“All the new laws and regulations, the changes and improvements which took place, emanated from Maria Theresa herself, and they were all more or less wisely and benevolently planned, and beneficial in their effects.”
Her first war was purely one of self-defence, and the sword was drawn in a just cause. Her enemy, Frederick the Great, acknowledged that “the Austrian army acquired, under the auspices of Maria Theresa, such a degree of perfection as it had never attained under any of her predecessors, and that a woman accomplished designs worthy of a great man.”
Maria Theresa was a conscientious Catholic, but she did not allow the Pope of Rome to dictate the affairs of her kingdom, and she realized the necessary distinction between temporal and spiritual jurisdictions.
“She suppressed the pensions charged at Rome upon benefices; and forbade the alienation of property in favor of ecclesiastical bodies.” She intrusted the spiritual governments of convents to bishops, but placed their secular matters in the hands of magistrates. She so restrained the power of the Inquisition, then existing in her Italian dominions, that the check she placed upon the despotic operations of that diabolical institution, led to its final abolishment in Lombardy and Tuscany at a later period.
Maria Theresa was ever ready to make sacrifice of personal ease for the good of her subjects. She was heard to say:—
“I reproach myself with the time I spend in sleep as so much robbed from my people.”
“No sooner did Maria Theresa find herself settled in peaceful security, than she prepared to carry out her systems of internal reform. The vestiges of war were effaced; agriculture was revived; commerce and the arts were encouraged; shipping interests were regarded; roads constructed and repaired; Vienna was enlarged and embellished; manufactories of woollen cloths, of porcelain, of glass, and of silken stuffs, were established. Science flourished in the foundation of several universities and colleges; while one of them, still enjoying celebrity, bears its sovereign’s name in gratitude to its foundress—‘Collegium Theresianum.’
“Special schools of drawing, painting, and architecture were instituted; while Prague and Innspruck had public libraries endowed. Observatories, enriched with valuable apparatus and instruments, arose in Vienna, in Gratz, and in Tirnau; Van Swieten was summoned to regenerate the study of medicine and surgery, and Metastasio was invited to help in disseminating a cultivation of the Italian muse on the banks of the Danube. Measures of importance and magnitude were effected by Maria Theresa in the government of her people. She introduced great amelioration into the feudal system as it then existed in Bohemia. She abolished the torture in her hereditary states,—Hungary and Bohemia. Severe penalties were attached to literary piracy. She exerted herself to promote popular education throughout her dominions, establishing a general system, and taking means for its efficacious operation. She divided into three classes the schools she instituted; firstly, ‘normal schools,’ one in each province, to serve as a model for all the other schools in the province; secondly, ‘principal schools,’ in the large towns; and thirdly, ‘commercial schools,’ in the smaller towns and villages. The normal schools were superintended by a director; those of the large towns were under the superintendence of a magistrate; and the commercial schools, under that of a parish priest, or an assessor of the communal council.
“She granted extra emolument to those teachers whose wives taught the girls sewing, knitting, and spinning; so that children thus taught were able to earn a daily addition to the family income. The system worked admirably, and formed the basis of that extended popular education which operates so beneficially throughout the Austrian monarchy.”
Her second war with Frederick the Great, which lasted seven years, was in the end productive of little besides a terrible loss of life and money to both contestants. By the treaty at its close not a foot of territory was gained or lost by either party. In this war Austria’s allies were France and Russia. Maria Theresa was forty-eight years of age at the end of this war. For twenty-four years all Europe had watched her with wonder and admiration. She had replaced the incapable Bartenstein by the able minister, Prince Kaunitz, and for nearly thirty years he ruled the councils of Austria as prime minister.