Maria Theresa

(painting in the public domain, found on www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maria_Theresia_Familie.jpg

For the next twelve months, I hope to provide biographies of noble women of the 17th and 18th centuries, one per month. The idea is based on a present I designed for one of my sisters. The month of January is about the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, and her effective rallying of the Empire against the invader in the province of Silesia, Frederick II of Prussia.

(picture from A History of France by M. Guzot, public domain)

"She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms"--Proverbs 31:13

Her youth, beauty and dauntless spirit won all her subjects' hearts, and appealed with tenfold force to the chivalrous Hungarians--Fontenoy and Great Britain's Share in the War of the Austrian Succession by Francis Skrine (public domain)