Europe in 1600
During the next 150 to 200 years, it's just one war after another. There were so many wars it's hard to keep track, including the Thirty Years War during which civilian loss of life approached 50% due to starvation and epidemics. There were also wars concerning the Austrian, Spanish, Polish and Bavarian Successions - I guess they took it real seriously who succeeded the throne in other countries. Some other wars had names like the Third Dutch War, War of the League of Augsburg, campaigns that returned Hungary to Austrian control, the Seven Years War and several wars against the Turks (more about that later). The result of all those wars was a lot of dead people and Austria losing some territories and gaining more.
The Baroque Era dated from around 1600 to the mid to late 1700s. It was marked by elaborate symmetrical ornamentation. As one art historian has said, it was "ornate, intricate, decorated, detailed, complex and beautiful."
A Baroque Era Room
The era was also marked by elaborate clothes - in the nobility of course. None of us want to see peasant smocks again.
The era succeeded the Renaissance, but painters kept turning out beautiful works of art. This is Caravaggio's "Calling of St. Matthew" - 1600
Even the soldiers were fancy. Here is a Hungarian Hussar in 1600.
It was also an era of strong female rulers. The greatest of them all, Elizabeth I of England, died in 1603 at the beginning of the era. But there were many others, notably Empress Maria Theresa of Austria and Catherine the Great of Russia.
Highly educated Catherine the Great (1729-1796) of Russia (originally from a German duchy) embraced her new country and religion. She had what can only be charitably called a chaotic private life. As a queen, however, few could match her. To begin with, she may or may not have participated in the conspiracy to depose her weakling husband. As Czarina, she reorganized government, modernized Russia, furthered arts and literature and conducted a complex foreign policy.
Catherine the Great
Here are two of the many women rulers in Central Europe during this era. Of course they derived their power from dead husbands. I display these two because they lived and died at the exact same time but were so different in their attitudes and accomplishments.
Princess Regnant Katharina von Brandenburg of Transylvania (1602-44) encouraged education and was very tolerant of different faiths. She tolerated all religions in her realm.
Regent Dowager Archduchess Claudia De Medici of Tirol [southern Austria] (1604-48) reorganized the army and led Tirol during the Thirty Years War, promoted trade and law and order. But although she limited the persecution of witches, she was adamant about religion - Protestants were not allowed in her country.
I find Empress Maria Theresa (1717-1780) of Austria the most fascinating woman because she was different from other female rulers in Europe. (I have more about her in Blog #26.) She was the only female and least inbred Habsburg ruler, but let's admit one basic truth - if she'd had a surviving brother, she would have been only a footnote in history. As it was she was poorly educated and ill-prepared to rule. Her husband - one of the few love matches in royal European history - helped her, and she eventually became a strong ruler in her own right, instituting many reforms like compulsory schooling for boys and girls. She promoted commerce, developed agriculture, reorganized the military and was extremely religiously intolerant. Of her 16 children, 11 grew to adulthood. She was an inconsistent mother, heavily critical of all except one daughter. After her husband's death, she sank into perpetual grief and never again wore anything but black. But the improvements she instituted led to the preeminence of Austria in central Europe for 200 years.
Maria Theresa as a young girl
Bubonic plague epidemics continued to ravage Europe in the centuries after the Black Death in 1347-50. A particularly virulent epidemic decimated central Europe in the late 1670s to early 1680s. It hit Vienna in 1679, but it's impossible to get accurate statistics. My research states the number of deaths as somewhere between 75,000 and 150,000 in a population variably described as between 50,000 and 175,000. The point is a whole bunch of people died, and the king erected a monument thanking God for their deliverance.
Plague Column (Pestsaule) in Vienna
The biggest problem for central Europeans was the Ottoman Turk Empire. For centuries they continued to invade Christian Europe with persistence and determination. By 1683 they had conquered the Balkans and much of southeastern Europe. They were dangerously close to Vienna.
Ottoman Empire - 1683
The final siege of Vienna was in 1683, and the Christian forces, led by King John III Sobieski, of Poland, defeated the Turks. After several more campaigns, by the end of the century, all of Hungary had been returned to Austrian control.
The Battle of Vienna - 1683
With the end of the Turkish threat, Baroque Era Austria thrived with scientific, intellectual, architectural and cultural advancements.
First 12-hour clock with two hands - 1700
Baroque Era Vienna
Hofburg Palace in Vienna
Empress Maria Theresa with family in 1755. The two-month-old baby in the gold cradle is her youngest daughter, Maria Antonia, known to history as Marie Antoinette.
Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna, the imperial summer palace Maria Theresa had renovated in the rococo style of Baroque architecture
Sword of an Austrian Grenadier - 1765
Statue of Empress Maria Theresa between the art and natural history museums in Vienna
High Fashion in 1780
Imperial Crypt containing the bodies of Maria Theresa and her husband - designed by her.
Here is the rest of the Imperial Habsburg Crypt. It lies below Capuchin's Church in the Neue Markt Square near the Hofburg Palace in Vienna. Buried in the crypt are 142 bodies, including 12 emperors and 18 empresses.
As the Baroque Era ended, Austria's greatest triumph still lay ahead. But first would come the double disasters of the French Revolution and Napoleon.
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