360 Chapter 19
territories in eastern Europe. Thus, in 1714 Vienna con-
trolled lands from Brussels in the west to Milan in the
south, Belgrade in the east, and Prague in the north—
plus the crown of the Holy Roman Empire. This gave
the Habsburg emperor Charles VI, who reigned from
1711 to 1740, daunting political problems. The hetero-
geneous, polyglot realm was united only by the person
of the Habsburg monarch.
Hungary gave Charles the most difficulty. The
magnate class had been largely autonomous under the
Turkish sultan, and their diet expected no less from the
Habsburgs. Some Hungarian nobles even claimed a re-
markable right, thejus resistandi,which legalized resis-
tance to central authority. Charles VI realized that “[I]t
is very important that quiet should prevail in this coun-
try,” and he made numerous concessions to the Hun-
garians, such as promises to continue their Diet, to
tolerate religious minorities (many nobles were Protes-
tants), and not to tax the magnates. Such concessions
to regional rights, however, meant that Austria lagged
behind rivals such as Prussia in the development of a
centralized authority and bureaucracy.
The second formidable political problem con-
fronting Charles VI was the issue of his heir. His only
son died in infancy, and all Habsburg lands thus proba-
bly would pass to his daughter, Maria Theresa, who
could not become Holy Roman Empress (because the
Salic Law excluded women) but who could, under Aus-
trian law, inherit the family dominions. Charles knew
that powerful men might challenge his succession if the
throne passed to a woman; he therefore devoted much
of his reign to guaranteeing Maria Theresa’s succession
and preventing a war of Austrian succession. For
Charles, the issue was not protecting his daughter or
defending the rights of women, it was the perpetuation
of the dynasty and the territorial integrity of the far-
flung Habsburg lands. For his subject peoples, however,
his death would open the prospect of independence or
enhanced autonomy. For the European powers, it sug-
gested the dismemberment of the Habsburg Empire.
The solution Charles VI proposed was a document
called the Pragmatic Sanction. It proclaimed that the
Habsburg lands were indivisible, and it outlined the
Austrian succession through Maria Theresa. Charles
obtained the agreement of his family and published the
Pragmatic Sanction in 1719. For the next twenty years
he bargained within the empire and abroad, buying ac-
ceptance of the Pragmatic Sanction. Negotiations with
the Hungarian Diet produced its acceptance in 1723, at
the price of further weakening Viennese central author-
ity over Hungary. A lifetime of diplomatic bribery
bought the consent (sometimes recanted and bought
again) of the European powers. Britain, for example, ac-
cepted the Pragmatic Sanction by a treaty of 1731;
Charles paid Britain by closing the Austrian trading
company (the Ostend Company) that competed with
the British in global commerce. The king of Spain
signed in return for the duchy of Parma.
Maria Theresa inherited the Habsburg dominions
in 1740 at the age of twenty-three, and she stayed on
the throne until her death in 1780. She possessed en-
ergy and determination but an empty treasury and a
weakened army. She began to reorganize the govern-
ment, but the Pragmatic Sanction failed almost immedi-
ately. Her realm accepted her, and the Hungarians were
chivalrous in her defense, but the duke of Bavaria, the
king of Spain, and the elector of Saxony each claimed
the Habsburg crown for himself. The Holy Roman Em-
pire sided with Bavaria, choosing the duke to be em-
peror. The king of Prussia demanded the province of
Silesia as his price for honoring the Pragmatic Sanction.
When Maria Theresa refused to surrender Silesia, the
Prussians invaded it, beginning a series of wars known
collectively as the War of the Austrian Succession
(1740–48).
The war went poorly for Maria Theresa at first.
The Prussians occupied Silesia. France, Spain, and
Bavaria joined an alliance against her. The support of
Britain and Holland, however, prevented the partition-
ing of the Habsburg Empire. When the duke of Bavaria
died in 1745, the electors of the Holy Roman Empire
acknowledged the stability of Maria Theresa’s position
by choosing her husband, the duke of Lorraine, as Em-
peror Francis I. The belligerents reached the same con-
clusion about Maria Theresa in 1748, ending the War
of the Austrian Succession in a treaty that sustained the
Pragmatic Sanction except for permitting Prussia to re-
tain Silesia.
The Habsburg Empire had survived the coronation
of a woman, but Maria Theresa’s empire remained inter-
nally divided and less efficient than her rivals. Condi-
tions improved when she entrusted the government to
a strong chancellor, Count Kaunitz, but he could not
block the rise of a hungry rival for leadership in central
Europe, Prussia. Within a few years, Austrian armies
again found themselves engaged with the Prussians.
The Seven Years’ War devastated both countries, leav-
ing no true victors. When peace came again in 1763,
the Austrian Empire remained firmly in the grip of
Maria Theresa, but even larger financial and administra-
tive problems plagued her. She faced the problems of
recovery and reorganization, even establishing a na-
tional budget for the first time in her reign. The death
of her husband in 1765, however, plunged her into