Maria Theresa II (Part 1)
Lived: 1423-1494
Head of House of Habsburg: 1448:1494
Holy Roman Empress: 1448-1494
Archduchess of Austria: 1448-1494
Queen of Bohemia: 1459-1494
Duchess of Lombardy: 1461-1494
The 2nd German Empress oversaw the Habsburg realm’s transition from powerful German Princedom to established, multi-cultural, European and colonial Empire. By the end of her reign Austria more closely resembled Castile than Brandenburg. Maria Theresa was the most powerful Emperor since the Hohenstaufens and brought considerable unity to the divided Princes of Germany although her concentration on the German territories of the Empire left Italy free to be absorbed into the growing Papal States of Italy.
Maria Theresa was forced to go to war within three months of her investiture as Empress after the powerful Duke of Thurungia attempted to attack the County of Anhalt. Immediately the powerful Austrian army rolled into action alongside a large coalition of German Princes. The Thurungian army was utterly crushed and after less than a year of fighting the Duke was forced to become a Habsburg vassal, a small strip of territory to the North of Bohemia was also ceded directly to the Empress.
Following the excommunication of Milan in 1552 the Empress received Papal blessing for an invasion of the once proud Duchy. The Duke of Bavaria rose to support the Italian state but faced defeat in battle against overwhelming odds as the Austrian army crushed its foes. Peace was signed the following year with the entire Duchy of Milan being annexed and Bavaria ceding the province of Schwaben.
In early 1556 the ruling family of the small County of Mantua died out, the County was then offered to a minor branch of the House of Habsburg in return for protection from outside threats. With that the small territory became a vassal of Austria.
On October 7th 1556 the Anglo-Austrian rivalry began in earnest. During the 1550s and 60s the Papal Curia was dominated by English Cardinals and pro-English Cardinals. The King of England had given financial and military support to the Papacy for its Italian wars and in return the Papacy gave religious support for English politics. Fearing the expanding power of Austria, King James I (of the House of Stewart) organised the excommunication of Maria Theresa.
Several uneasy months passed as English fleets and armies began to relocate to friendly Mediterranean ports and English diplomats bombarded the German Princes. War finally came on February 17th after an Austrian merchant ship was sunk by an English warship in the Adriatic. England, Wurttemberg and the Palatinate prepared for war with Austria and their vassals in Saxony and Thurungia.
The war began slowly as the opposing armies assembled, the first major battle occurred on June 14th near the city of Nurnberg. The Elector Gustav Adolf of the Palatinate faced a Habsburg army twice the size of his own and won an incredible victory. The first stage of the battle began with an Austrian cavalry charge.
The charge into the Rhenish pikes ended in utter destruction as 2/3s of the Habsburg knights were slain. The Infantry then began to panic as Gustav Adolf led his army in a charge. With the nobility fleeing and without a strong leader the Austrian army began to rout, these routing men were run down by Gustav Adolf’s cavalry, the Austrians suffered terrible losses.
The defeat failed to win Gustav Adolf the war as at the same time another Austrian army ransacked his Rhenish lands but it did secure him a favourable peace which was signed at the start of 1458 along with the surrender of Wurttemberg.
Just before the war in Germany ended the first wave of English arrived in on the Adriatic shore whilst 15,000 Lombards rose up against Austrian rule in Italy.
On April 7th an Austrian army defeated the Lombard rebels in a brutal melee. Both sides suffered heavy losses but the battle proved a critical victory for Austria as the rebellion quickly petered out following the clash.
Meanwhile Carinthia became the site of a bloody struggle between the English and Austrian armies. Despite being such a great distance from their homes the English were able to support an army of comparable size, at times larger, than the Habsburgs. For the next 2 years both armies battled endlessly as each month thousands of English were killed and each month thousands more arrived in the captured ports. At the height of their advance English troops raided the outskirts of Vienna itself. At a time when it appeared that the English might secure victory the Austrians found an unlikely ally in the Barbary Pirates. In order to support such a large army English merchant fleets, laden with gold, men and supplies, were forced to sail across the favourite hunting grounds of the Muslim Pirates in large numbers. Such was the effect of the Pirates that for every ship that successfully made the journey between Friuli and Plymouth two were lost. This cost slowly drained away at the English army in Carinthia and by late 1460 they had been entirely thrown from Austrian lands. Shortly later a white peace was signed in which England recognised Austria’s annexation of Wurttemberg and was paid a nominal tribute.
In the year 1461 another attempt by the Teutonic Knights to annex the Electorate of Riga was defeated by the Austrian army.
At the same time as she expanded her realm Maria Theresa II firmly established the House of Habsburg in the regions inhabited by non-Germans. In 1458 she revived the ancient right of the Bohemian nobility to choose their Monarch. The elections was only ceremonial as it was required that the leading descendent of the House of Habsburg be elected but the Czech people seemed happy to have their vacant throne filled once more. Maria Theresa also had a local Bohemian Parliament created to help the Habsburgs govern the Czech Kingdom. The success of these policies convinced Maria Theresa to declare herself Duchess of Lombardy in 1461. The move was coupled with a system which handed greater rights to the Italian cities, this reduced Vienna’s power over them but the policy was accompanied by a shakeup of the tax and tariff systems in the region which actually allowed Vienna to extract slightly more wealth from the cities in return for greater local autonomy in the region.
Maria Theresa’s attentions had been fixed firmly in the South of the Empire for much of her reign and as such she had failed to take any major measures to keep the peace in Northern Germany. Tensions had been rising between the city-states of Northern Germany and the powerful Danish Monarchy for years and following the death of a Danish merchant in Lubeck these tensions erupted into war. Denmark’s attack on the vital trading port caused a great uproar throughout Germany and the Baltic as: Sweden, the Teutonic Order, numerous minor German Princedoms and Austria all declared war upon the Danes. Austria had significant trading interests in Lubeck and could not afford to have it fall into unfriendly hands whilst the Empress also saw a precious opportunity to push back foreign encroachment into the Empire, thus improving her popularity amongst the Princes.
In the first few months of the war King Christian II of Denmark was forced to fight a defensive war around his German possessions as the small armies of the Princes harassed his territories. Yet when news reached the King of 20,000 Austrians headed through central Germany he fled Northward to a line of forts in Slesvig.
Upon arriving at these forts the Austrians used cannons for the first time since the debacle at Milan during the reign of the previous Empress. This time the experimental weapons worked wonders as the Danish forts were obliterated allowing the Austrians to march Northward. Realising that he would have to meet them in battle Christian attacked the Austrian vanguard.
Despite numerical superiority and the advantage of surprise the Danes were crushed. The initial attack by the Danish infantry was easily fought off by a counter charge from the German knights and after two more failed attacks the Danes fled Northward. After two further engagements with the Austrian army the entire Danish army surrendered near Aarhus along with their King. Christian then agreed to a peace deal in which all of Denmark’s German lands were surrendered and united into the Duchy of Bremen and Holstein. The new Duchy was ruled by promoted members of the local German mobility and ruled over a wealthy realm which included the cities of Bremen and Hamburg.