Ah Maria, Welcome to Prague

Hey, I haven’t said a word to him about all the battle stuff he’s been covering. Honest.

If it seems that I have been focusing on the wars that Maria fought to the exclusion of all else, that is because, alas for Maria, that is what she was forced to deal with in the first years of her reign. As we have seen, defeat was far more common than victory. She never regained Silesia, she finally did get the crown of the Holy Roman Emperor for her husband in October of 1746, which occasioned a snotty remark from said husband to the effect that she didn’t wish to share the crown with him (she insisted he be crowned alone, she didn’t want to hog his Big Day.) because she considered it a lesser honor than the crown of Austria. But fighting continued on and off for another two years.

There were other pressing issues that Maria had to address as best she could while keeping the wolves at bay. Not the least of these was doing something about the fundamental structure of the empires society. Not that she told herself that she had to change society. It was just that she had this notion that a queen ought to be a Queen.

Either she was in charge, really in charge, or she was little better than a figure-head. Given the crying need the empire had at that time for a strong leader, her thinking was quite logical. Her plans were also. They were also extremely radical, although she didn’t see them that way.

Maria’s strategic goals were direct, and early on, few. Strengthen the Austrian military. Consolidate power to the Crown government in Vienna. Institute fiscal reforms to pay for it all. These were her broad goals. It was never her stated intention to produce “radical” reforms. But such changes would come about of their own volition simply by Maria doing what she felt she needed to do.

One of her early agenda items was clipping the wings of the nobles. In early 1743, the Austrians finally reclaimed Prague. Charles Albert was deposed and Maria traveled to Prague for her coronation. She was in no mood to forgive and forget the rapidity in which the Bohemian nobles brushed aside their oaths of loyalty to the Hapsburg crown.

In stark contrast to her regard for Hungarian sensitivities, she was letting the Bohemians, particularly the nobles, know that she was claiming the crown by right of birth. To drive home the point, she intended to make the coronation ceremonials as brief as possible. Her itinerary looked something like this:

1: Go to Prague.

2: Put crown on head.

3: Go to church, then have dinner, maybe a nap.

4: Go back to Vienna.

When her advisor, Count Kinsky, complained that she wasn’t allowing enough time for things to be done properly, she sent him this note;

“In Pressburg (the then Hungarian capital) the time was even shorter. The diet in Prague is less important than the Hungarian one, where everything happened in three days. The Elector ( Charles Albert ) gave even less time. The banquet is of no account: I can eat fish…There are plenty of churches for the people to hear mass in…I shall be in a bad temper anyway. Don’t make it worse. (yikes!) Nothing is to be changed, not even by one hour.”

As early as 1742 she had been putting her plans into action. After the Austrian army had recovered Linz and Upper Austria, she sought to punish those nobles who had sworn fealty to Charles Albert. Her advisors were aghast. The nobles were at the top of the food chain. They were rich and important. Who would run things? Her response: “I am sure that enough loyal and honest men can be found to fill the positions made vacant by a purge. Many of my Silesians are out of bread because of their loyalty and have nothing to do. Don’t tell me there are no able men among them.”

In case any nobles slept through that, she did something in Morovia, in March of 1742, that really got their attention. She ordered firearms to be distributed among the peasants, who in that area were virtual serfs. Her explanation for this act was simple. Were not these people loyal subjects of the crown? Why, of course they were! Her Majesty might need them to serve in the army. To that end, they needed to know how to use their guns.

Her Majesty was quite certain the peasants wouldn’t use those guns against their landlords. Her Majesty was further quite certain that the Morovain serfs loved their treacherous feudal overlords To…Death…!

It was during this time that Maria acquired someone whom she very much needed to bring order to her high energy personal life. Don Manoel Telles de Menezes e Castro, or Count Tarouca, was a Portuguese nobleman twenty years her senior who first rose to prominence in her fathers court. An able administrator, he occupied a prominent position in the Austrian Netherlands when Maria ascended the throne.

He was not an ambitious man and little is known about how he came to Maria’s notice after she became Queen. She remembered him from her childhood in dad’s court. And he had done well in the various posts he had held over the years. However it came to be, she tapped him for a particular job that she believed only he could do.

What she wanted, basically, was for Count Tarouca to be her tutor, her confidant, her personal secretary, and her Good Buddy. What she wanted was an older, court experienced man she could confide in. A man she could trust. It had to be a man, and no, it could NOT be her husband.

She wrote to him: “From now on, without intermission, you are to tell Her where She errs and to explain with perfect openness Her faults of character.” The only problem was, Count Tarouca didn’t want the job. He REALLY didn’t want the job.

Wrote on historian of the Count’s feeling in the matter: “What had he done to deserve this frightful destiny? He was a good servant of the crown, a devoted admirer of the Queen; to be singled out in this unprecedented way was indeed an honor, almost unthinkable, but it was also ruin.”

The Viennese court was a bottomless well of gossip. The Queen herself enjoyed hearing tales, during card games, of who was doing what with whom. Count Tarouca knew as well as anyone that to become that close to the Queen, only twenty-four at the time, would be an engraved invitation to gossip of the worst kind. He would make powerful enemies and he was not at all certain that Her Majesty would be able to protect him.

In Maria’s mind, what did it matter what others thought? She didn’t do that sort of thing. She was faithful, even if her spouse wasn’t. That she knew that was enough for her and that should be good enough for everyone else. She needed a male confidant with a brain, court experience, good sense and discretion.

And she had found him. And he was going to take the job wither he liked it or not. And he didn’t like it, so she had to order him to take it. The thing was, he was very, very good at it. He brought much needed order to the Queen’s personal life.

Left to her own devices Maria mixed business, family and pleasure into volatile mix where she, the Count feared, was in serious danger of burning herself out. She could, and often did, dance from late afternoon until the wee hours of the morning stopping only briefly to eat and drink. She would then sit down to high stakes card games until sunrise. At which point she would saddle up her horse, riding astride, never side-saddle, unless she was too pregnant, and ride hard for several hours. She then took a quick bath, changed clothes and would begin her business day.

That could not go on. Even Maria realized that. But she needed someone to tell her that. This Count Tarouca did, even if it often seemed a thankless task. Wrote one historian:

“His true role was to teach her how to think, how to organize her days, how to manage her ministers, to give her self confidence and smooth out her moods as they oscillated between elation and despair… In the early years of her reign he was her rock.”

— Mr. Al