[Sidenote: Diversity of Habsburg Dominions]
Between the various peoples who were thus brought under the Habsburg sway, the bond was of loosest description. They spoke a dozen different languages and presented an even greater diversity of interests. They did not constitute a compact, strongly centralized, national state like France. Charles VI ruled his territories by manifold titles: he was archduke of Austria, king of Bohemia, king of Hungary, duke of Milan, and prince of the Netherlands; and the administration of each of these five major groups was independent of the others. The single bond of union was the common allegiance to the Habsburg monarch.
[Sidenote: Check upon Habsburg Ambitions in the Germanies]
To adopt and pursue a policy which would suit all these lands and peoples would hardly be possible for any mortal: it certainly surpassed the wit of the Habsburgs. They had made an attempt in the seventeenth century to develop a vigorous German policy, to unify the empire and to strengthen their hold upon it, but they had failed dismally. The disasters of the Thirty Years' War, the jealousies and ambitions of the other German princes, the interested intervention of foreign powers, notably Sweden and France, made it brutally clear that Habsburg influence in the Germanies had already reached its highest pitch and that henceforth it would tend gradually to wane.
Blocked in the Germanies, the Austrian Habsburgs looked elsewhere to satisfy their aspirations. But almost equal difficulties confronted them. Extension to the southeast in the direction of the Balkan peninsula involved almost incessant warfare with the Turks. Increase of territory in Italy incited Spain, France, and Sardinia to armed resistance. Development of the trade of the Belgian Netherlands aroused the hostility of the influential commercial classes in England, Holland, and France. The time and toil spent upon these non-German projects obviously could not be devoted to the internal affairs of the Holy Roman Empire. Thus, not only were the Germanies a source of weakness to the Habsburgs, but the Habsburgs were a source of weakness to the Germanies.
[Sidenote: Continued Prestige of the Habsburgs]
Despite these drawbacks, the Habsburg family was still powerful. The natural resources and native wealth of many of the regions, the large, if rather cosmopolitan, armies which might be raised, the intricate marriage relationships with most of the sovereign families of Europe, the championship of the Catholic Church, the absolutist principles and practices of the reigning prince, all contributed to cloak the weaknesses, under a proud name and pretentious fame, of the imperial Austrian line.
[Sidenote: Question of the Habsburg Inheritance]
[Sidenote: The "Pragmatic Sanction" of Charles VI]
In the eighteenth century a particularly unkind fate seemed to attend the Habsburgs. We have already noticed how the extinction of the male line in the Spanish branch precipitated a great international war of succession, with the result that the Spanish inheritance was divided and the greater part passed to the rival Bourbon family. Now Charles VI was obliged to face a similar danger in the Austrian inheritance. He himself had neither sons nor brothers, but only a daughter, Maria Theresa. Spurred on by the fate of his Spanish kinsman, Charles VI directed his energies toward securing a settlement of his possessions prior to his death. Early in his reign he promulgated a so-called Pragmatic Sanction which declared that the Habsburg dominions were indivisible and that, contrary to long custom, they might be inherited by female heirs in default of male. Then he subordinated his whole foreign policy to securing general European recognition of the right of Maria Theresa to succeed to all his territories. One after another of his manifold principalities swore to observe the Pragmatic Sanction. One after another of the foreign powers—Prussia, Russia, Great Britain, Holland, the Empire, Poland, France, Spain, and Sardinia,—to whom liberal concessions were made—pledged their word and their honor most sacredly to preserve the Pragmatic Sanction. When Charles VI died in 1740, he left his daughter a disorganized state, a bankrupt treasury, and a small ill-disciplined army, but he bequeathed her an ample number of parchment guarantees. The cynical Prussian king remarked that 200,000 fighting men would have been a more useful legacy, and, as events proved, he was right.