Coat of arms of Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, on the ceiling of the Castle Chapel of St George, Ljubljanski Grad, Ljubljana. The arms bear the legend 'Maria Theresa Koenigin zu Hung. und Bohem: Erzhert: zu Oester Kommt zur Regi: 1740'
"Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina (German: Maria Theresia ; 13 May 1717 – 29 November 1780) was the only female ruler of the Habsburg dominions and the last of the House of Habsburg. She was the sovereign of Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Transylvania, Mantua, Milan, Lodomeria and Galicia, the Austrian Netherlands and Parma. By marriage, she was Duchess of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany and Holy Roman Empress.
She started her 40-year reign when her father, Emperor Charles VI, died in October 1740. Charles VI paved the way for her accession with the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 and spent his entire reign securing it. Upon the death of her father, Saxony, Prussia, Bavaria, and France all repudiated the sanction they had recognised during his lifetime. Prussia proceeded to invade the affluent Habsburg province of Silesia, sparking a nine-year conflict known as the War of the Austrian Succession, and subsequently conquered it. Maria Theresa would later unsuccessfully try to reconquer Silesia during the Seven Years' War.
Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, had sixteen children, including the Queen of France, the Queen of Naples and Sicily, the Duchess of Parma and two Holy Roman Emperors, Joseph II and Leopold II. Of the sixteen, ten survived to adulthood. She had eleven daughters and five sons. Though she was expected to cede power to Francis and Joseph, both of whom were officially her co-rulers in Austria and Bohemia, Maria Theresa was the absolute sovereign who ruled by the counsel of her advisers. She criticised and disapproved of many of Joseph's actions. Although she is considered to have been intellectually inferior to both Joseph and Leopold, Maria Theresa understood the importance of her public persona and was able to simultaneously evoke both esteem and affection from her subjects.
Maria Theresa promulgated financial and educational reforms, with the assistance of Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Haugwitz and Gerard van Swieten, promoted commerce and the development of agriculture, and reorganised Austria's ramshackle military, all of which strengthened Austria's international standing. However, she refused to allow religious toleration and contemporary travelers thought her regime was bigoted and superstitious. As a young monarch who fought two dynastic wars, she believed that her cause should be the cause of her subjects, but in her later years she would believe that their cause must be hers.
It is unlikely that Maria Theresa ever completely recovered from the smallpox attack in 1767, as 18th-century writers asserted. She suffered from shortness of breath, fatigue, cough, distress, necrophobia and insomnia. She later developed edema.
The empress fell ill on 24 November 1780, ostensibly of a chill. Her physician Dr. Störk thought her condition serious. By 28 November, she asked for the last rites, and the next day, at about nine o'clock in the evening, she died surrounded by her remaining children. With her, the House of Habsburg died out and was replaced by the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. Joseph, already co-sovereign of the Habsburg dominions, succeeded her. Her longtime rival Frederick of Prussia, on hearing of her death, said that she had honored her throne and her sex, and though he had fought against her in three wars, he never considered her his enemy.
After several diplomatic failures and military defeats in the 1730s, Austria seemed to be declining, or even on the verge of collapse. After her forty years reign, Maria Theresa left a revitalised empire that influenced the rest of Europe throughout the 19th century. She gave the Habsburg dominions an efficient administrative system that allowed it to remain a great power in its own right, without the support of the Holy Roman Empire. Her descendants followed her example and continued reforming the empire. The acquisition of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria gave the empire an even more multinational character that would ultimately lead to its destruction. Her introduction of compulsory schooling, as a means of Germanisation, eventually triggered the revival of Czech culture.
The empress is buried in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna next to her husband in a coffin she had inscribed during her lifetime."
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