In the midst of these troubles Ferdinand ceded Lusatia to Saxony at the peace of Prague, concluded in 1635; and when the war was ended he ceded Alsace to France, at the peace of Westphalia in 1648. The Emperor Leopold I, son and successor of Ferdinand III, was victorious through the talents of his min ister Eugene, in two wars with Turkey; and Vienna was delivered by John Sobieski and the Germans under Karl von Lotharingien from the attacks of Kara Mustapha in 1683. In 1687 he changed Hungary into a hereditary kingdom, and joined to it the territory of Transylvania, which had been governed by dis tinct princes. Thanks to the victories of Prince Eugene of Savoy, Leopold succeeded in concluding a permanent peace at Carlovitz in 1699. Moreover, he restored to Hungary the country lying between the Danube and the Theiss. It was now the chief aim of Leopold to secure to Charles, his second son, the inher itance of the Spanish mon#rchy, then in the hands of Charles II, King of Spain, who had no children; but his own indecision, and the policy of France, induced Charles II to appoint Philippe crAnjou, the grandson of Louis XIV, his successor. Thus began the war of the Spanish Succession (see SUCCESSION WARS) in 1701. Leopold died 5 May 1705, before it was terminated. Emperor Joseph I, his successor and eldest son, continued the war, but died without children, 17 April 1711. His brother Charles, the destined King of Spain, immedi ately hastened from Barcelona to his hereditary states, to take upon him the administration of the government. He was elected emperor 24 December of the same year; but was obliged to accede to the peace of Utrecht, concluded by his allies at Rastadt and Baden in 1714. By this treaty Austria received the Netherlands, Milan, Mantua, Naples and Sardinia. In 1720 Sicily was given to Austria in exchange for Sardinia. The duchy of Mantua, occupied by Joseph in 1708, was now made an Austrian fief, because it had formed an alliance with France prejudicial to the interests of Germany. This monarchy now embraced 191,621 square miles. Its annual income was between 13,000,000 and 14,000,000 florins, and its army consisted of 130,000 men; but its power was weakened by new wars with Spain and France. In the peace concluded at Vienna 1735 and 1738, Charles VI was forced to cede Naples and Sicily to Don Carlos, the Infante of Spain, and to the King of Sardinia a part of Milan, for which he re ceived only a part of Parma and Piacenza. In the next year, by the peace of Belgrade, he lost nearly all of the fruits of Eugene's victories, even the province of Temeswar; for he was obliged to transfer to the Porte, Belgrade, Servia and all the possessions of Austria in Wallachia and Bosnia. To all this Charles VI willingly acceded in order to secure the suc cession of his daughter, Maria Theresa, by the Pragmatic Sanction. This law of inheritance was passed 1713-19, and acknowledged one after another by all the European powers.
Austria under the House of Hapsburg By the death of Charles VI, 20 Oct. 1740, the male line of the Austrian house of Hapsburg became extinct; and Maria Theresa having married Stephen, Duke of Lor raine, ascended the Austrian throne. On every side her claims were disputed, and rival claims set up. A violent war began in which she had no protector but England. Frederick II of Prussia subdued Silesia; the Elector of Bavaria was crowned in Lintz and Prague, and in 1742 chosen emperor under the name of Charles VII. Hungary alone supported the Queen. But in the peace of Breslau, concluded 4 June 1742, she was obliged to cede to Prussia, Silesia and Glatz, with the exception of Teschen, Jagern dorf and Troppau. Frederick II, by assisting the party of Charles VII, soon renewed the war. But Charles died 20 Jan. 1745, and the husband of Theresa was crowned Emperor of Germany under the title of Francis I. A second treaty of peace, concluded 25 Dec. 1745, confirmed to Frederick the possession of Silesia. By the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 18 Oct. 1748, Austria was obliged to cede the duchies of Parma, Pia cenza and Guastalla to Philip, Infante of Spain, and several districts of Milan to Sardinia. The Austrian monarchy was now firmly established; and it was the first wish of Maria Theresa to recover Silesia. With this object in view she formed an alliance with France, Russia, Saxony and Sweden. This was the origin of the Seven Years' War; but, by the peace of Hubertsberg, 1763, Prussia retained Silesia, and Austria had sacrificed her blood and treasures in vain. The first paper money was now issued in Austria, called state obligations, and the Emperor Fran cis erected a bank to exchange them. After his death, 18 Aug. 1765, Joseph II, his eldest son, was appointed colleague with his mother in the government of his hereditary states, and elected Emperor of Germany. To prevent the
