Charles VI (German: Karl; Latin: Carolus; 1 October 1685 – 20 October 1740) was Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of the Austrian Habsburg monarchy from 1711 until his death, succeeding his elder brother, Joseph I. He unsuccessfully claimed the throne of Spain following the death of his relative Charles II of Spain. In 1708, he married Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, by whom he had his four children: Leopold Johann (who died in infancy), Maria Theresa, Maria Anna (Governess of the Austrian Netherlands), and Maria Amalia (who also died in infancy).
Four years before the birth of Maria Theresa, faced with his lack of male heirs, Charles provided for a male-line succession failure with the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713. The Emperor favoured his own daughters over those of his elder brother and predecessor, Joseph I, in the succession, ignoring the Mutual Pact of Succession he had signed during the reign of his father, Leopold I. Charles sought the other European powers' approval. They demanded significant terms, among which were that Austria close the Ostend Company. In total, the states of Great Britain, France, Saxony-Poland, the Dutch Republic, Spain, Venice, the Papal States, Prussia, Russia, Denmark, Savoy-Sardinia, and Bavaria, plus the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire, recognised the sanction. France, Spain, Saxony-Poland, Bavaria, and Prussia later reneged. Charles died in 1740, sparking the War of the Austrian Succession, which plagued his successor, Maria Theresa, for eight years. His death without male heirs also resulted in the complete extinction of the male line in the Habsburg dynasty.
Contents
Biography
Early years
Archduke Charles (baptised Carolus Franciscus Josephus Wenceslaus Balthasar Johannes Antonius Ignatius), the second son of the Emperor Leopold I and of his third wife, Princess Eleonore Magdalene of Neuburg, was born on 1 October 1685.
Following the death of Charles II of Spain in 1700, without any direct heir, Charles declared himself King of Spain — both were members of the House of Habsburg. The ensuing War of the Spanish Succession, which pitted France's candidate, Philip, Duke of Anjou, Louis XIV of France's grandson, against Austria's Charles, lasted for almost 14 years. The kingdoms of Portugal, England, Scotland, Ireland and the majority of the Holy Roman Empire endorsed Charles's candidature. Within Spain his supporters were concentrated in the Crown of Aragon where there was a fear of Bourbon centralism. Charles III, as he was known, disembarked in his kingdom in 1705 and stayed there for six years, only being able to exercise his rule in the Principality of Catalonia until the death of his brother, Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor; he returned to Vienna to assume the imperial crown.
Not wanting to see Austria and Spain in personal union again, the new Kingdom of Great Britain withdrew its support from the Austrian coalition, and the war culminated with the Treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt and Baden three years later. The former, ratified in 1713, recognised Philip as King of Spain; however, the Kingdom of Naples, the Duchy of Milan, the Austrian Netherlands and the Kingdom of Sardinia — all previously possessions of the Spanish — were ceded to Austria. To prevent a union of Spain and France, Philip was forced to renounce his right to succeed his grandfather's throne. Charles was extremely discontented at the loss of Spain, and as a result, he mimicked the staid Spanish Habsburg court ceremonial, adopting the dress of a Spanish monarch, which, according to British historian Edward Crankshaw, consisted of "a black doublet and hose, black shoes and scarlet stockings".
Charles's father and his advisors went about arranging a marriage for him. Their eyes fell upon Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, the eldest child of Louis Rudolph, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. She was held to be strikingly beautiful by her contemporaries.
Succession to the Habsburg dominions
When Charles succeeded his brother in 1711, he was the last male Habsburg heir in the direct line. Since Habsburg possessions were subject to Salic law, barring women from inheriting in their own right, his own lack of a male heir meant they would be divided on his death. The Pragmatic Sanction of 19 April 1713 abolished male-only succession in all Habsburg realms and declared their lands indivisible, although the Diet of Hungary only approved it in 1723.
