Leopold II of Habsburg-Lorraine
Leopold II reigned as emperor for two years, was the ablest Habsburg of his generation, and died just as the French Revolution turned dangerous. Born in 1747, the third son of Maria Theresa, he became Grand Duke of Tuscany at twenty and governed it for twenty-five years as the most thoroughly reformed state in Europe. What he did there is remarkable by any standard. He abolished the death penalty and torture in 1786 — the first state anywhere to do it, which Tuscany still commemorates — dismantled internal tariffs and guild monopolies, reduced the church's civil role, reformed taxation on physiocratic lines, and drafted a written constitution with an elected assembly that he never quite promulgated. He succeeded his brother Joseph II in 1790, inheriting a monarchy in crisis: Joseph's reforms had been imposed too fast and produced open revolt in the Austrian Netherlands and near-revolt in Hungary. Leopold reversed the ones that could not be enforced, conciliated the Hungarians by having himself crowned and restoring their constitution, settled the Netherlands, and ended the war with the Ottomans. His sister was Marie Antoinette, and his policy on France was to avoid war while appearing to threaten it. The Declaration of Pillnitz of August 1791, issued with Prussia, offered intervention on a condition — the agreement of all the other powers — that he knew Britain would never give. The French read it as a threat regardless. He died suddenly in March 1792, and France declared war six weeks later. His death at forty-four is one of the plausible counterfactuals of the period. He had the ability and the intention to keep Austria out of the French war, and his son Francis had neither, which is how a coalition war began that ran with interruptions for twenty-three years.
- Lived: 1747 CE – 1792 CE
- Nationality: Austrian
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state
