Joseph II of Austria

Joseph II (March 13rd 1741 - February 20th 1790)

Oldest son of Marie-Therese of Austria, he became emperor of the Saint Empire Romain Germanique and Co-regent of the possessions of the Habsbourg with died of his father, François I {{er}}, in 1765, then only emperor in 1780 with died of his mother, the Marie-Therese empress.

Joseph II descended directly from Louis XIII. Indeed, he was the great-grandson of Philippe (1640 - 1701), duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV, of which the girl Elisabeth Charlotte of Orleans (1676 - 1744) had married Léopold (1679 - 1729), duke of Lorraine and Bar, father of François Ist.

It was a modern sovereign and reformist, but its reforms, too brutal, neither were included/understood nor accepted by its subjects. He did not hesitate to be combined with the Prussia and the Russia to cut up the Poland (1772). It failed to start a European war in 1778 while wanting to seize the Bavaria. It tried to influence the course of the foreign politics of France while using of its influence on his sister Marie-Antoinette of Austria. It tried to dismember the Ottoman Empire while being combined with the Russia.

To consolidate new alliance with the France signed in 1756, the empress made him marry in 1760 Marie-Isabelle of Bourbon-Parma (1741-1763), grand-daughter of Louis XV, young girl of a spirit and an intelligence superiors but of an even morbid temperament melancholic person. " Tya-Tya" , as Joseph called it affectionately, made the conquest of his/her husband, his in-laws and the court of Vienna. The young woman did not answer the sincere but awkward love of Joseph and conceived an impassioned affection and secrête for her beautiful sister the archduchess Marie-Christine. She quickly gave a girl to Joseph, Marie-Therese 1762 + 1770). She died the following year after having put at the world one second girl, Marie-Christine, who did not live.

Joseph was desepéré by it. Notwithstanding, its duty was to ensure a posterity the empire: he thought of marrying the sister of late but this one was already promised to the prince of Asturies. Joseph had remarier in 1765 in Josépha of Bavaria (1739-1767), princess not too pretty and its elder two years that it made unhappy by his sometimes coarse indifference: he ends up making build a wall on their common balcony not to see it. With died of its second marries the empress thought of making him marry the Bathilde princess of Orleans (always to reinforce the Alliance Fran1caise). Later still it was a question of a union between the emperor and the youngest sister of Louis XVI but these two projects made failure. The heart of Joseph belonged to Isabelle.

It conceived later feelings in love for the Eléonore princess with Liechtenstein which, not more than Isabelle, did not share her feelings.

Its religious reforms inspired of the spirit of the Aufklärung which consisted in subjecting the Church to the state were worth him the nickname d'" emperor sacristain" : reduction of the number of seminars, suppression of congregations and religious orders considered to be useless, tolerance with regard to the noncatholic Christians… These reforms so strongly worried the Saint Seat that the pope Pie VI made the voyage since Rome to make reconsider the emperor his intentions.

Carrying out an austere life and without ostentation, Joseph II, by his policy reformist while remaining absolutist, is the example even " despot éclairé".

He died in 1790, unpopular and misunderstood, leaving his territories to Léopold II, his brother the large duke of Toscane.

Formation of its character

Of the sixteen children of the imperial couple, it was most difficult to raise.

Very awaited child, born after three girls during the War of succession from Austria, his birth was celebrated as a victory by Marie-Therese which made weigh on him immense requirements. However his/her father was elected emperor only four years later. During this time, the small archduke raised in the pride of his blood had shame to be only the son of the large duke of Toscane when so many of its aïeux had been emperors. It defended one cultivating an immense pride then by developing a taquin spirit, sour and surface. " You are vain of esprit" he will write to one day his/her mother.

To make it obey, one took for practice to terrorize it: one the USA with him of threats of the other world but that did nothing but pose the bases of his religious skepticism.

A military tutor the USA in vain of the trip hammer. The empress itself gave him the whip.

A Jésuite taught the Religion, the Latin , the Mathématiques and science Militaire to him, but the manner pedant of the ecclesiastic removed to him any provision for the serious Religion and studies. Another tutor, author of fifteen large volumes for the instruction of the crown prince through the History, destroyed all his respect for the historical characters of the past. The flattering ones and to its tutor stimulated the pressing character and the extravagance of the crown prince, while Martini, its natural law professor, found in him a student interested by the Physiocratie - doctrines which impregnated the spirit of Joseph deeply, by filling with enthusiasm it for the sights of its time, the “rights of man” and the wellbeing of the people. The “Lumières” coming from France influenced it also, especially incarnated by Voltaire and his royal disciple, Frederic II.