extinction of the male line of her family Maria Theresa now established two collateral lines; the house of Tuscany, in her second son, Peter Leopold; and the house of Este, in the person of the Archduke Ferdinand. For these separa tions Maria Theresa indemnified the country by the confiscation of several cities, formerly pledged to Poland by Hungary, without paying the sum for which they stood pledged; by ob taining Galicia and Lodomera in the first profligate division of the kingdom of Poland in 1772; and by the capture of Bukowina, which was ceded by the Porte in 1777. In the peace of Teschen, 13 May 1779, Austria received Inn viertel, and the vacant county of Hohenembs in Suabia, the county of Falkenstein, and the Sua bian territories of Tettnang and Argen; and thus at the death of the Empress, 28 Nov. 1780. Austria contained 234,684 square miles; it had lost 16,366 square miles, and gained 34,301. The population was estimated at 24,000,000; but the public debt also had increased to 160,000,000 florins. The administration of the Empress was distinguished by substantial improvements in connection with government, agriculture, trade and commerce, the education of the people, the promotion of the arts and sciences and of re ligion. The foreign relations of the kingdom also, even those with the Roman court, were happily conducted by the talents of her minis ter, lunitz.
Her successor, Joseph II, was active and restless; impartial, but too often rash and vio lent. While a colleague with his mother in the government he diminished the expenses of the state, and introduced a new system in the payment of pensions and of officers. But after the death of his mother all his activity and tal ent as a sovereign was fully developed. As severe to the military as to the civil officers, he adhered, however, to liberal principles. The censorship of the press was reformed; the Prot estants received full toleration, and the rights of citizenship; the Jews were treated with kind ness; 900 convents and religious establishments were abolished, and even the visit of Pius VI made no alteration in Joseph's system of refor mation. The system of education he subjected to revision and improvement; and he tried to foster manufactures by duties on foreign goods. But his zeal excited the opposition of the ene mies of improvement. The low countries re volted, and his vexation probably led him to attempt the exchange of the Netherlands, un der the title of the kingdom of Austria, for the palatinate of Bavaria under an elector. But the project was frustrated by the constancy and firmness of the next magnate, the Duke of Deux-Ponts, and by the German league con cluded by Frederick II. Joseph was equally unsuccessful in the war of 1788 against the Porte. His exertions in the field de stroyed his health; and grief at the rebellious disposition of his hereditary states accelerated his death, which happened 20 Feb. 1790. Joseph II was succeeded by his eldest brother, Leopold H. By his moderation and firmness he quelled the turbulent spirit of the Netherlands, and restored tranquillity to Hungary. The Treaty of Reichenbach with Prussia, 27 July 1790, and the Treaty of Sistova, 4 Aug. 1791, led to a peace with the Porte. The unhappy fate of his sister and her husband, Louis XVI of France, induced him to form an alliance with Prussia, but he died 1 March 1792, before the revolutionary war broke out. Soon after the accession of his son, Francis II, to the throne, and before he was elected Ger man Emperor, France declared war against him as King of Hungary and Bohemia. In the first articles of peace, dated at Campo Formio, 17 Oct. 1797, Austria lost Lombardy and the Netherlands, and received as a compensation the largest part of the Venetian territory; two years previous, in 1795, in the third division of Poland, the Austrian dominions had been en larged by the addition of west Galicia. In the beginning of the year 1799, the Emperor Fran cis, in alliance with Russia, renewed the war with France. But Napoleon extorted the peace of Luneville, 9 Feb. 1801, and Francis acceded to it, without the consent of England. By the conditions of the treaty he was to cede the county of Falkenstein and the Frickthal. Fer dinand, Grand Duke of Tuscany, at the same time renounced his claim to this province and received in return for it Salzburg and Berch tesgaden, with a part of the territory of Passau, and was afterward made master of the largest part of Eichstadt, and honored with the title of elector. Austria obtained the Tyrolese arch bishoprics, Trent and Brixen, and, notwith standing its cessions of territory to France, had gained, including its acquisitions in Poland, 9,580 square miles; this made the whole extent 253,770 square miles. The public debt had also increased to 1,220,000,000 florins.