*Just as the chaos of the mid 1600s inspired Louis XIV to build an absolute monarchy in France, the same was true in the kingdoms of Central and Eastern Europe.

*The Holy Roman Emperor was, by the end of the Thirty Years War, an emperor over Germany in name only, but the Hapburgs were also rulers in their own right of Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, and other German and non-German territories.  After the defeat of the Turks in 1683, Austria began to expand into Southeastern Europe as well.  By the 1700s, the Archdukes of Austria ruled over about a dozen different nationalities.

*In 1740, Charles VI died.  He had no sons, but fortunately the Austrian Hapsburgs had planned ahead.  During the War of Spanish Succession, Charles V, with the agreement of his sons, had issued the Pragmatic Sanction.  Charles VI later modified it somewhat, but the major European monarchies had agreed to recognise it.  The Pragmatic Sanction allowed a woman to inherit the throne in Austria, and in 1740 Maria Theresa claimed the thrones of Austria and Hungary, and her armies soon won control of Bohemia.

*In fact, her armies were busy, because upon her ascension to the throne, Prussia, a German kingdom to the north that had grown powerful in the 1700s, challenged her right under Salic law to rule a country.  Soon Europe divided into two alliances:  Austria (with the UK and Hanover—George II personally led troops on the Continent, the Dutch Republic, Russia, and minor German and Italian states) versus Prussia (with France, Spain (who were already fighting the British in the War of Jenkins's Ear), Sweden, Bavaria, and other Italian and German states).  Most of the fighting was in Silesia, most of which ended up being taken over by Prussia, but there was fighting throughout Europe, on the high seas, and in India and the Americas (where Anglo-Americans called in King George's War and colonists from Maine captured Fortress Louisbourg and were incensed when it was returned after the war).  The war ended with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748.

*Overall, Prussia won the most land from the war (France, despite numerous victories, gained so little that her people felt cheated and angry), but Maria Theresa defended most of her lands well enough that she remained the ruler of Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and most other Hapsburg lands.  Furthermore, her husband, Francis, was elected Holy Roman Emperor—but Maria Theresa tended to run the Empire through him along with his other lands in Europe.

*Maria Theresa had had very little training in leadership by her father, who always hoped she would have a son, but she ended up being a powerful and wise ruler in most ways.  She strengthened the monarchy but used that strength to pass laws for the good of her people--this was the era of the Enlightenment, and she wanted to be an Enlightened Despot.  She changed laws requiring better treatment of serfs (who still existed in Eastern Europe), funded medical research (mandating autopsies for all hospital deaths in Graz, Austria's second largest city, a law still in effect today and giving Graz one of the world's greatest autopsy records for medical research) and strongly supported smallpox vaccinations (especially after several members of her family died of smallpox), outlawed torture, burning for witchcraft, and (temporarily) capital punishment (replaced with forced labour). She also had decency police to enforce morality—prostitutes were sent to the eastern parts of her empire to keep the big cities clean.

*Under Maria Theresa, the Austrian government issued a coin called the Thaler, and had such a reputation for purity that it was used all over the world—it was the official currency of Ethiopia, Muscat and Oman, is still used in parts of Africa today, and was so widely circulated in the American colonies that it may have contributed to the size and name of the U.S. Dollar.  From the year of her death onwards, the coin has always been dated 1780, although small changes in the design mark different mint years.  The coin is still issued today, and is sometimes known as the most famous coin in the world.

*Maria Theresa had had several arranged marriages in her youth—she was a widow at the age of five—but she and Francis truly loved one another and had 16 children (eleven of them daughters with the first name Maria, for the Virgin Mother).  Many died of smallpox, but of those who lived, many married into other royal families to such an extent that Maria Theresa was known as the mother-in-law of Europe.  Her most famous match was of Marie Antoinette to Louis XVI of France.

*When Maria Theresa died, and her son Joseph II became king (and Holy Roman Emperor).  He also ruled as an Enlightened Despot, although he was less religious than his mother.   He dissolved the monasteries, saying they were a waste of time and money, which led to criticism from Pope Pius VI.  He also abolished serfdom, requiring peasants to be paid in cash, which neither the nobilty nor the peasants liked, as the freed serfs had preferred a barter economy.  He undertook many policies at home and abroad that offended people, and then dropped them.  Overall he was a weaker and less confident monarch than his mother (although partly because she excluded him from decision-making growing up (partly because she didn't think he was mature enough)).

*Austria's primary rival was Prussia.  Prussia had begun as a state created by crusading German knights in the middle ages, who wiped out the Baltic Prussian people and set up a crusader kingdom.  During the Reformation the Teutonic Knights turned their lands into a Lutheran state, with the Grand Master of the Order as the first Duke and the other knights and noblemen, later referred to as Junkers.  The Dukes of Prussia later inherited Brandenburg within the Holy Roman Empire.  In return for supporting the Empire during the War of Spanish Succession, Emperor Lepold I allowed the Electors of Brandenburg-Prussia to have the title King in Prussia.

*The Hohenzollerns ruled over the Junkers who ruled over the people.  King Frederick I said the soul belongs to God; all else is mine.  He began to build a standing army with absolute loyalty—kedaversgehorsam, the order of a corpse.  In time it would be said that while other countries had armies, in Prussia the army had a country.  By 1740, Prussia would have Europe's 4th largest army (60,000 soldiers) despite being Europe's 12th most populous country (2.5 million).  Out of a 7 million thaler budget, 5 million thalers (71%) were spent on the military.