Joseph saw of an eye dissatisfied and jealous the intellectual superiority of the Protestants of the Germany of North, which dominated clearly the South Catholique: he also looked at with an aggravated impatience the victories of Frederic II and his skill to control. He saw the goal there that he was to reach. But when it reached the throne, its plans failed completely.

On the throne

Starting from 1765 Joseph was emperor and Co-regent with his mother, but it was in charge only with the go concern and the military businesses of the empire. Finally, full with resentment against the way in which his/her mother, too careful, bound the hands to him, it decided to travel in Italy, France and in the grounds of the Crown. Twice it met Frederic II and in 1780 the tsarina Catherine II. The same year, his/her mother, the Empress Marie-Therese, died.

In the Empire

With the best intentions, Joseph applied, inter alia, to reform imperial jurisprudence. But the difficulties inside and outside cooled its enthusiasm. He wanted to be liberal but became imperialist each time the interests of the Habsbourg were in question, he did not drop of it less the imperial capacity on the level from that from other German princes.

The ecclesiastical policy played in the empire a considerable part. Joseph tried to guarantee the fidelity of the German clergy to the Austrian princes. It ressuscita of the obsolete imperial privileges, like what is called the Panisbriefe, to make sure the support of its laic partisans thanks to the imperial monasteries. While detaching from the large archbishop's palaces like Salzburg and Passau their part which was in Austrian territory, it broke the last bond which linked the Austria with the empire, the Prussian Frederic II assembling his fellow-members by acting the scarecrow of the Tyrannie.

Although it was not in oneself contrary with the German interests, its project to exchange the Austrian Netherlands against the close Bavaria, at the time of an imminent change of dynasty and with the agreement of the new voter, caused, by handling of Frederic II, the War of succession of Bavaria. The Austria obtained only the district of Inn with the small town of Braunau on Inn (where Adolf Hitler was born one century later). In 1785, Frederic II only eager to weaken the Habsbourg, was opposed to the resumption of this project by constituting the “League of the Princes”.

Joseph made any possible sound to develop his possessions in north and the east and to make Austria the dominant power in Central Europe. He obtained a considerable increase in his territory by the first Division of the Poland (1772) and he concludes with the Russia a defensive alliance, of which he hoped for broad profits of territory in the East, but, during the war austro-Russian against the Turks (1788), although the army of Joseph had taken Belgrade, it was Catherine II which collected all the fruits of the countryside.

In Austria

In interior policy, Joseph sought to bring together in only one nation the basically different people which composed the Austrian State: Germans, the Slavic ones, of the Hungarians, Belgians, of the Luxembourgers, Italians. This is why he wanted to make clean slate of all and everywhere, and in greatest haste. Frederic II said of him: " He takes the second step before the premier". His/her mother, the empress, was frightened of so many innovations. She had started the machine of the State in the way of the modern world. In the religious field she had resorted to strict measurements only to prevent the disorders, but Joseph saw in all that only “half-measures and inconsistency” and, ignited by his convictions, “ he voulait, said Krones, dans a kind of hot greenhouse to make come as fast as possible to their maturity the reforms which his/her mother had only commencées”. He unified the administration of all the provinces within a central council established in Vienna, and from which he was to be the head, while he abolished their diets or paralyzed them by subjecting them to the provincial executive authorities. And it said the enemy of any illegality in vain, he did not decide of it less itself in businesses which should have raised of the central government of Vienna. German became the official language in all the countries subjected to his law; the courts of justice were independent and in the same way judged the noble ones and the peasants. Serfdom was removed as well as the right which their subjects had the noble ones to punish; the coding of the civil law and the criminal law, started with his/her mother in 1753, was continued and the capital punishment was abolished. In his Ehepatent, Joseph created the Austrian law on the marriage; he subjected to the tax the nobility and the clergy, which created new sources of revenue to him; he abolishes the censure and allowed freedom of expression, a measurement which caused a flood of booklets of most pernicious, especially in the religious polemic.

However the brutality which it put in its reforms involved everywhere of dissatisfactions and the inhabitants of the Austrian Netherlands, following the example their French neighbors, openly revolted in 1790 (Révolution brabançonne).

Mozart

In 1782, Joseph II ordered from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart an opera. It will be " Die Entführung aus dem Serail" (Removal with the seraglio), first opera in German language. It is at the exit of one repetition to which it had come to assist that it would have said to Mozart: “Too many notes my dear Mozart”, formulates who left for the posterity an image of pompeux Philistine of Joseph II.

Reference

Jospeh II, revolutionary Habsbourg , François FEJTÖ, Academic Bookstore Perrin, Paris, 1982.

Internal bonds

Joséphisme
François Ier of Austria
Marie-Therese of Austria
Marie-Isabelle of Bourbon-Parma

Random links: