Maria Theresa

MARIA THERESA.

OUGHT women to vote? This is one of the questions of the day. Many men would be disposed to favor the admission of women to the ballot but for one objection. If, say they, women can vote for President, why should they not be eligible to the office of President? Very well ; suppose they were. When we consider that the two greatest empires of modern times have been governed by women, and when we consider also how many of the nations of the earth have been governed badly by men, why should we think it so terrible a thing to have a woman at the head of this Republic? It is true, we are not likely to witness such an event, but if it should occur, the nation would probably survive it.

Let us see in what manner the great Maria Theresa ruled for forty years the extensive and ill-assorted empire of Austria.

Born in 1717, the eldest daughter of the Emperor, Charles VI, she married in her nineteenth year, Francis, the Duke of Lorraine, and in her twenty-third year, upon the death of her father, was proclaimed Empress of the sixteen different states and territories which made up the Austrian empire. Her father was a man of limited capacity, though of respectable character, and left to his daughter an empty treasury, a small, disorganized army, and a disputed succession. Although all the great powers, during the lifetime of the Emperor, had solemnly engaged to recognize his daughter as the legitimate heir, no sooner had the news of his death spread over Europe, than all of them, except the King of England, questioned her claims, and several of them took measures to seize portions of her inheritance. It was the general opinion of Europe that the impoverished empire, under the sway of a young woman, would fall to pieces almost of itself, and that the only question was, respecting the division of its provinces among adjacent states.

While the other powers were negotiating and arming with a view to the dismemberment of Austria, Frederick II, the young King of Prussia, availing himself of the splendid army and the vast treasures accumulated by his father, suddenly invaded the Austrian province of Silesia, and marched with such rapidity that, in a few weeks, he had possessed himself of almost the whole province. Frederick then offered to the young Empress to establish her in the possession of all her other states, and to give her a subsidy of five million of francs, on the single condition of her ceding to Prussia the province of Silesia, which Frederick claimed as rightfully belonging to his kingdom. Threatened as she was by France, Holland, and Spain, it would have been only prudent in her to have accepted this offer. But with the Imperial crown, she inherited also an Imperial pride. She rejected the proposal with as much promptitude and disdain, as though she had been the mistress of powerful armies and inexhaustible treasuries.

In this extremity she repaired to Hungary, where the celebrated scene occurred with the Diet of that country. Presenting to the assembled nobles her infant child, she appealed to their compassion and their loyalty, saying, with tears in her eyes :

" I have no allies but you in the world."

Whereupon, her husband shouted :

"Life and blood for our Queen and kingdom."

"Yes," exclaimed the members of the Diet, "our life and blood."

Some timely help, too, came from George II of England, and it was with English guineas and Hungarian horsemen that she endeavored to expel Frederick from Silesia, and keep at bay the armies of France and Spain. Such enthusiasm was there for her in England, that a public subscription was started for her benefit. The Duchess of Marlborough subscribed the extraordinary sum of forty thousand pounds sterling, and other ladies of London a hundred thousand more — so touched were the susceptible hearts of the English people at the spectacle of a young and beautiful woman defending her hereditary rights against such numerous and powerful enemies. The Empress, however, thought it due to her dignity to decline this friendly succor, and said to the ladies, that she would defend her states by the help of her loyal subjects alone. It added to the general interest in her fortunes, that she was about again to become a mother, and knew not, as she said, whether there would remain to her a city in which she could give birth to her child.

Despite the heroic efforts of the Hungarians, she was compelled to yield Silesia to the King of Prussia in order to detach him from the coalition against her. She then waged successful war against her other enemies until, in the eighth year of her reign, she concluded a treaty of peace which left her mistress of all the ancient possessions of her house, excepting alone the fine province wrested from her by the invincible Frederick.

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After this eight years of most desperate and desolating warfare, Maria Theresa enjoyed a precious interval of seven years of peace which is about the duration of two presidential terms. Then it was that, for the first time, silo could display the gentler and benevolent traits of her character. She employed her power to encourage agriculture and reanimate trade. She removed tariffs and other barbarous restrictions from the commerce with foreign nations. She caused new and better roads to be constructed. She decorated her capital with grand and useful edifices. Directly through her encouragement, her subjects began to manufacture woolen cloths, silk, and porcelain, which remain to this day important branches of the national industry. Not content with these merely material works, she founded a University, several colleges, schools of architecture and design, and three observatories. She took great pains to make her subjects acquainted with improved methods of healing the sick. For the old soldiers who had shed their blood in her cause, she erected hospitals and asylums. She pensioned the widows and dowered the daughters of officers who had fallen in war. Above all, in her own life, and in the government and education of her family, she set an example of purity, wisdom, and devotion, which every mother in the world could study with profit. She did not think that the labors of governing an empire exempted her from the ordinary responsibilities of life. She became the mother of ten children, four sons and six daughters, all of whom survived her, and all of them, I believe, did honor to the character of their mother.

But she could not reconcile herself to the loss of her darling Silesia. Always looking forward to the time when she should be in a position to recover that province, she strengthened and disciplined her army continually, and founded military schools where officers could be trained capable of coping with the veterans of the Prussian king. At the same time she prepared the way, by able diplomacy, to combine the powers of Europe against the ambitious Prussians. She stooped even to flatter the mistress of the King of France, Madame de Pompadour,whom, in notes still existing, she styled " my dear friend." The great Frederick, on the contrary, would never con-descend to notice, officially, the existence of Madame de Pompadour, and made her his bitter foe by his contemptuous silence and stinging sarcasm. He used to call her Petticoat III," in allusion to the fact that she was the third mistress of Louis XV; and there were always about the two courts busy adherents of the Empress to convey to the cars of Pompadour the sneering wit of the Prussian monarch.

By such arts, and others more legitimate, Maria Theresa united against Frederick the sovereigns of France, England, Russia, and of several of the States of Germany, not doubting for a moment that a kingdom of five mil-lions of souls must of necessity succumb before a combination of States, the united population of which was more than a hundred and fifty millions.

But she did not know her enemy. Informed of the secret treaty for the destruction of his kingdom and its division among his enemies, Frederick suddenly marched with sixty thousand men, and overran Saxony and Bohemia, and thus began the famous Seven Years' War, which only ended when the enemies of Frederick, exhausted of men and money, were compelled to leave him in peaceful possession of the province he had seized. It must be avowed, however, that, in all probability, Frederick would have been overwhelmed and finally defeated, hut for the accession to the throne of Russia of Peter III. This emperor had conceived such a passionate admiration of the character and exploits of the Prussian king that the moment he came upon the throne he abandoned the coalition, and withdrew his armies from the seat of war. This event occurred in the very nick of time. It relieved Frederick and completed the discouragement of his enemies.

After the restoration of peace, Maria Theresa renewed her exertions for the welfare of her people. Though a devout Roman Catholic, she resisted the efforts of the Pope to control the ecclesiastical affairs of her empire, and so checked the over of the Inquisition that her successors were able to suppress that terrible institution. One of her best acts was the abolition of torture in the administration of justice —a reform which was greatly due to the eloquent and pathetic denunciations of Voltaire. At that time, :n almost every country, criminals were put to the torture, either to compel them to confess their own guilt or to reveal the names of their accomplices. The unhappy prisoner, pale and trembling with terror, was conducted to a vault underground, and there, in the presence of a magistrate and recording clerks, he was subjected to increasing degrees of anguish, until the attending surgeon decided that he could bear no more without danger of his life. Many poor wretches, to gain a moment's respite from agony, accused innocent persons, who, denying their guilt, were in turn subjected to the same infernal cruelty. The first monarch of continental Europe to abolish this most irrational and horrid system was Frederick the Great; the second was Catherine I1, of Russia; the third was Maria Theresa; the fourth was Louis XVI, of France. Readers may remember that when the benevolent Howard made his tours among the jails of Europe, about the time of the American Revolution, he found the torture chamber in almost every city that he visited, and in many of them it was still employed.

It used to be considered a stain upon the administration of the Empress Maria. Theresa that she consented to the dismemberment of Poland, and to accept a large portion of that country as her share of the spoil. More recent writers, however, who have looked into that affair closely, are disposed to think the act justifiable and even necessary. One thing is pretty certain; if a country can be dismembered, it soon will be, unless it is the interest of some great power or powers to protect it.

Mary Theresa died in 1780, aged 63, bequeathing to her son, Joseph, an empire far more united, prosperous, and powerful than the Austria which she inherited from her father. When the news of her death was brought to Frederick, the greatest of her enemies, he wrote to his friend, D'Alembert, the French author :

" I have shed some very sincere tears at her death. She has done honor to her sex and to the throne. I have made war upon her, but I have never been her enemy."

Of the female sovereigns of Europe in modern times, Maria Theresa was, probably, the ablest and the most virtuous. Her errors were those of her rank and blood; her good actions were the result of her own noble heart and generous mind. Austria still styles her the Mother of her country, and remembers with fondness one of her sayings:

"I reproach myself for the time I consume in sleep; it is so much taken away from the service of my people."

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Source: Daughters of Genius: A Series of Sketches of authors, artists, reformers, and heroines, queens, princesses, and women of society, women eccentric and peculiar. James Parton, Hubbard Brothers, Publishers, Philadelphia: 1886.