Categotry Archives: Mr. Al
Ah Maria, It Was Merely a Tiff
Having inadvertently raisied Marie Antoinette to have strong, puritanical notions, there was little her mother could do to make her understand the special place of a king’s mistress. “The Court of Versailles was beside itself with delight at the spectacle of this child setting herself up against the King’s mistress, therefore, against Louis himself.” And this was what Marie Antoinette could not grasp. She was too young and too un-worldly to understand what Madame Dubarry meant to King Louis. As […]
Ah Maria, a Match Made in Heaven… or Not.
We now veer sharply into titillating details of Marie Antoinette’s marriage. A proxy marriage ceremony was carried out in Vienna and a game of one-upmanship between Austria and France shifted into high gear. Receptions of the utmost splendor were held at the Belvedere and Liechtenstein Palaces. Full-dress military reviews, theater galas and much more filled the itinerary. And while all this was taking place in Vienna, frantic preparations were under way at Versailles, including the construction of a new opera […]
Ah Maria, How to Educate a Heedless Lady
Mr. Al’s take on Marie Antoinette, as seen by her mother, continues. I must beg forgiveness of all my readers for a mistake that I made last week. I said that Marie Antoinette was not born to be Queen of France. This was quite true. However, she had been pledged to to wed the Dauphin at age eleven. This should have given mom plenty of time to prepare her except for the fact that she actually got married when she […]
Ah Maria, What of Marie Antoinette?
Emperor Joseph wasn’t Queen Maria Theressa of Austria’s only wayward child. In fact, he wasn’t even the best known of the lot. In the great mass of official business that Maria had to attend to, she still found time to correspond with family and friends. After the death of Francis, Maria took, not surprisingly, a great interest in the family affairs of her married children. There were a lot of them. By 1774, only two children remained at home; daughters […]
Ah Maria, It’s School
Queen Maria Theresa had no interest in enlightenment, but she did many progressive things for her people where her son considered himself highly enlightened. What did he do? Maria’s positive achievements during this period were remarkable, if mostly unheralded. While serfdom existed to one degree or another throughout the empire, it was not because Maria wanted it that way or because she accepted the status quo as immutable. As we have seen, Maria was aware, to an extent, of the […]
Ah Maria, Who is Truly Enlightened?
We left off with Empress Maria Theresa of Austria butting heads with her Emperor son, and that’s where we resume with week. “If I conversed only with my equals, I should have to spend my days in the imperial vault.” So wrote the Emperor Joseph. The truth was, while he believed that of himself, he didn’t think that anyone else was worthy of their positions. Time and again he lambasted those whom he felt held their positions because no one […]
Ah Maria, What a Battle
King Joseph, co-regent of Austria and brother to Marie Antoinette, needlessly invaded Bohemia in search of fame and glory. It didn’t quite work out for him. Joseph was right to believe that Frederick did not really want to fight. That is to say, Frederick was not totally committed to fight. Which is not the same as saying he was unable or unwilling to fight. Frederick had 160,00 men and over 850 guns. (cannon) His main reason for hesitating was that […]
Ah Maria, How Can He Measure Up?
Sometimes history hands us the unhappy combination of a juvenile and selfish mind full of arrogance in a position of power. Woe betide the fool who challenges the worth of such an individual. Witness Marie Antoinette’s brother in action. Joseph considered the reputations of some of his peers in the “running an empire” business, and was not happy when he compared his own to theirs. What did they do to be considered “Great?” Catherine in Russia. Great Scot, the woman […]
Ah Maria, The Filial Son in Action
Queen Maria Theresa took the death of her husband hard, maybe harder than anyone else. “ No human being is capable of adequately expressing the acute feelings with which the heart of a son is overwhelmed, who loses forever a father, by whom he is convinced he was loved….He was my teacher, my friend. I am now twenty-four years old. Providence has given me the cup of sorrow in my early days.” So wrote Joseph to his mom shortly after […]
Ah Maria, The Widow
The death of her husband, the Emperor Francis Stephen, was a hard blow for Queen Maria of Austria to endure. At age forty-eight, she had been running the kingdom without much in the way of input from her husband. That was the way Maria liked it, and Francis was happy to oblige. While she had little need of Francis in an official capacity, she had an overwhelming emotional need for him. It wasn’t only that she loved him; she adored […]
Ah Maria, If I Can’t Have Her, Then… I Take The Other One
After Prince Joseph of Austria’s lovely, lesbian wife died, he was forced to turn to another. But who could match such a nonpareil? Before leaving the subject of Joseph and his marriage to the stunning Isabella of Parma, a post script. Not long after her death, he announced that if he had to re-marry, he would like his bride to be Isabella’s younger sister, Louise. If he could not have his beloved, he would have someone kinda like her. There […]
Ah Maria, It’s Love Most Discerning
Maria Theresa of Austria didn’t get along very well with her eldest son. The problem with Prince Joseph was not that he disagreed with his mom on nearly everything, he disagreed with everyone on nearly everything. And it wasn’t only that he disagreed, he HAD to be right. And is wasn’t only that he had to be right, he knew he was right. All the time. About everything. Because of his position, the only person who could disagree with him […]
Ah Maria, She’s Such a Sweet Mother
For the last several weeks, Mr. Al has been recounting the political difficulties that beset Maria Theresa of Austria when, starting as a young woman, the task of saving the country fell to her shoulders. To see more, click on the History by Mr. Al tab. It is worth a moment to pause here and look at Maria’s home life. She was the Mother of her country. She was also the mother of twelve children by the time the Seven […]
Ah Maria, Yes It’s War, But Besides That…
On August 29th, 1756, Frederick the Great invaded Saxony. It wasn’t his intention to start a Europe-wide war. He needed Saxony as a buffer for Silesia and as a jumping-off for an invasion of Bohemia. He did these things not to provoke Austria, but because he believed Austria intended to strike at him. With a Franco-Austrian treaty signed and sealed, he sounded out Austria as to her intentions. The answers he received were evasive and, to Frederick’s way of thinking, […]
Ah Maria, Stuck in the Middle with Who?
In order to save Austria, Queen Maria Theressa entrusted her diplomat, Kaunitz, with a lot of power, even encouraging his partying. Meanwhile she turned her attention to the shambles of her empire. As late as 1754 all of Europe wanted peace. Kaunitz knew that a war would be required to recover Silesia, but not right away. The ground had to be prepared. As long as France was allied with Prussia, attacking the Prussians in Silesia was out of the question. […]
