Conflicts between the Great Powers 395to take advantage of the lone queen in a world of kings. Confident that the
recent death of the Russian empress would preclude Russian assistance to
Austria, Frederick sent his army into Silesia.
Frederick the Great was the latest in the line of aggressive Prussian
kings who identified the interests of the state with a powerful army com
plemented by a centralized bureaucracy able to raise money through taxes.
The Habsburg monarchy embodied, by contrast, the complexity of Central
Europe. Austrian Germans dominated the administrative structure of the
empire of many different peoples and languages. The multiplicity of privi
leges (particularly those of Magyar and Croatian nobles), traditions, and
cultures undermined the authority, resources, and efficiency of the state.
The Habsburg Empire also lacked the trading and manufacturing base of
Great Britain and the Dutch Republic, foremost among the non-absolutist
states, or of France or even Prussia. Mercantilists in Austria hoped that
foreign trade would add to the coffers of the state, but the overwhelmingly
rural Habsburg lands had little to export.
Maria Theresa’s troubles were not limited to Silesia. The nobles of
Bohemia, the richest Habsburg province, rebelled against Habsburg rule,
offering the throne to the ruler of Bavaria, Austria’s rival in southern Ger
many. Dependent on the good will of the provincial Diets, no Habsburg
monarch could be sure of having either sufficient support from the Estates
or money with which to raise an effective army.
Now, with Prussian troops occupying Silesia, Maria Theresa traveled to
Hungary to ask for the support of the Hungarian Diet, which had agreed
to the Pragmatic Sanction in exchange for recognition of Hungary’s status
as a separate kingdom within the Habsburg Empire. Dressed in mourning
clothes following the recent death of an infant daughter and clutching one
of her sixteen children to her, Maria Theresa convinced the Diet to provide
an army of 40,000 men. The Magyar nobles held out their swords to her,
shouting their promise to give “life and blood” for her. The gesture could
not restore Silesia to the Habsburgs, but it may have saved the Habsburg
monarchy. Aided by Hungarian troops, imperial forces put down the
Bohemian revolt.
Fearing a disproportionate expansion of Prussian power in Central Eu
rope, other states now joined an alliance against Frederick the Great. Yet,
confronted by Austria, Russia, Sweden, Piedmont-Sardinia, and Denmark,
states with a combined population twenty times that of Prussia, the Prus
sian army more than held its own, with the help of France as well as Spain
and Bavaria, each hoping to help bring about the disintegration of the
Habsburg Empire. France joined the anti-Austrian coalition because it
coveted the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium); Spain participated because it
wanted to recapture influence in Italy at Habsburg expense; and the king
of Piedmont-Sardinia cooperated because he coveted Milan. Frederick,
satisfied for the moment with the acquisition of Silesia, withdrew from the
war in 1745 after the Peace of Dresden. But Britain was drawn into the