Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor (1741 to 1790), was the son and successor of Maria Theresa (1717 to 1780) and Francis Stephen, aka Francis I (1708 to 1765), of the imperial house of the Habsburgs. He governed as co-ruler with his mother from 1765 to 1780 and was sole ruler of the Habsburg Empire from 1780 to 1790. A remarkable emperor, Joseph II has gone down in the annals of history as an Enlightenment reformer comparable to the monarchs Catherine II of Russia (reign 1762 to 1796) and Frederick II of Prussia (reign 1740 to 1786), both of whom received the epithet "Great."

Joseph II was a proponent of a form of government known as Enlightened Absolutism or Enlightened Despotism that was informed by the ideas of the philosophical movement called the Enlightenment sweeping through Europe in the 18th century. Despite being a despot, Joseph II was also interested in secularizing, liberalizing, and modernizing the Habsburg Empire and was interested in promoting the arts and sciences. Indeed, he was a great patron of such composers as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 to 1791).

Born in 1741 to Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor (reign 1745 to 1765), Joseph II was the eldest son of 16 children. Although his tutoring developed under the careful structuring and guidance of his mother, he developed his independent views of various issues early on. He married the Bourbon King Louis XV of France's granddaughter Isabella of Parma in 1760, and the marriage solidified the alliance between the Habsburgs and the Bourbons. The marriage was a pleasant but short one, as Isabella died in 1763.

Although reluctant to remarry, Joseph II took another wife in 1765, his second cousin, the daughter of Charles VII, Holy Roman Emperor (reign 1742 to 1745), the Bavarian princess Maria Josepha. The marriage was an extremely unhappy one, and Maria Josepha died in 1767 from smallpox. After the death of his second wife, he never remarried but indulged in affairs with Viennese prostitutes. Joseph II had two daughters from his first marriage, the Archduchesses Maria Theresa and Maria Christina, the latter of whom died shortly after birth, and he refused to sire an heir with his second wife. Joseph II's personal life made him impatient with his mother, as he did not have his own family for very long to distract him.

He also had a complex relationship with his youngest sister Marie Antoinette, but he was frank with both her and her husband. Following her marriage to Louis XVI of France (reign 1774 to 1792), which remained unconsummated for seven years, Joseph II is known to have conducted an intervention in 1777. He spoke to Louis XVI on the matter leading to the marriage's consummation and the birth of the couple's first child in 1778. Joseph also criticized Marie Antoinette's lifestyle, especially her constant gambling and heavy socializing and warned her that she would alienate the French public and damage the monarchy.

The 18th century was an important period of Habsburg rulership because it introduced several key changes in governance that would give rise to the Enlightened absolutist Habsburg state. Lacking male heirs, Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor (reign 1711 to 1740) is known to have gone to extraordinary lengths to enable his daughter Maria Theresa to inherit the Habsburg territories with his Pragmatic Sanction of 1713. Maria Theresa still faced problems in her succession and considerable opposition from other European sovereigns. Known as the War of Austrian Succession, her appearance on the European stage and her right to inherit the throne caused the major European powers to enter conflict between 1740 and 1748. The empress was also expected to cede rule to her husband Francis Stephen, and then to her son Joseph II. She did not cede control however, retained much authority and decision-making independent of them, even though she co-ruled with her husband and later her son.

What vexed Maria Theresa the most during her reign was not her husband or her various advisors, but Joseph II. Her husband's interference in matters of her governance was not considerable, as he was an obtuse statesman and an incompetent military man, but Joseph II was unlike Francis I. Not only was Joseph II keenly intelligent and perceptive, but he was also an advocate of daring and innovative ideas. The problem was that he was overbearing, persistent, impatient, and resorted to mocking the people who did not agree with him. He was also very eager to carry out policies quickly and thoroughly compared with his mother, who desired moderation and compromise.

