His birth was followed by numerous others, the imperial couple producing 16 children in all. Then suddenly, in , the Emperor died of a stroke. Maria Theresa was inconsolable.
For a time she thought of withdrawing to a cloister and turning the government over to Joseph, who was then It was only with great difficulty that her ministers, with Kaunitz in the lead, managed to dissuade her from this course. And when she did return to public life, it was as a different woman. For the rest of her days she wore only black; she never again appeared at the gay divertisements of what had been a very lighthearted court; and if she had all her life been a pious Catholic, her devotion to religion now came to border on both fanaticism and bigotry.
At his father's death Joseph had been appointed coregent. Unlike his father, the archduke meant in fact to share in the governance of the realm. But this Maria Theresa was unwilling to let him do. After many recriminations, a compromise was arrived at: Joseph was to take charge of army reform and to share with Kaunitz the responsibility of making foreign policy.
This arrangement was unfortunate not only because it deprived Joseph of any real influence on the internal affairs of Austria, the sector in which his ideas were most promising, but also because he had no talent whatever either for diplomacy or for warfare. The 15 years of the coregency were a time of continual struggle between mother and son, but it would be a mistake to construe them as an unrelenting struggle between the forces of progress, as represented by Joseph, and those of reaction, led by Maria Theresa.
Although the archduke vigorously defended the principle of religious toleration, anathema to his mother, and once threatened to resign when she proposed to expel some Protestants from Bohemia, on the equally important question of peasant emancipation, Maria Theresa took a stand distinctly more favorable to the peasants than Joseph. In foreign affairs, she opposed Joseph's adventurous attempt to acquire Bavaria, which, as she had feared, led to war with Prussia in ; and when Joseph lost his nerve in the midst of the struggle, she took matters into her own hands and negotiated a by no means disadvantageous peace that resulted in the acquisition of the Innviertel.
These last events, incidentally, confirm that after the unsatisfactory conclusion of the Seven Years War the main Austrian objective was no longer a redress of balance against Prussia. If political and social reforms continued, it was in part because reform had become a way of life, in part because Maria Theresa recognized that a more centralized and effective government was an end worth pursuing for itself. Although it is true that throughout the coregency Joseph kept up a clamor for various changes, some of the major reforms of the period can nevertheless be attributed chiefly to the desires of the Empress.
This is particularly true of the new penal code of and of the abolition of judicial torture in The penal code, although objected to as still unduly harsh, nevertheless had the virtue of standardizing both judicial proceedings and punishments.
In her reign, neither papal bulls nor the pastoral letters of bishops could circulate in her dominions without her prior permission, and in Maria Theresa joined a number of other European monarchs in banishing the Society of Jesus from her lands. Angela Merkel does have the image of a mother in Germany.
However, she does not have 16 children to manage and she places no importance on her physical appearance. By contrast, Maria Theresa of Austria was highly coquettish, at least until she was widowed. Today, women are practically forced to wear a neutral suit, as if the aim were to make their femininity invisible. Hillary Clinton and Theresa May are elegant, but no more than that.
It is quite the opposite for the wives of powerful men, who are expected to be feminine, to embody the class or the beauty of the women of their countries, or to be perfect hostesses. Even today, femininity is not considered the mark of seriousness. Women have to fit into a masculine mould, since for millennia masculinity has embodied competence and seriousness. While Barack Obama could have the luxury of crying twice in public, it is embarrassing for a woman to give in to tears.
But Maria Theresa could play the card of emotion and seduction. Maria Theresa was crowned "king" of Hungary.
What was the significance of that title? To the Hungarians at the time, it was unthinkable to elect a woman to the throne.
So Maria Theresa circumvented the custom by retaining the title of "king". Moreover, she valued her title of Queen of Hungary and Bohemia more than that of Empress consort, which referred only to her status as a wife. Her preference was not unlike that of women today who use their maiden names at work so as not to be reduced to the status of "Mrs" someone else. Maria Theresa thus demonstrated a keen sense of absolute monarchy. Conscious of the importance of titles, she even sent back a letter from Louis XV of France, who addressed her as empress, not as "empress and queen".
What was the role of those ambassadors behind the scenes? 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 , 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, 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. Bright, Rev. Maria Theresa. New York: Macmillan Company, This can be of assistance when looking for details about the life of Maria Theresa, and how war influenced her to begin the now common practice of drafting of soldiers.
Colton, Joel and R. A History of the Modern World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, This shows how Maria Theresa got her start on the throne. From the detail in this book, it is possible to see how she was accepted as an Empress, since she actually gave much of the credit for the ruling of the country to her husband.
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. However, this applied only to the Austrian and Bohemian Lands. 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. 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.
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.
0コメント