Maria Theresa and the Habsburgs, Pt. 6: Pressburg (Bratislava)

When the mob figuratively lost their collective heads during the French Revolution, many nobles literally lost their heads.

Marie Antoinette is the most famous victim remembered by "popular history," but an estimated 300,000 royalists (1 in 50 French residents) were arrested during the Reign of Terror and 40,000 died by force or disease, with over 16,500 sentenced to death by guillotine by Maximilien Robespierre and his blood-thirsty followers.

In the aftermath, a young officer named Napoleon Bonaparte rose to become Emperor of France.

City Gate in Bratislava

Napoleon championed a new meritocracy with systems of justice designed to make everyone equal under the law, so of course the royal families of Europe, including the Habsburgs, felt their feudal order was now being threatened in their own back yard as well as across the ocean in far-away America.

A series of coalitions formed to take down this upstart who had no legitimate claim to power by "royal blood."

Napoleon dealt with these threats, keeping territories captured during the successful defense of his realm through successive coalitions.

Unlike Hitler's detestable rule by fear, Napoleon and the common people in the territories he subsequently conquered saw him as a liberator.

Strolling through beautiful Bratislava

When the Third Coalition met with utter defeat at his hands, the Peace of Pressburg was declared on December 26, 1805, under a treaty between Napoleon and Holy Roman Emperor Francis II, a grandson of Maria Theresa.

So total had been the defeat that the Holy Roman Empire itself, the last official vestige of the amazing Roman Empire, collapsed entirely.

Emperor Napoleon's son by Austrian Archduchess Marie Louise, was called "King of the Romans" from birth, inferring that the Roman Empire almost resurrected under a Habsburg descendant, as royal family lines have occasionally reclaimed thrones in the past.

That was not to be, as royal blood apparently demanded that royal kingdoms destroy Napoleon and all that he stood for to stem the tide toward a more egalitarian world, even if it might have eventually evolved full circle back to the Roman Empire.

The eastern branch of the Roman Empire based in Constantinople (modern day Istanbul), which by historians came to be called the Byzantine Empire but considered themselves Romans, had ceased to exist with the Fall of Constantinople in 1456 at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.

This was obviously a significant milestone for the Ottoman Empire, which had been rapidly expanding since the year 1300.

When Suleiman the Magnificent came to power as the 10th Ottoman Sultan, he set his sights on expanding deeper into Eastern Europe and beyond.

To those ends, Suleiman's army decimated the Royal Hungarian army at the Battle of Mohács in 1526.

In retreat, Louis II, the 20 year-old King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia, fell backwards off his horse riding down a steep ravine.  He landed in a stream, and the heavy armor he wore for protection in battle proved to be so heavy that he couldn't stand up before he drowned.

This defeat brought central Hungary under Ottoman control.

Transylvania became a semi-independent vassal state of the Ottomans and eventually a "suzerainty" under the rule of both the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburgs.

The remaining Kingdom of Hungary was primarily modern day Slovakia, including Pressburg plus Transnubia, an area east of Vienna along the Danube encompassing modern day Budapest.

Separate Hungarian noble groups elected two Kings almost simultaneously for "Royal Hungary": Slavonian noble John Szapolyai, who would become known as Hungarian King John I, and Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand I of Austria, who was brother-in-law of' the recently deceased Hungarian King Louis II who was married to Maria of Habsburg.

John and Ferdinand both claimed to be King of Hungary.

Suleiman was not finished, and whether because he thought Ferdinand had stretched Hungary too thin with his power grab or because it simply fit his general plan, in 1529 at the absolute zenith of Ottoman power in Europe he went after the Austrian capital for the first time with the unsuccessful Siege of Vienna.

These unresolved, less-than-absolute claims of sovereignty by the Habsburgs as to who ruled Transylvania and Royal Hungary would seem to fall under what our guide in Vienna referred to as Austrian compromise as opposed to German compromise.  In that case, he was talking about a popular Viennese chocolate cake and conflicting claims to be "Original Sacher Torte" versus "The Original Sacher-Torte."  Austrian compromise means living with ambiguity until the situation can be settled later, whereas German compromise would require immediate satisfaction, even if that would mean a duel to the death over whose cake was the original.

As it turned out, the talons of the Habsburgs overcame occasional setbacks like those at the hands of Suleiman and Napoleon, clinging fast to Hungary through World War I.

In 1699, at the culmination of the 15 year Turkish War, the Ottomans withdrew entirely from Hungary, marking the first time they had lost significant territory after centuries of expansion.

When Maria Theresa was crowned King of Hungary in 1741, she promised to keep a residence in Hungary as well as Austria.

Pressburger Schloss (Bratislava Castle), which was just across the border from Austria, served that purpose.

As her successful reign progressed, Maria Theresa began remodeling Pressburger Schloss in the ornate Rococo style she preferred

Getting back to the promise at the end of my last lengthy post, Empress Maria Theresa's favorite child was Maria Christina.  Both strong-willed and extremely intelligent, "Mimi" was the most like her mother.

Her parents ensured Mimi received an excellent education, and she developed to be a fine artist by any standards, irregardless of her royal position.

Add in her beauty, and it becomes obvious why her siblings might be a bit jealous when their mother treated Mimi as her favorite.

Like Maria Theresa, who had been allowed to marry for love,  Mimi eschewed unions with more promising Princes to marry the younger son of the King of Saxony (Poland) rather than the heir apparent to the throne of a more significant prospective ally like France.

Albert of Saxe-Teschen was merely the Duke of Teschen, a title that would proceed to be held by Habsburgs for future generations.

However, they did not marry until 1765, when Mimi's father had passed away, possibly indicating the Emperor never gave the final green light to the marriage.

Mimi and her hubby moved to the beautifully refurbished Pressburger Schloss in 1766, and acting as a mother-in-law who wanted her favorite daughter to be married to a successful man, Maria Theresa appointed Albert Governor.

Because the Governor needed more space, a new palace in Classic style was built inside the walls.

Further upgrades included gardens similar to Schönbrunn Palace plus summer and winter riding schools along the lines of the Spanish Riding School in Hofburg Palace in Vienna.

In addition, Maria Theresa upgraded the furnishings, adding more valuable art.

While she visited there in keeping with her promise to live there part of the time, this remodeling would seem to be primarily for the benefit of her favorite child while at the same time providing mother and daughter the opportunity to maintain their close relationship.

Maria Theresa died in 1780, and the next year Mimi's brother Emperor Joseph II eliminated the position of Governor and moved many of the treasures to Vienna.

Did sibling jealousy weigh into those decisions?

In any case, Albert and Mimi took some treasures with them to Brussels for Albert's new position as Governor of Austrian Netherlands (modern day Belgium).

In 1783, Emperor Joseph II moved the seat of power to Buda (half of today's Budapest) and the Hungarian Crown Jewels to Hofburg Palace in Vienna.

Stripped of its treasures, Pressburger Schloss became a Catholic seminary.

In 1802, the aging seminary became a military barracks housing 1500 soldiers.  That made it a target for bombardment by Napoleon's forces in 1809 after Austria joined Britain in the Fifth Coalition to break the French Empire.

Austria had stayed out of the Fourth Coalition, abiding by terms of the Treaty of Pressburg, but no peace lasts forever, it seems.

By the way, all of the photos in this post are from our port stop in Bratislava (formerly known as Pressburg), except the last one which is a picture of Bratislava from the AmaWaterways brochure.