The enlightened rule of the Empress Maria Theresa
The role of personality and charm in running a state is one theme of Richard Bassett’s superb book, the first English biography of the Empress Maria Theresa since Edward Crankshaw’s in 1969. The different parts of the Habsburg monarchy – Austria, Tyrol, Bohemia, Hungary, Croatia and Milan – had little in common except dynasty, geography and Catholicism. Yet, partly owing to Maria Theresa’s force of character, this complex tapestry of nationalities remained a great power After she came to the throne in 1740, she felt ‘forsaken by the whole world’. Encouraged by France, Austria’s neighbours Prussia, Saxony and Bavaria invaded the monarchy in order to divide it between them. By
