Alpha Book

The Wittelsbach family was
reinstated in Bavaria and in the Palatinate, and the husband of Maria
Theresa, Francis of Lorraine, succeeded Charles VII as Holy Roman
Emperor. France, for all her expenditures and sacrifices, gained
nothing. The War of the Austrian Succession was but a preliminary
encounter in the great duel for German leadership between Prussia and
Austria. It was similarly only an indecisive round in the prolonged
battle between France and Great Britain for the mastery of the colonial
and commercial world.
[Sidenote: Coalition against Frederick the Great]
In the war just closed, Austria had been the chief loser, and the
resolute Maria Theresa set herself at once to the difficult task of
recovering her prestige and her ceded territory. Her first efforts were
directed toward internal reform--consolidating the administrations of
her various dominions by the creation of a strong central council at
Vienna, encouraging agriculture, equalizing and augmenting the taxes,
and increasing the army.


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