Charles VI's death on October 20, 1740 left his 23-year-old daughter Maria Theresa as heir to the vast Habsburg domains, despite the Pragmatic Sanction he had spent decades securing to guarantee her succession. Prussia, Bavaria, and France almost immediately challenged her claim, plunging Europe into eight years of war.
Charles VI had no surviving sons, and imperial law traditionally barred female succession to Habsburg lands, so he spent much of his reign persuading European powers to recognize the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713, a legal instrument guaranteeing his daughter's inheritance. When he died suddenly on October 20, 1740, apparently from a meal of poisonous mushrooms, Maria Theresa inherited Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, and scattered territories across Europe—but almost none of the guarantees he'd negotiated held.
Frederick the Great of Prussia invaded Silesia within weeks, calculating that a young, untested woman presiding over a treasury near bankruptcy and an army in disarray made for easy pickings. Maria Theresa would prove him wrong over decades of shrewd rule, but the immediate aftermath of her father's death plunged the continent into the War of the Austrian Succession. Legend holds she appeared before the Hungarian Diet with her infant son, appealing for loyalty in a moment of political theater that helped rally support when it mattered most.
Key people: Maria Theresa, Charles VI