*In 1740, Frederick I's grandson, Frederick II (later Frederick the Great) became king.  His father had thought he was a sissy because he liked music and wore gloves in cold weather, but Frederick the Great would prove him wrong.  He would strengthen the army, encourage colonisation within Prussia--moving people from crowded places to empty areas in the east (which had been devastated by the bubonic plague in the 1600s), draining swamps, and encouraging the production of new crops like potatoes and turnips, allow religious toleration (even for Turks), and reform the laws to the extent that, at least on paper, he had created a constitutional monarchy.  However, in practise, he was also an enlightened despot, and one with ambitions.

*Frederick the Great would take his professional army to fight Austria in the War of Austrian Succession, eventually gaining most of Silesia.  Later, Austria would change ally with its traditional enemies, France and Russia (also traditional enemies), and Prussia would ally with the UK in response.  Fearing an Austrian attack (Maria Theresa had reformed her army, embarrassing her generals by knowing more than they did), Prussia attacked Austria in 1758, beginning the Seven Years' War (which merged with the existing French and Indian War in North America).  Some have argued that this war, beginning in the Ohio River Valley and Silesia, became the first world war, with fighting on every settled continent. In the end (the Peace of Paris in 1763), Frederick barely held on to Silesia, France lost most of its New World Colonies, and France and England were plunged deep into debt, which they would try to resolve through new taxes that would lead to Revolutions.  Later military leaders, especially Napoleon, would study Frederick the Great's strategies (Napoleon, viewing Frederick's tomb, supposedly said that if Frederick were still alive, he would not be there.  Frederick died in 1786 and was followed by his brother Frederick Wilhelm II.

*Russia was also ruled by Enlightened Despots in the 1700s.

*In the mid 1500s, Ivan the Great (or Ivan the Terrible) had unified all of Russia and taken the title Tsar (or Caesar).  In 1613 Mikhail Romanov was made Tsar of all the Russias.  In 1682, Peter I became Tsar at the age of ten.  He would come to be known as Peter the Great, both for his many accomplishments and for his tremendous height—he was 6 feet, 9 inches tall (over a foot higher than average).  His mother ruled for the first part of his reign, and he spent his time playing with toy soldiers, building boats, and spending time with western Europeans living in Moscow. 

*He became convinced that Russia needed to become more like Western Europe.  He even travelled through Europe to learn modern techniques of government, architecture, and shipbuilding.  He changed his official title from Tsar to Emperor.  He required nobles to give their children some education, and tried to break the power of the Boyars, the traditional nobility, as monarchs in Western Europe had done.  He even outlawed wearing beards in Russia, seeing them as old-fashioned.

*When Peter took control of Russia, he sought out a Window on the West—an ice-free seaport and a modern, western-looking city.  He eventually founded the new capital of St. Petersburg on the Baltic.  He also tried to fight the Ottoman Empire for access to the Black Sea.  He failed at that, but late, Catherine the Great would succeed.

*Peter died in 1724, with no living children to succeed him.  His second wife ruled, instead.  She in turn was followed by a series of rulers of no great distinction (both male and female), culminating in Peter III.  He was pro-Prussian and probably mentally retarded (and outlawed the import of sugar), all of which made him unpopular.  He was murdered by his guards in 1762 with the support of most of the nobility and his wife Catherine, who became empress after his death.

*Catherine II, or Catherine the Great, was a German princess.  She went on to be one of Europe's mightiest enlightened despots and expanded the Russian Empire to the Black Sea and into Alaska. She also expanded the Navy, even hiring American war hero John Paul Jones to help lead it.

*She also encouraged arts, science, and the theatre-all known as the Russian Enlightenment.

*However, she reduced the rights of the serfs, declaring that they were not subjects (or really even people), but merely 'souls,' who had religious duties and who had to be served by the church, but who did not have the other rights of Russian subjects.

*In response, some serfs fled to the Crimea, where, along with the Cossacks (highly militarised inhabitants of the steppes, whom the serfs frequently joined), they revolted in Pugachev's Rebellion (1773-1775), which ultimately failed and made relief for the serfs even less likely.

*Catherine also had numerous affairs, most famously with the general Potemkin, who led efforts to colonise Russia's frozen steppes.  Supposedly he made these look more successful than they were by hiring actors to portray happy serfs when the Empress came to survey his work—such fake towns came to be known as Potemkin Villages.

*Many Russians were suspicious of Catherine's reforms, but if they were too vocal they were exiled to Siberea.  Nonetheless, she left Russia a major world power when she died in 1796.

*Some rulers tried to be enlightened despots but were less successful.  Efforts were made in Sweden and Denmark, but their time as world leaders had passed.

*Poland-Lithuania created a government with an elected king, but with a parliament of nobles so powerful that any one lord could veto any act of government.  Eventually this made Poland so weak that between 1772 and 1795, Poland was partitioned on three occasions, losing all its land to Prussia, Russia, and Austria; in 1795, Poland ceased to exist.  So many wars were fought there that Poland was sometimes known as God's Playground.

*Overall, the 1700s would be characterised by the concept of the Balance of Power, in which major and minor nations strove to counterbalance each other militarily, switching alliances when it was seen to be advantages.  From the League of Augsburg onward, European politics would be dominated by efforts to maintain this balance (and be on the better side of it).  It also meant that almost any war would become a major war—the War of the League of Augsburg, the War of Spanish Succession, the War of Austrian Succession, the Seven Years War, and the War of the American Revolution (1775-1783, ending with another Peace of Paris) were all part of this balance, and most ended without major changes of borders (except sometimes in the New World).