GIUSEPPE II, EMPEROR. — Born on 16 March 1741 in Vienna, died there on 20 February 1790. The first male child of Grand Duke Francis I of Lorraine-Tuscany (later elected Emperor in 1745) and Empress and Queen Maria Theresa, he became King of the Romans on 27 March 1764, then Emperor upon his father’s death (1765), and co-ruler with his mother over the Austrian hereditary lands, finally sole sovereign from 1780 to 1790. He consistently shaped his political action according to a rigidly absolutist conception, yet as a son of the Enlightenment he sought to place sovereign power at the service of the people’s “happiness,” which in his intention was to live in a “state of welfare” (Wohlfahrtsstaat). A complex and richly human figure, he has been judged variously by contemporaries and posterity: he suffered the tragic fate of seeing much of his vision collapse, yet it remains a fact that after his death, and in the following century, his ideas had significant practical repercussions. During the period of co-rule he was often at odds with his mother, who, being deeply attached to the Church, recoiled from the Enlightenment-inspired notions of her son; the clash was especially acute in ecclesiastical policy.
He made a useful contribution to army reform in collaboration with the court councillor Lacy and exerted notable influence on foreign policy: the acquisition of Galicia by Austria following the First Partition of Poland (1772) was due to his personal intervention. In 1775 Austria also received the Bukovina from Turkey, and it was G. II who first drew attention to the importance of that region; in fact, the acquisition of that territory secured Austria a lasting influence over Slavic lands. Significant too were G. II’s interventions in the Bavarian question, concluded with the Peace of Teschen in 1779. After the death of his mother Maria Theresa (1780), becoming sole ruler, G. II drew closer to Russia, with which he concluded in May 1781 an offensive and defensive alliance. He attempted to acquire Bavaria through an exchange for the Austrian Netherlands, an objective that had already engaged his interest during the period of co-rule, but failed owing to the opposition of the German princes led by Frederick II of Prussia. The alliance with Russia dragged him in 1788 into an unsuccessful war against Turkey.
Especially important were G. II’s domestic reforms. He aimed to build a strongly centralized state, an enterprise that required overcoming the particular traditions of the individual Habsburg lands. The army and bureaucracy were to be the pillars of this centralized state, whose authority was to be exercised over subjects brought under a uniform legal status. These conceptions inspired the uniformity of the fiscal system, which abolished the exemptions of privileged classes; the creation of a strong state police (1786); the promotion of the spread of the German language (declared the official language of the state); the abolition of serfdom; and a whole series of reforms in education, judicial administration, and religious policy.
The bold domestic reforms of G. II
provoked reactions and open opposition throughout his dominions, notably in those lands with the strongest traditions, namely the Austrian Netherlands and Hungary. The Austrian Netherlands broke out in rebellion and in 1789 proclaimed independence; in Hungary the nobility’s opposition forced the Emperor to renounce part of his reforms. As regards the Italian region under the House of Austria, namely the Duchy of Milan, G. II’s reforming activity was intense and had lasting effects. There he removed the clergy’s tax exemptions, stripped feudal lords of their seigneurial jurisdiction, and dissolved the old craft guilds. In the field of judicial administration he improved the system of evidence by abolishing torture (1784), suppressed the ecclesiastical forum, and established a new judicial order, replacing the Milanese Senate—which had wielded such authority for two and a half centuries—with a supreme court of third instance; moreover, he introduced into Lombardy the new “General Regulation of Civil Causes,” which had already been tested in other lands of the monarchy (May 1786). G. II also sponsored a project for a criminal code, though it could not enter into force owing to the political events that brought Austrian rule to an end.