculture, manufactures, and commerce flourished, the national revenues greatly increased, and the burdens of the peasantry were diminished. All this time she was strengthening her resources in anticipation of a renewal of the war with Frederick the Great. Her indomitable pride and her devout Catholicism would not permit her to relinquish Silesia as long as she could fight for it. She found in Kaunitz (q.v.) a minister possessed of the wisdom and energy requisite for the conduct of affairs, and in him she placed almost unlimited confidence. He effected the alliance with France which disturbed all existing international arrangements (1756). In the Seven Years’ War (q.v.) Maria Theresa and her allies well-nigh achieved the ruin of Frederick the Great; but the generalship of the indomitable Prussian King, the incapacity of the generals of Louis XV., and Russia’s abandonment of the cause of Maria Theresa, enabled Frederick to emerge from the struggle with his dominions intact. The war reduced Austria to a state of great exhaustion; but when it was concluded, Maria Theresa renewed her efforts to promote the national prosperity, and made many important reforms, ameliorating the condition of the peasantry and mitigating the penal code. Her son Joseph (II.) became Holy Roman Emperor on the death of her husband in 1765. Maria Theresa associated him with herself in the government of her hereditary States, but in reality committed to him the charge only of military affairs. She joined with Russia and Prussia in the first partition of Poland (1772), Galicia falling to her share. She also compelled the Porte to give up Bukowina to her (1777). The brief War of the Bavarian Succession (1778–79) ended in her acquisition of a district along the Inn (Innviertel), but led to the formation of the Fürstenbund or League of German Princes, which set bounds to the Austrian power in Germany. Maria Theresa died in Vienna, November 29, 1780. Throughout her reign she displayed a resolute and masculine character. Although a zealous Roman Catholic, she maintained the rights of the Crown against the Court of Rome, and endeavored to correct some of the worst abuses in the Church. She prohibited the presence of priests at the making of wills, abolished the right of asylum in churches and convents, and suppressed the Inquisition in Milan. Her son succeeded her as Joseph II. (q.v.).

Consult: Arneth, Geschichte Maria Theresias (10 vols., Vienna, 1863–79); Kern, “Die Reformen der Kaiserin Maria Theresias,” in Historisches Taschenbuch, xi. (Leipzig, 1809); Broghe, Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa, from unpublished documents, translated (London. 1883); id., Marie Thérèse, Impératrice, 1744–46 (Paris, 1888); Villermont, Marie Thérèse, 1717–80 (Paris, 1895); Bright, Maria Theresa (London, 1897). Her correspondence has been edited by Kervyn de Lettenhove, Lettres inédites de Marie Thérèse et de Joseph II., Royal Academy of Belgium, and by Arneth (Vienna, 1867–81).