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 “below” them was allowed to have the job. “The title of Privy Councilor cannot be denied him, no matter how much a fool, simply because once upon a time there was a sensible and honest individual in his family….If the court and ministers would not only withhold honors from all these vapid and useless members, but would regard them with contempt, there would soon be a change.”

Mom pointed out that what was sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander. If merit was all, then where would he, a Hapsburg, be? His case was different. He accepted his hereditary privilege without question; much as he accepted without question that his every idea of reform must have naturally been based on the firmest logic for no other reason than he thought of it.

It was an extremely exasperated Maria who wrote. “You are an intellectual cocotte.(18th century spelling) You chase after what seem to you clever ideas without the least shadow of discrimination. You catch onto any idle word-play, any telling phrase you read in a book or overhear in conversation and come out with it yourself at the first opportunity, without asking whether it is relevant or not.”

An interesting point in their relationship was their mutual inability to compromise on anything. While it was not in Joseph’s nature to do so, Maria had learned the hard way that compromising was vital in a leader. The art was in learning when to do so to one’s best advantage.

She had reached advantageous compromises with her worst enemies. She knew in her bones how to strike such deals. But with her son, there could be no compromise. No deals, no understandings. And yet, they somehow did manage to work together. For fifteen years they managed to do so. The great tragedy of it was what they did not accomplish by not being able to work together.

And for Maria, she knew she was fighting a loosing battle. Legally, she and her son were co-regents. Morally, Maria held ALL the high cards. Everyone, even Austria’s enemies, knew that; even if Joseph refused to consider it. But Maria was getting older. One day, she would be gone and everything would be in Joseph’s hands. This was not something she was looking forward to.

Thus she wrote in 1773, when Joseph threatened to step down over one of the many, many incidents that caused him to get into a Royal Snit:

“I must confess that my capabilities, my looks, my hearing, my skill are swiftly declining; and that the weakness which I have dreaded all my life is indecisiveness, made worse by discouragement and lack of faithful servants. The loss of you, of Kaunitz, the death of all my faithful advisers, the irreligion, the deterioration of morals, the jargon which everyone uses and which I do not understand, all of these are enough to overwhelm me. I offer you my whole confidence and beg you to point out any mistakes I may make….Help a mother who for thirty-three years has had only you, a mother who lives in loneliness, and who will die when she sees all her efforts and her sorrows gone to waste. Tell me what you wish and I will do it.”

Maria may have felt exasperated and at the end of her rope, but she still knew how to write like a mom. Joseph did not step down. I doubt that anyone seriously thought that he would. Nor did Maria accommodate herself to all his wishes. Again, to no one’s surprise.

I mention the tensions between mother and son at this particular point because much of Maria’s “legacy” to history would be formed at this point. That is to say, historians for the most part would judge her by what she tried to do during this period. It was also during this period that Joseph would be looked upon as the “enlightened monarch” dragging Austria, meaning mom, kicking and screaming out of the middle ages.

To be sure, there were subjects that Maria would rather die than compromise on. Religious toleration was the big one. She was adamantly opposed to it. To modern eyes, particularly modern American eyes, such a view was very medieval. Joseph’s view strikes a note that sits well with modern historians.

He wrote: “Things cannot be done by halves. Either complete freedom of religion, or you must drive from your lands everyone who does not believe as you do….So long as men serve the state, obey the laws of nature and society and do not dishonor your Supreme Being- what right has a temporal ruler to interfere in other matters?”

That sounds wonderful. Unfortunately, Austria in the 18th century was not the society to practice such philosophies on. France was getting ready to do so. Many people, including Maria, saw it coming and it rightly terrified them. As Maria and Joseph were exchanging these letters, over ten thousand Catholic Moravians had been forced to convert to Protestantism.

Maria felt that as Empress and moral leader of the Austrian empire she had an absolute duty to deal with such matters with all the force necessary. Not just as a matter of state policy, but as a matter of law and order as well as religion. Talk of religious toleration only inflamed and emboldened radicals who wished to destroy everything.

To modern eyes, Joseph was indeed, the light of moderation. What few modern historians try to understand were Maria’s unique obligations as Empress of Austria. Empress of the Hapsburg empire. It was a family affair and she had sworn by her ancestors to preserve it no matter what the cost to herself. And, unlike her son, she had tried to keep it an empire at peace with it’s neighbors from the first day she ascended the throne.

Her “enlightened” son, on the other hand, gleefully embroiled Austria in the the most needless and disreputable wars in Austria’s history.

— Mr. Al