Part eight of our series on Maria Theresa.
I’m pausing our story for a moment because I want to talk about the stately quadrille. Throughout the 18th century (so, the 1700s) the great powers of Europe kept making deals and alliances with each other, and then breaking them in favor of something more immediately beneficial. The quadrille is a dance where everyone is constantly swapping partners, much like what’s happening in European politics.
And that’s what the road to Maria Theresa’s next title (Holy Roman Empress) looks like: Spain wants Parma, Britain is worried about France (per usual) and so ends up screwing over Austria, Frederick the Great of Prussia is always plotting how to get more land, even Russia ends up getting involved by the end. It just reads and feels like the most convoluted kind of high school gossip, except it involved wars and battle and people dying.
And so, I’m going to skip over the details of who fought whom, who double-crossed whom, and who made alliances with whom. Here’s what you need to know about how to become Holy Roman Emperor in 1745: you need to be elected. And it’s not just Austrian territories that are officially governed by The Holy Roman Emperor. It’s also German principalities like Bavaria and all or some of Poland (I’m not sure how much). The head of each state gets to vote on which one of them should be The Holy Roman Emperor.
Suffice it to say, some of the convoluted mechanics of what’s going on here are about who’s going to be elected Holy Roman Emperor.
A quick word: Maria Theresa can’t be Holy Roman Emperor because it has to be a man. She’s actually fine with this, as far as I can tell. Francis is never going to get Lorraine back (despite him being, you know, Francis of Lorraine) because of part of the Stately Quadrille doings; having Francis be Holy Roman Emperor, in Maria Theresa’s mind, makes up for that loss. She is Empress simply because she is Francis’ wife when he is elected. (Which, she maneuvered to get him elected so…)
The main thing to know, other than Francis becoming Holy Roman Emperor, is that at the end of this particular round of the Stately Quadrille, Maria Theresa officially and for real concedes Silesia to Prussia. It marks the end of Frederick’s and Prussia’s bits in the Wars of Austrian Succession.
There is some clean-up work to be done about Spain and a few regional powers in Italy, as well as France in the Netherlands, but that is all done by 1748. Finally, there is peace. At least for now.
Source: In the Shadow of the Empress by Nancy Goldstone. Affiliate link to Bookshop.org.