Part seven of our series on Maria Theresa.
Maria Theresa has gained a smidge of breathing room, having become Queen of Hungary. Now, she can get troops from them, to continue to try to secure her throne and strengthen Austria.
But, before she gets a chance to ask for them, France starts massing troops in the north, threatening an invasion of Britain, Austria’s erstwhile ally. Sure enough, Britain’s like “sorry, can’t help.” Then, the Elector of Bavaria, husband to a rival claimant of the Austrian throne, invades. He’s making his way towards Vienna.
So Maria Theresa goes to Hungary, asks for troops, and gets them. Hungary also reaches out to Croatia and Transylvania to request yet still more troops. Suddenly, the Elector of Bavaria thinks twice about pressing on towards Vienna. Instead, he decides to aim for Prague, still a part of Austria, but easier to take.
There are a bunch of shenanigans at this point. Maria Theresa needs to break up the France-Prussia-Bavaria alliance because she can’t fight all three at once. She offers them each, individually, territory in exchange for them to go away, but only Frederick takes her up on it. There are reasons for this, but the primary one is that he’s not sure he’s actually going to follow through with it. (Spoiler alert: he ends up reneging on it, but then his former allies don’t trust him anymore so the whole thing ends up falling apart.)
Maria Theresa and Austria also end up winning a bunch of battles now that they have Hungarian troops on their side, including taking Munich (in Bavaria) from the Elector of Bavaria. This brings Great Britain back into things, on Maria Theresa’s side, to help with negotiating favorable peace treaties.
The long story short is that Austria ends up recovering Prague and Bohemia. Maria Theresa ends up celebrating in the city, which allows everyday people to partake in the festivities, something her father never did. She also punishes the nobles who helped the Elector of Bavaria; she understood that common folks didn’t have a choice. Mostly. Maria Theresa was anti-semitic, and the Jews were blamed for lending the Elector money. They’re not forced to leave Prague, but they do have to pay a significant bribe to be allowed to stay. Not good.
But, she’s kept her land, conducted a war, negotiated a peace treaty, and bested France, Prussia, and Bavaria. She’s shown she knows what she’s doing, and she’s celebrating her wins with (most of) her people, which they like. She’s competent.
She’s also only 26 and pregnant with her 5th child.
Next time: The ruler/emperor of Austria is usually crowned Holy Roman Emperor. But the head of Austrian state is also usually a dude. So what happens now?
Source: In the Shadow of the Empress by Nancy Goldstone. Affiliate link to Bookshop.org.