After her husband's death in 1765, the empress declared Joseph II co-regent. But she retained the final say in all areas except in the direction of German affairs and military matters. Because the empress did not yield control aside from these very defined areas, there was considerable friction between the empress and Joseph II throughout their co-regency. The result was that she yielded to his demands in minor matters such as court lifestyle and protocol, but not on major policies. To vent his frustration, Joseph devoted himself to travelling to every corner of the realm under the assumed name "Count Falkenstein" to discover how the common people lived. He exhibited considerable sympathy for his subjects and the peasantry. Although Maria Theresa was happy about Joseph II's absences from Vienna, he returned armed with enhanced influence and knowledge to challenge her. Their frequent clashes led the empress to contemplate abdication and her son to contemplate exile.

Like with domestic policy, he was on a warpath with his mother about foreign policy as well. While he was also primarily driven by the fear of Frederick the Great and the prospect of a Prusso-Turkish attack on the Habsburg monarchy, unlike his mother, his agenda included territorial expansion. So, Joseph II pursued quite an aggressive foreign policy.

Since the sieges of Vienna in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottoman Turks were perceived as a threat to the monarchy, but the Ottoman Empire's declining military power rendered them less of a threat than they had previously been in Habsburg history. Maria Theresa also secured the monarchy's western and southern frontiers by strengthening an alliance with France. The wedding of her youngest daughter Marie Antoinette to the future Bourbon king Louis XVI in 1770 was pivotal in this regard. Therefore, most of the co-rulership was focused on the north and the east.

By 1767, Russia's progressive interference in Poland's affairs led to civil war there, and one year later, the Ottoman Empire declared war on Poland. Maria Theresa concluded an agreement with the Ottomans in 1771 by which she sought to limit Russia's territorial gains. Russia ultimately accepted the Prussian proposal to satisfy Russian territorial expectations at the expense of Poland. To counterbalance Russia's gains there, Austria and Prussia would also be compensated with territory. In 1772, during the First Partition of Poland, the Habsburg monarchy acquired Polish Galicia, with a population of 2.6 million people. Furthermore, Joseph also enforced the monarchy's claim to compensation from the Ottomans and annexed Bukovina in 1775, a strategic territory that enhanced communication between Hungary and Galicia.

Thus, along with the empress, Joseph II managed to secure a power balance with the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire, but he also wanted to strengthen Habsburg power in relation to Prussia within Germany. He held Bavaria within his grasp to achieve this. However, he made a series of military blunders, and Maria Theresa eager to end the ensuing War of the Bavarian Succession, concluded peace terms without even consulting her son. In the Treaty of Teschen, concluded on 13 May 1779, she relinquished all of Bavaria. Joseph II was greatly humiliated by his mother's actions, but with her death 18 months afterwards, he became the sole ruler of the Habsburg Empire that encompassed the core Austrian dominions of Upper and Lower Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, and Tyrol; the kingdoms of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Hungary; what is called Austrian Netherlands that comprised present-day Belgium and Luxembourg; the Italian duchies of Milan and Mantua; and Galicia and Bukovina.

In the ten years of his reign, Joseph II put his insignia on a plethora of domestic policies and initiatives. He produced nearly 700 edicts per year. It was clearly a sign of the release of the pent-up frustration Joseph II had felt during the years of his co-regency. Whatever the motivation, his policies dealt with the issues that Maria Theresa left unresolved. Most of the policies reflected his Enlightenment ideals and embraced the utilitarian concept that the primary objective of the government was to secure the happiness and welfare of the greatest number of people. His reforms included:

As soon as he gained sole rulership, Joseph wasted no time to ease restrictions on freedom of expression and curtailed literary censorship. He broadened educational and vocational opportunities for Jews and eliminated several other humiliating restrictions on them. Specifically, Jews were no longer compelled to wear distinctive dress, stay indoors during Sunday mornings, or pay a Jewish tax. Similarly, the Edict of Toleration granted private worship for his Protestant and Orthodox subjects, and they were also allowed to build churches and schools, buy and sell land, attend university, join guilds, and enter civil service. Joseph granted more literary and religious freedoms to his subjects than anywhere else in Europe.

