MARIA THERESA archduchess of Austria, queen of Hungary and Bohemia, and wife of the Holy Roman emperor Francis I., was born at Vienna on May 13, 1717, eldest daughter of the Emperor Charles VI. (q.v.) and Elizabeth of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel. On Feb. 12, 1736 she married her cousin Francis of Lorraine (q.v.), then grand duke of Tuscany, and afterwards emperor. Five sons and eleven daughters were born of this marriage. From the date of her father's death on Oct. 20, 1740, till her own death in 1780, Maria Theresa was one of the central figures in the wars and politics of Europe. But unlike some sovereigns, whose reigns have been agitated, but whose per sonal character has left little trace, Maria Theresa had a strong and in the main a noble individuality. There was no affectation in her assumption of a becoming bearing or in her picturesque words. The common story, that she appeared before the Hun garian magnates in the diet at Pressburg in 1741 with her infant son, afterwards Joseph II., in her arms, and so worked on their feelings that they shouted Moriamur pro rege nostro Maria Theresia, is only mythically true. But during the delicate nego tiations to secure the support of the Hungarian nobles she un doubtedly did appeal to them with passionate eloquence, and with a pardonable sense of the advantage she obtained from her youth, her beauty and her sex. Maria Theresa was especially preoccupied with her position as heiress of the rights of the house of Austria. Therefore, when her inheritance was assailed by Frederick of Prussia, she fought for it with the utmost deter mination, and for years cherished the hope of recovering the lost province of Silesia. Her practical sense showed her the necessity of submitting to spoliation when she was overpowered. She accepted the peace of Berlin in 1742 in order to have a free hand against her Bavarian enemy, the emperor Charles VII. (q.v.). When Frederick renewed the war she accepted the strug gle cheerfully, because she hoped to recover her own. Down to the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 she went on fighting for Silesia or its equivalent. In the years following the peace she ap plied herself to finding allies in France and Russia who would help her to recover Silesia. Here, as later in the case of Poland, she subordinated her feelings to her duty to the state. Though she denied that she had ever written directly to Madame de Pompadour, it is certain that she allowed her ministers to make use of the favourite's influence over the French king. When fate decided against her in the Seven Years' War she bowed to the inevitable, and was thenceforward a resolute advocate of peace.
In internal government she worked to promote the prosperity of her people, and to give more unity to an administration made up by the juxtaposition of many states and races with different characters and constitutions. Her instincts, like those of her enemy Frederick and her son Joseph II., were emphatically ab
solutist. She suspended the meetings of the estates in most parts of her dominions. She was able to do so because the mass of her subjects found her hand much lighter than that of the privileged classes who composed these bodies. Education, trade, religious toleration, the emancipation of the agricultural population from feudal burdens—all had her approval up to a certain point. She would favour them, but on the distinct condition that nothing was to be done to weaken the bonds of authority. She took part in the suppression of the Jesuits, and she resisted the pope in the in terest of the state. Her methods were those of her cautious younger son, Leopold II., and not of her eldest son and immediate successor, Joseph II. She did not give her consent even to the suppression of torture in legal procedure without hesitation, lest the authority of the law should be weakened. Her caution had its reward, for whatever she did was permanently gained, whereas her successor in his boundless zeal for reform brought his em pire to the verge of a general rebellion.
In her private life Maria Theresa was equally the servant of the state and the sovereign of all about her. She was an affec tionate wife to her husband Francis I.; but she was always the queen of Hungary and Bohemia and archduchess of Austria, like her ancestress, Isabella the Catholic, who never forgot, nor allowed her husband to forget, that she was "proprietary queen" of Castile and Leon. She married her daughters in the interest of Austria, and taught them not to forget their people and their father's house. In the case of Marie Antoinette (q.v.), who mar ried the dauphin, afterwards Louis XVI., she gave an extraordi nary proof of her readiness to subordinate everything to the reason of state. She instructed her daughter to show a proper respect to her husband's grandfather, Louis XV., by behaving with politeness to his mistresses, in order that the alliance between the two courts might run no risk. The signing of the peace of Teschen, which averted a great war with Prussia, on May 13, 1779, was the last great act of her reign, and so Maria Theresa judged it to be in a letter to Prince Kaunitz; she said that she had now finished her life's journey and could sing a Te Deum, for she had secured the repose of her people at whatever cost to her self. The rest, she said, would not last long. Her fatal illness de veloped in the autumn of the following year, and she died on Nov. 28, 1780. When she lay painfully on her deathbed her son Joseph said to her, "You are not at ease," and her last words were the answer, "I am sufficiently at my ease to die." See A. von Arneth, Geschichte Maria Theresas (Vienna, 1863-79) and J. F. Bright, Maria Theresa (1897) ; M. Gael, Maria Theresa (1900) ; also AUSTRIA.