You know, Europe is a little like a pot of boiling water.
One nation rises to the surface over time while another starts to decline, smooth, steady
convection.
Except sometimes countries decline to decline and everyone rushes to the top
simultaneously and the pot explodes.
[Intro]
All right, let’s get crackin’.
Like many an Archduchess, she was exorbitantly educated, her father had her taught by the
Jesuits who learned her real good in Latin, and… well that was mostly it, the Jesuits
kind of dropped the ball on this one, Maria ended up learning mostly from her governess.
She could sit in on council meetings too if she behaved, but nobody really taught her how
to run a country because she wasn’t going to be in charge anyway.
Oh wait.
Before Maria was born, Austria had something of a succession crisis on its hands.
Her father found himself the last man standing the house of Habsburg
and had no one to inherit his lands and titles except his nieces,
so he figured he should probably make it legal for a woman to take the Habsburg thrones…
just in case.
He spent years trying to get Europe to go along with this crazy plan and promise they
wouldn’t do to Austria what Austria and France did to Spain.
Britain even made him shut down Austria’s version of the East India Trading Company,
but at least Britain held up their end of the bargain unlike some people.
Charles kept trying for sons but got nothing but girls, girls, girls before he died.
Austria’s now broke because, well, they shut down their trading company, but also
because of fights with the Ottomans, what else is new, and getting involved in another
succession crisis in Poland.
There was this guy, Augustus the strong, briefly deposed by a certain Swede
♪ I was chosen by heaven! ♪
he came back again but in the interim this guy Stanisław was in charge.
Augustus dies, there’s a fight over whether he can give Poland to his son or whether Stanisław
gets to come back.
Stanisław lost, Austria won, but now Maria’s left with only 100,000 florins.
Er, wait, no those didn't exist at the time, maybe it was Gulden? Thaler?
Whatever, her mother took it all.
And now France, Spain, Bavaria, Saxony-Poland, and perhaps most importantly Prussia all revealed
they’d signed the agreement with their fingers crossed.
I mean sure Prussia fought with Austria on behalf of Saxony-Poland five years ago, but
look at her, she’s a woman, and this is the perfect opportunity to claim her cousin’s
would-be inheritance, or take Silesia and start a lifelong grudge match!
Maria’s strapped for generals, so she releases one from prison.
Unfortunately he’d been imprisoned for being a bad general.
Now France is talking about carving up the country, Bohemia wants a new ruler, her husband’s
screaming at her “For God’s sake, give up Silesia before Frederick comes back wanting
more!”
And so she gave up most of Silesia and Prussia was happy to withdraw.
For two years until he realized Austria was actually on the upswing.
Bohemia, though, uh-uh, they were staying.
Mr. “King of Bohemia” can go ahead and put on the crown of the Holy Roman Empire
that’s been in the Habsburg family for nearly three hundred years, that’s fine!
Because Munich just got captured in a surprise winter attack!
In the end, Maria got to keep the bulk of her dominion, though her husband became co-monarch
and Holy Roman Emperor at least in name.
Spain and France won a few outlying territories, but the real winner was Frederick.
He’d go on to be a real thorn in her side, but now the war was over so she could do the
things she enjoyed doing during the war like having children and being grumpy about the
Enlightenment, which would famously kill one of her children, and trying to retake Silesia!
Oh hold on, Frederick’s already overrun Saxony.
Bother.
But Austria’s not backing down, not with Russia on her side and France lending her
oodles of cash and telling its people “We’ve always been at war with Prussia.
Always”.
The war got off to a rough start, but then Sweden got involved, Prussia was totally surrounded,
Austria occupied Berlin for a little bit, they had this in the bag!
Until Elizabeth of Russia died and was replaced by a Prussian fan boy who opened the bag by
backing out of the war.
And then Sweden decided “Screw this, I’m going home” leaving Austria alone with France
who was having a grand old time being repeatedly gut-punched by Britain, and Spain, who was
completely failing at invading Portugal.
Silesia was gone for good and Frederick wasn’t going anywhere.
But unlike France, who lost basically its entire empire and would spend the rest of
the century being bitter about it, revolutionizing America as revenge, spiraling into debt and
bursting into flames, Austria’s ship was still afloat.
Maria doubled state revenue in a decade, and eventually got around to some of those Enlightenment
ideas.
To this day every hospital in Graz is required to perform autopsies, that was kind of a big
deal, even Frederick was impressed by the empress, though maybe that was because she
modeled her new mandatory school system after his, but still, big, big deals.
My dear friend M. Laser can testify, he’s had to live through that school system, which
students complain about to this day
So Maria Theresa was doing somewhat good for herself along with Austria
and that helped build up one of the most important cities, Vienna
It is the golden apple on the Danube and the cultural heartland of Central Europe
The home to great minds alike and the deathbed of great emperors from the Roman to the Habsburg
If you want to know more about Vienna come check out my video after this one. Back to you
Thank you, monsieur.
Maria never really warmed up to the arts, though, her son wanted to hire this kid named
Mozart, she told him not to waste his time on such drivel.
Oh, and secularism and religious tolerance definitely didn’t catch on with her, she
deported the Jews and relocated the Protestants to Transylvania.
Her twilight years were spent in an extended funk after her husband died.
Her son became her new co-ruler, but there was always some friction between them.
And on top of that she still had to deal with Frederick waltzing in and going “Heeyyy,
butter biscuit, Russia fought a war with the Ottomans so now we’re taking parts of Poland,
you want some?”
"What? No, Friedrich, you can’t just take Poland”
“Tough luck, honey nut, because we’re doing it with or without you.
Better get while the getting’s good!”
And, so, yeah, she took part of Poland.
Tough to say if it was a good idea in the long run, I mean the land was good, but it
kind of led to the mess that was Austria-Hungary with all its different people groups and languages,
which would’ve been fine except no one knew how to organize it all.
And then she fell ill with, well it’s unclear exactly, but it probably stemmed from her
smallpox infection a while back, and thus passed the House of Habsburg into the annals
of the past.
But Austria was no longer on death’s door and no longer dependent on controlling the
HRE, which was a darn good thing because otherwise, boy would the 1800s have been fun for them.
And Frederick was kind enough to write some nice words about her, so…
I ship it.
[Upbeat music]
Fun Fact: Maria’s dad considered marrying her to Frederick but thought “Mmm… nah,
religious differences, they’d never get along”.
If, like Cotton Eyed Joe, you’d like to know where Vienna and Austria came from and
where did they go, may I point you to this video all about that, created by that dashing
gentleman who came by here earlier.
Auf Wiedersehen