The Mother of her Country

Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, and Empress of Germany, was born in 1717, the eldest daughter of Charles VI., of Austria. She acquired, through her force of character, her wisdom and uprightness, and her unselfish devotion to the welfare of her realm, the title, "Mother of her Country." Ascending the throne at the age of twenty-three years, she found herself confronted by a combination of potentates, who had agreed among themselves to dismember the Austrian Monarchy and divide the spoils, under the guise of asserting certain just claims of theirs to various parts thereof.

Maria Theresa, being driven from her capital, Vienna, by the invaders, took refuge in Hungary. She appeared in the Hungarian Diet with her crown upon her head, the sword of state by her side, and holding her infant son in her arms. In Latin speech she roused the Hungarian nobility to such a pitch of enthusiasm, that, with drawn swords, the vast assembly shouted: "Let us die for our King, Maria Theresa!" They at once took up her cause and defended her so successfully that she kept all her territory except Silesia, which was given to Frederick the Great, of Prussia. This war was called "the war of the Austrian Succession." In 1745, her husband, Francis of Lorraine, was elected Emperor of Germany; after his death, in 1765, she devoted the rest of her life to the advancement of her people.

Her reforms were numerous. She brought about the abolition of torture, and of the worst features of feudal servitude; established a system of education; put a check upon the temporal powers of the Roman Catholic Church; forbade the alienation of landed property in favor of ecclesiastical bodies; set limits to the authority of the Inquisition; encouraged men of learning; improved the system of taxation, and was, on the whole, so good and gracious and wise a sovereign, that the population of even her remotest provinces increased amazingly, and her people became attached to her as no other people in Europe were attached to their ruler. But one serious mistake was forced upon her by her son, afterwards Joseph II., and Prince Kaunitz; this was her consent to the partition of Poland, in 1772. On the edge of the copy given her to sign she wrote, "Placet (I consent)," "because so many great and learned men will have it so, but after I am dead and gone, people will see the consequence of thus breaking through all that has hitherto been held holy and just. M.TH." She died November 29th, 1780, and was succeeded by her son Joseph. Her ill-fated daughter, Marie Antoinette, had been, at the time of her mother's death, Queen of France for six years.