The most important of his peasant legislation abolished serfdom in the Bohemian lands and awarded peasants the rights to leave the manor, buy and sell land, marry, and learn a new trade. Joseph thus took a decisive step towards establishing economic freedom and security for the monarchy's peasants.

Although he was firm in his top-down approach to reforming the Empire, unlike France, he was determined that just as the state had the responsibility to help its people, the people had a reciprocal obligation towards the state. His unprecedented aggressiveness and thoroughness pushed the limits of what had characterized Habsburg rule thus far, that is, consensus between the ruling dynasty and the rest of the elites. Therefore, his policies, having received the epithet Josephinism, not unsurprisingly ruffled a lot of feathers among the nobility.

Many local populations saw him as a threat to their traditions and autonomy. His religious freedom edicts led Christians of all persuasions to deride Joseph as being the "emperor of the Jews." His attempts to enforce German made him unpopular among the Hungarian nobility. The discontent did often erupt in the form of revolts and demonstrations, and Joseph II. in several instances. did withdraw or amend many of his reforms. Despite such glitches, Josephinism was an inevitable step towards the state-building process, and the modernization brought about by Joseph II continued with his successors during the long 19th century.

In 1787, the Ottoman Empire declared war on the Habsburg ally of Russia. Although the Russian alliance was important to Joseph II, he was not interested in acquiring any lands that would come with getting involved in the war. Yet, the attack compelled him to go to war in the Balkans. Despite a formidable resistance, the Ottomans invaded the Banat (a region around the modern Romanian-Serbian border), and Joseph II assumed command of the army. He hoped he would win the epithet "the Great" by entering the war, but the military adventure only weakened his health, and he was forced to return to Vienna. The Habsburg army remained tied down in the Balkans; moreover, Joseph II had to rely on Hungary for troops.

During this time, Frederick William II of Prussia (reign 1786 to 1797) concluded an offensive alliance with the Ottomans and stirred up political unrest in Hungary. The Hungarian nobles soon called for dethroning the Habsburgs. At the same time, trouble was brewing in the Austrian Netherlands. When Joseph read these reports, he simply could not comprehend why his subjects were against him. He thought all the reforms he had initiated had been for the subjects' own good and simply could not understand that people might prefer traditional ways over more rational approaches. To limit criticism, he imposed censorship and gave considerable latitude to a secret police chief named Count Pergen (1725 to 1814), who spied on subjects and fed Joseph reports on public mood. Ultimately, the price Joseph paid in the end for the war with the Ottomans was the revocation of all his reforms except for the ones that granted religious tolerance and abolished serfdom.

In 1789, the French Revolution broke out. Alongside derision for her terrible gambling and socializing habits, rumours about Marie Antoinette funnelling state funds to Vienna to support her brother Joseph's foreign campaigns had fuelled yet more public hatred towards her. He could do little to help her in the midst of the crisis and did not live to see the Revolution take on its most radical phase that would end in the trial and execution of Marie Antoinette.

By January 1790, Joseph II's health was failing him rapidly. After several years of vomiting blood, Joseph II died of tuberculosis in February 1790. He had composed an epitaph for his coffin, which stated, "Here lies Joseph, who failed in everything he undertook." Obviously, he was very frustrated that many of his ambitious policies had to be revoked towards the end. However, Joseph II set the precedent for a benevolent government that acts for the welfare of the people and developed policies that aimed to increase human freedom and well-being.

Although he had adopted a paternalistic top-down approach of despotic governance with the bureaucracy imposing the ruler's will on the population, it is a fair assessment to say that, to a substantial extent, the policies were intended for the subjects' own good. Thus, Joseph II's legacy was instrumental in shaping modern Central Europe, as he lived on in the form of the Austrian Enlightenment that further thrived under his successor, his shrewd and sensible brother Leopold II (1747 to 1792).