Person1717 – 1780

Maria Theresa

Also called: Maria Theresia

Habsburg heiress who ruled Austria, Hungary and Bohemia (1740–1780), fighting the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War while reforming her realm

Eldest daughter of Emperor Charles VI, she married for love Francis Stephen of Lorraine and bore him sixteen children; her youngest daughter, Marie Antoinette, married Louis XVI of France. Legally the emperor was her husband, but she was the one who governed, and after his death she ruled jointly with her son Joseph II. She introduced compulsory schooling in 1774 and centralised the administration. She gave Schönbrunn Palace its present form.

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3 related events

1
1740 – 1748War of the Austrian Successionmonarch
When Maria Theresa inherited the Habsburg lands in 1740, Prussia invaded Silesia and France, Bavaria and others joined in; the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) confirmed her inheritance, but Silesia went to Prussia.
2
1756 – 1763Seven Years’ Warmonarch
In 1756–1763 Austria, seeking to regain Silesia, allied with France and Russia against Prussia, while Britain and France fought for colonies in North America and India; Britain defeated France and won colonial supremacy.
3
1772 – 1795Partitions of Polandmonarch
In three partitions in 1772, 1793 and 1795, Russia, Prussia and Austria divided up the lands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; Poland disappeared from the map until 1918.

People who appear alongside

Frederick the Great1712 – 1786
King of Prussia (r. 1740–1786) who seized Silesia and made Prussia a great power — an enlightened despot who called the ruler “the first servant of the state”
Catherine the Great1729 – 1796
Empress of Russia (r. 1762–1796), German-born, who took the throne in a palace coup, professed enlightened despotism and expanded Russia to the Black Sea and through the partitions of Poland

Themes this person appears in

Islamic Empires and the Atlantic World1500 – 1800
Three centuries in which the Ottomans of Suleiman I, the Mughals of Akbar and the Safavids of Abbas I flourished and then faltered, while across the Atlantic the slave trade and colonies transformed the Americas, leading to American independence
Reformation and Absolutism1517 – 1796
From Luther’s Ninety-five Theses to Catherine the Great — the wars of religion of a divided Christendom ended at Westphalia, and absolute monarchs armed with divine right, standing armies, bureaucracies and mercantilism, followed by the enlightened despots of eastern Europe, contended for the balance of power among sovereign states