Abstract
Only as he lay on his deathbed did the Emperor Charles VI ever abandon the hope of having a male heir. The first child born to his consort, the beautiful Elizabeth-Christina of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, was a son but it died in infancy. The second, Maria Theresa, was born on May 13, 1717 and was followed by two other daughters, Marianne and Amalia. The youngest, Amalia, died as a child. Thus, when Charles perished on October 20, 1740 of fever and what appears to have been ptomaine poisoning, he was survived by two children both of whom were members of what was then considered to be the wrong sex. Succeeding him was his twenty-three year old daughter Maria Theresa.1
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© 1970 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Brechka, F.T. (1970). Maria Theresa. In: Gerard Van Swieten and His World 1700–1772. Archives Internationales D’Histoire Des Idées/International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 36. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3223-0_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3223-0_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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