Joseph II of Austria
Joseph II ruled the Habsburg lands as the most radical of the enlightened despots and revoked most of his own laws as he died. Born in Vienna in 1741, the eldest son of Maria Theresa and Francis I, he became Holy Roman Emperor in 1765 and co-ruler with his mother, who blocked him at almost every turn until her death in 1780. He then had ten years and used them at extraordinary speed, issuing some six thousand decrees. He abolished serfdom in 1781, giving peasants the right to marry, move and be educated without their lord's consent, and attempted to convert labour dues into cash payments. He abolished the death penalty and judicial torture, and issued a legal code applying equally to nobles and commoners. The Patent of Toleration granted Lutherans, Calvinists and Orthodox freedom of worship, and a further edict gave Jews access to trades, schools and the army while requiring German surnames. He dissolved some seven hundred contemplative monasteries as socially useless, using the proceeds for parishes, seminaries and hospitals including the Vienna General Hospital, and reduced the church to a department of state — Pope Pius VI travelled to Vienna to protest and achieved nothing. He imposed German as the administrative language across Hungary and Bohemia, refused to be crowned King of Hungary so as not to swear to its constitution, and abolished its counties. Almost everyone was alienated: nobles, clergy, Hungarians and the peasants the reforms confused. Revolt broke out in the Netherlands and Hungary. He died in 1790 at forty-eight, having revoked most of it, and wrote his own epitaph as a man who failed in everything he undertook.
- Lived: 1741 CE – 1790 CE
- Nationality: Austrian
- Roles: monarch, statesman, reformer
