GIUSEPPE II, EMPEROR. — Born on 16 March 1741 in Vienna, where he died on 20 February 1790. The first male child of Grand Duke Francesco I of Lorraine-Tuscany (later elected emperor in 1745) and of the Empress and Queen Maria Teresa, he became King of the Romans on 27 March 1764, then emperor upon his father’s death (1765) and co-regent with his mother for the Austrian hereditary states, and finally sole ruler from 1780 to 1790. He consistently guided his political action by a strictly absolutist conception; yet, as a son of the Enlightenment, he intended to place sovereign power at the service of the “happiness” of the people, who, in his view, were to live in a “welfare state” (Wohlfahrstaat). A complex figure, rich in humanity, he has been judged variously by contemporaries and posterity: he had the tragic fate of seeing a large part of his conceptions collapse, but the fact remains that after his death, and in the following century, his ideas had significant practical repercussions. During the co-regency he was often at odds with his mother, who was deeply attached to the Church and recoiled from her son’s Enlightenment-derived conceptions; the conflict was especially acute in the field of ecclesiastical policy.
He usefully concerned himself with the reform of the army in collaboration with the Aulic Councillor Lacy, and exercised considerable influence on foreign policy: Austria’s acquisition of Galicia following the first partition of Poland (1772) was due to his personal intervention. In 1775 Austria also received Bukovina from Turkey, and G. II was the first to draw attention to the importance of that region: in fact, the acquisition of that country secured for Austria a lasting influence in the Slavic territories. G. II’s interventions in the Bavarian question, concluded with the Peace of Teschen in 1779, were likewise significant. After the death of his mother Maria Teresa (1780), having become sole ruler, G. II drew closer to Russia, with which he concluded an offensive and defensive alliance in May 1781. He attempted to acquire Bavaria, which had already been an object of his interest during the preceding period of the co-regency, through an exchange involving Belgium, but failed in his aim as a result of the opposition of the German princes led by Frederick II of Prussia. The alliance with Russia drew him into an unsuccessful war against Turkey in 1788.
G. II’s reforms within the State were particularly important. He intended to construct a strongly centralized state, an undertaking that entailed overcoming the particular traditions of the individual Habsburg countries. The army and the bureaucracy were to be the pillars of this centralizing state, whose activity was to be directed toward subjects all brought into a uniform legal situation. These conceptions inspired the uniformity of the fiscal system, which abolished the exemptions of the 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 the fields of education, judicial administration, and religion.
G. II’s audacious reforms concerning domestic policy provoked reactions and open opposition throughout all the dominions, particularly in those countries with stronger traditions, namely Belgium and Hungary. Belgium broke out in open rebellion and proclaimed itself independent in 1789; in Hungary, opposition from the noble class compelled the Emperor to renounce some of his reforms. As for the Italian region dependent upon the House of Austria, namely the Milanese, G. II’s reforming activity was intense and produced lasting effects. There he deprived the clergy of fiscal exemption, took seigneurial jurisdiction away from the feudal lords, and dissolved the ancient trade guilds. In the administration of justice, he improved the system of evidence by abolishing torture (1784), suppressed the ecclesiastical forum, and established a new judicial organization, replacing the Milanese Senate—which had exercised such authority for two and a half centuries—with a supreme court of third instance; he also introduced in Lombardy the new “general regulation of civil cases,” which had already been tested previously in other countries of the monarchy (May 1786). G. II also sponsored a draft criminal code, which, however, could not enter into force because of the political events that brought Austrian rule to an end.