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 was his mother. And this, Joseph was convinced, was one person too many. Wrote Podewils to Frederick of Joseph at age six. “He tutors everybody; his countenance reflects pride and haughtiness, and so does his behavior. He has the most exalted conception of his station…the Emperor tries to rid him of such airs, but his great love for the boy weakens his authority.”

It was noted by all that at an age when most kids would be starting on their alphabet, Joseph was not only ignoring, but making fun of, people who did not occupy the highest rank. At age nine he was publicly ridiculing the inferior station of his fathers family. Indeed, he ridiculed his father as “an idler surrounded by flatterers.”

While still a child he was given honorary command of a regiment. This, he felt, gave him permission to attack Prince Haugwitz, who at the time was embarked on army reforms. “Did you ever do service in the army?…then why do you meddle in matters you do not understand? I warn you not to touch my own regiment with your reforms, for I would not tolerate them.”

Mom was VERY put out when she heard about that. It was widely believed that some adult put him up to it, no child used that sort of language, but they never found out who. As if that were not enough, he discovered a new pleasure at this period of his life. And that was “the pleasure he is prone to take in seizing on the short-comings, physical or otherwise, of others and pouring ridicule on them…he must be stopped from amusing himself at the expense of others-a failing especially reprehensible in the great, who can so easily hurt or embarrass those who cannot defend themselves.” So wrote a tutor.

But, said one historian, “the horrid youth could not be stopped.” He was not just a prince, he was The Prince. The boy who would be king. And he never grew tired of reminding people of this. Maria had hopes, very briefly held, that her son’s marriage, at age nineteen, to Isabella of Parma would soften his hard edges.

He was certainly infatuated with her for a time. Whither he ever really loved her was debatable. Indeed, whither he ever loved anyone besides himself is an open question. He claimed that he loved her. The marriage itself was one of those dynastic decisions common for that age The idea was to forge stronger ties between Vienna and Versailles.

Isabella was the granddaughter of Louis XV. Not only that, but the child of his favorite daughter. At this point, the Seven Years War had just ended, Maria, and Austria, were strapped for cash and needed the French connection rather badly.

Money woes aside, Maria pulled out all the stops for her boy’s wedding. The marriage took place, by proxy, in Parma. Isabella was then escorted to Vienna for a round of celebrations “on a scale to take the breath away.” Joseph could hardly have chosen a better wife, dynastic considerations aside. Stunningly beautiful, she was also highly intelligent, an accomplished musician, music being the only thing outside himself that Joseph really loved, She was more than able to hold her own on the subjects of politics, economics and trade. In fact, she wrote long, perceptive papers on these subjects.

There was one small problem. Isabella was deeply, wildly, passionately in love. With Joseph’s sister, Maria Christine. It would seem, judging from their correspondence that the feeling was reciprocated. If, with a somewhat more subdued passion on the part of Maria Christine. The times being what they were, both women behaved properly. At least, in public. But Isabella made it abundantly clear in her letters, indeed, annoyingly clear, that if she could not have Maria Christina, she would rather be dead.

According to one historian; “The correspondence between Maria Theresa’s favorite daughter and her adored and cherished daughter-in-law was for generations a source of almost intolerable embarrassment to biographers.”

I say “annoyingly clear” because Isabella’s preoccupation with death more than once caused Maria Christine to tell her to get a grip and stop being so morbid. Wrote Isabella to Maria Christine;

“Here I am again, my all too cruel sister, on tenterhooks until I know the effect of what you have just been reading…I cannot wait to know my fate, whether you think of me as someone worth knowing, or worth throwing yourself head first into the water for. It is too much to bear. I can think of nothing but that I am head over heels in love like a fool; if only I knew why? Because you are so cruel that you really shouldn’t be loved, yet how can one help it when one knows you.”

Wrote Maria Christine; “Allow me to tell you that your great longing for death is an outright evil thing. It means either that you are selfish or else you want to seem a heroine. You aught to be ashamed of uttering sentiments so grievous to people who are absolutely bound up with your existence.”

She made a big impression on Maria Christine’s future husband, Albert of Saxony. “This truly amazing woman, who was not twenty years old, was endowed not only with all the qualities of heart which made her estimable, but also combined all the knowledge and talents one might hope for in the most accomplished of young men.”

No, he was not being ironic. He didn’t know. No one did.

Isabella eventually got her wish. Dying at age twenty-one. Not of unrequited love, but of small-pox. The same wave of small-pox that almost carried away Marie Antoinette, of whom, I shall be writing of soon.

— Mr. Al