Maria Theresa

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As an Archduchess of Austria, Maria Theresa had to raise money somehow. Since Maria Theresa was left a weaken army after the wars the army fought during Charles VI’s reign. She had to start regulating another law. Maria regulated on the nobility and how she decreased their power was that she forced them to pay taxes. Maria reforms had come in wartime, when she was left with a weakened army because of past wars. Her government was in need of more money, and all classes, including the nobility, who were never before were to be taxed now being forced to pay taxes. According to the empress, it was a- "God-willed equality”. Maria Theresa doubled the state revenue between 1754 and 1764, though her attempt to tax clergy and nobility was only partially successful, although by her attempt by taxation strongly improved Austria’s economy. Also, she raised money by imposing extremely harsh taxes on her Jewish subjects when she was dealing with religious affairs.

During Maria Theresa’s rule she had a time that she had to deal with religious affairs. Like all members of the House of Habsburgs, Maria Theresa was a Roman Catholic and a devout one in fact. She believed that religious unity was necessary for a peaceful public life and explicitly rejected the idea of religious toleration. However, she never allowed the Church to interfere with what she considered to be prerogatives of a monarch and kept Rome at hand. She still controlled the bishops, archbishops, and so on. Eventually she gave up trying to convert her non-Catholic subjects to Roman Catholicism, Maria Theresa regarded both the Jews and Protestants as dangerous to the state and actively tried to suppress them. By the first of January, her goal was to expel all Jews, and she transferred Protestants from Austria to Transylvania and cut down the number of religious holidays and monastic orders. Maria was probably the most anti- Semitic monarch of her time, but she had to do what she had to do. She reformed the church by forbidding the founding of new monasteries, and basically established the one religion in Austria.

In conclusion, Maria Theresa was one of the most powerful rulers of her time, and was as stern with her children as she was with her nation. She was courageous, generous and kind. She respected the rights of others and expected others to respect her rights. In the later part of her rule, the empress focused more on human concerns, and less on financial and administrative improvements. She became increasingly involved with the problem of serf reform. In 1771, she issued the Robot Patent, the serf reform designed to regulate the peasants' labor payments in all of the Habsburg lands. She was the savior to the Hapsburg dynasty. Maria Theresa provided a strong foundation for the continuation of the Habsburg Dynasty into the modern era. She focused mainly on the human concern rather than business reforms. Maria Theresa was the most human out of all the Hapsburgs.

Phillip Truong

AP EURO- MR.PYNN

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