Birthday Greetings #6

Happy birthday to Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor between 1790 and 1792. Leopold was the third son of Maria Theresa of Austria and her largely irrelevant husband Francis of Lorraine (less well known as Holy Roman Emperor Franz I). Leopold's status went up a notch when his elder brother died and he became second in line to the throne. He was made Grand Duke of Tuscany which at the time was one of those chunks of Italy that the Habsburgs parcelled out to various relatives to keep them out of trouble.

On the death of his father his elder brother Joseph took over the empire (and made a dreadful hash of it) and Leopold settled down to rule Tuscany. During his time there he disbanded the military, stamped out corruption, introduced enlightened laws for the care of the mentally ill, banned torture and capital punishment, initiated a public works program and gave the people a constitution. Naturally he was cordially disliked by his subjects.

In 1790 his brother Joseph II, who had been running his own reform project with disastrous consequences, died and Leopold traded up to become Holy Roman Emperor. Voltaire's quip about the Holy Roman Empire being neither holy nor Roman nor even an empire is too irresistible not to steal. I have mentioned before the somewhat ambivalent attitude the Habsburgs had towards genius. Joseph was a perfect example of why. If not a genius he was at least an intelligent and gifted man who was determined to reform his creaking old empire from the ground up. A firm believer in enlightened despotism, from the moment he took the throne he drowned his subjects in such a blizzard of reforms that by the time he died almost the entire empire was on the point of revolt. The exception was the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium) which was actually revolting (some would argue it still is).

Leopold arrived in Vienna fresh from his reforming successes in Tuscany and very swiftly realised that the only way to save the situation was to backpedal very rapidly on the entire reform issue. This eased tensions which was necessary as Prussia was hostile, Russia ambitious and France was sliding into revolution. While deploring the collapse of royal power in France Leopold wasn't exactly disappointed to see the nation that was the Habsburgs oldest rival descending into chaos. He had some sympathy for his younger sister Marie Antoinette but one gets the impression that possibly not very much. He was still a reform minded man and if circumstances had forced him to become a pillar of the establishment he was still determined that the establishment should earn its support. He kept French noble refugees (who were demanding he invade France) at arms length, made peace with the Turks (in one of his sillier moments big brother Joseph had got involved in a war with them) and kept the Russians and Prussians on their toes. Unfortunately the next thing he did was die. The throne went to his eldest son Franz II (later Franz I of Austria) who was an exemplar of the fine Habsburg tradition of mediocrity.

Many observers have commented that it was a pity for the empire that Leopold died after only two years on the throne and before drowning his eldest son. The Habsburg empire would last for another hundred and twenty six years and have four more emperors but none of them would approach Leopold (or even Joseph) in ability.