MARIA THERESA, te-re'sa (Ger. tl ri'za), German empress, queen of Hungary and Bohemia, Archduchess of Austria : b. Vienna, 13 May 1717; d. there, 29 Nov. 1780. The oldest daughter of the Emperor Charles VI, she was carefully educated, was named heir to the throne by the Pragmatic Sanction, and in 1736 married Stephen, Duke of Lorraine, who became Grand Duke of Tuscany in the next year, and who in November 1740, a month after Maria's acces sion to the throne of Hungary, Austria and Bohemia, was named joint regent with her. France and Bavaria invaded Bohemia; and at the same time she was beset by Frederick the Great in Silesia, by Spain and Naples in Italy, and by the counterclaims of Charles Albert, who was proclaimed first Archduke of Austria and then German emperor. She fled from Vienna to Presburg, convoked the Diet, raised a Hungarian army, won the alliance of Eng land, made a secret peace with Prussia, surren dering Silesia and Glatz, and gained peace by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, October 1748, securing the election of her husband as German emperor in return for the cession to Spain of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla. To revenge herself on Frederick she formed • an alliance with Russia, and, by the help of her chancellor, Kaunitz, with France. With the further help of Sweden and Saxony she was preparing to strike at Prussia, when Frederick forestalled her by striking the first blow and opening the Seven Years' War (q.v.). This terrible struggle availed Austria nothing and Maria Theresa had to admit Prussia's right to Silesia in the Peace of Hubertsburg 15 Feb. 1763. Francis I, her
husband, died 18 Aug. 1765, and Maria associ ated with her as emperor her oldest son, Jo seph II, but kept in her own hands everything save military administration. Seven years afterward, upon the first partition of Poland, she received Galicia and Ludomeria; and in 1775 Bukovina was granted to Austria by Turkey. The Peace of Teschen, closing the War of the Bavarian Succession, brought Austria the Inn Valley in 1779• but the Princes' League (Ftir stenbund), under the lead of Frederick II,
a heavy blow at Austrian supremacy. Though best known for her part in European politics, Maria Theresa was equally great in interior administration; Austrian finance was revived, agriculture encouraged and higher edu cation fostered. The empress was a strict Catholic and an enemy of the Protestant Refor mation, but in this latter part of her reign under the influence of her free-thinking son's poli cies, she was induced to enact some anti-ecclesi astical legislation, which he subsequently devel oped into persecutions. She was a pure and noble woman, strikingly beautiful in her youth. Ten of her 16 children survived her. Monu ments to Maria Theresa are to be found in Klagenfurt, Vienna and Presburg. Her letters to her children and her friends were edited by Arneth (1881), who wrote Maria Theresa' (1888). Consult also de Broglie,
Therese' (1888); de Villermont,