“ Her intellectual honesty was as perfect as Frederick’s own, and she was as incapable as he was of endeavouring to blind herself to the quality of her own acts. No ruler was ever more loyal to a conception of duty. Maria Theresa considered herself first and foremost as the heiress of the rights of the house of Austria. Therefore, when her inheritance was assailed at the beginning of her reign, she fought for it with every weapon an honest woman could employ, and for years she cherished the hope of recovering the lost province of Silesia, conquered by Frederick. ”

“ She accepted the peace of Berlin in 1742 in order to have a free hand against her Bavarian enemy, the emperor Charles VII. (q.v.) . When Frederick renewed the war she accepted the struggle cheerfully, because she hoped to recover her own. Down to the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 she went on fighting for Silesia or its equivalent. In the years following the peace she applied herself to finding allies in France and Russia who would help her to recover Silesia. Here, as later in the case of Poland, she subordinated her feelings to her duty to the state. ”

“ She was able to do so because the mass of her subjects found her hand much lighter than that of the privileged classes who composed these bodies. Education, trade, religious toleration, the emancipation of the agricultural population from feudal burdens—all had her approval up to a certain point. ”