Charles had three daughters, Maria Theresa (1717–1780), Maria Anna (1718–1744) and Maria Amalia (1724–1730), but no surviving sons. When Maria Theresa was born, he disinherited his nieces, who were the daughters of his elder brother Joseph I, Maria Josepha and Maria Amalia. It was this act that undermined the chances of a smooth succession as set out in a Pact arranged by his father, and obliged Charles to spend the rest of his reign seeking to ensure enforcement of the sanction from other European powers.
Charles agreed to a demand from Britain that he close a trading company, the Ostend Company, which was based in the Austrian Netherlands and which he himself had founded in 1722. Other signatories included Britain, France, the Dutch Republic, Spain, Russia, Denmark-Norway and Savoy-Sardinia, but subsequent events underlined Prince Eugene of Savoy's comment that the best guarantee was a powerful army and full treasury. Charles's nieces were married to the rulers of Saxony and Bavaria, both of whom ultimately refused to be bound by the decision of the Imperial Diet. France, despite publicly agreeing to the Pragmatic Sanction in 1735, signed a secret treaty with Bavaria in 1738 promising to back the "just claims" of Charles Albert of Bavaria.
In the first part of his reign, the Habsburg monarchy continued to expand thanks to the success in the Austro-Turkish War (1716–1718), adding Banat to Hungary and establishing direct Austrian rule over Serbia and Oltenia (Lesser Wallachia). This extended the Austrian rule to the lower Danube.
The War of the Quadruple Alliance (1718–1720) followed. It too ended in an Austrian victory; by the Treaty of The Hague (1720), Charles swapped Sardinia, which went to the Duke of Savoy, Victor Amadeus II, for Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean, which was harder to defend than Sardinia. The treaty also recognised Philip V of Spain's younger son, Don Carlos (the future Charles III of Spain) as heir to the Duchy of Parma and Grand Duchy of Tuscany; Charles had previously endorsed the succession of the incumbent Grand Duke's daughter, Anna Maria Luisa, Electress Palatine.
Religious policies
As a devout Catholic, Emperor Charles supported the reestablishment of Catholic ecclesiastical structures in various regions that were liberated from Ottoman rule and incorporated into the Habsburg Monarchy by the Treaty of Passarowitz (1718). At the same time, several questions related to the rights and liberties of other Christian denominations were regulated. In the Kingdom of Hungary, a significant portion of both nobility and people belonged to the Reformed Church (Calvinists), while eastern and southern regions were also inhabited by Eastern Orthodox Christians, mainly Serbs and Romanians. On several occasions, Emperor Charles issued confirmations of old privileges that were granted to Eastern Orthodox subjects by previous Habsburg monarchs (Emperors Leopold I and Joseph I), and in 1732, an official collection of those documents was published.
Death and legacy
The Emperor, after a hunting trip across the Hungarian border in "a typical day in the wettest and coldest October in memory", fell seriously ill at the Favorita Palace, Vienna, and he died on 20 October 1740 in the Hofburg. In his Memoirs Voltaire wrote that Charles died after consuming a meal of death cap mushrooms. Charles's life opus, the Pragmatic sanction, was ultimately in vain. Maria Theresa was forced to resort to arms to defend her inheritance from the coalition of Prussia, Bavaria, France, Spain, Saxony and Poland — all parties to the sanction — who assaulted the Austrian frontier weeks after her father's death. During the ensuing War of the Austrian Succession, Maria Theresa saved her crown and most of her territory but lost the mineral-rich Duchy of Silesia to Prussia and the Duchy of Parma to Spain.
At the time of Charles's death, the Habsburg lands were saturated in debt; the exchequer contained a mere 100,000 florins; and desertion was rife in Austria's sporadic army, spread across the Empire in small, ineffective barracks. Contemporaries expected that Hungary would wrench itself from the Habsburg yoke upon his death.
Emperor Charles VI has been the main motif of many collectors' coins and medals. One of the most recent samples is a high-value collectors' coin, the Austrian Göttweig Abbey commemorative coin, minted on 11 October 2006. His portrait can be seen in the foreground of the reverse of the coin.
