Joseph II (13 March 1741 – 20 February 1790) was Holy Roman Emperor from 18 August 1765 and sole ruler of the Habsburg monarchy from 29 November 1780 until his death.

His formal education was provided through the writings of David Hume, Edward Gibbon, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the Encyclopédistes, and by the example of his contemporary (and sometimes rival) King Frederick II of Prussia.

[citation needed] His practical training was conferred by government officials, who were directed to instruct him in the mechanical details of the administration of the numerous states composing the Austrian dominions and the Holy Roman Empire.

(The bride's mother, Princess Louise Élisabeth, was the eldest daughter of Louis XV of France and his popular wife, Queen Marie Leczinska.

The loss of his beloved wife and their newborn child was devastating for Joseph, after which he felt keenly reluctant to remarry, though he dearly loved his daughter and remained a devoted father to Maria Theresa.

One thing the union did provide him was the improved possibility of laying claim to a portion of Bavaria, though this would ultimately lead to the War of the Bavarian Succession.

He was a friend to religious toleration, anxious to reduce the power of the church, to relieve the peasantry of feudal burdens, and to remove restrictions on trade and knowledge.

[8] He could and did place a great strain on her patience and temper, as in the case of the First Partition of Poland and the War of the Bavarian Succession of 1778–1779, but in the last resort the empress spoke the final word.

The death of Maria Theresa on 29 November 1780 left Joseph free to pursue his own policy, and he immediately directed his government on a new course, attempting to realize his ideal of enlightened despotism acting on a definite system for the good of all.

[8] He undertook the spread of education, the secularization of church lands, the reduction of the religious orders and the clergy, in general, to complete submission to the lay state, the issue of the Patent of Toleration (1781) providing limited guarantee of freedom of worship, and the promotion of unity by the compulsory use of the German language (replacing Latin or in some instances local languages)—everything which from the point of view of 18th-century philosophy, the Age of Enlightenment, appeared "reasonable".

After the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Joseph sought to help the family of his estranged sister Queen Marie Antoinette of France and her husband King Louis XVI.

These plans failed, however, either due to Marie Antoinette's refusal to leave her children behind in favor of a faster carriage or Louis XVI's reluctance to become a fugitive king.

As privy finance minister, Count Karl von Zinzendorf (1739–1813) introduced a uniform system of accounting for state revenues, expenditures, and debts of the territories of the Austrian crown.

Emancipation of the peasants from the Kingdom of Hungary promoted the growth of a new class of taxable landholders, but it did not abolish the deep-seated ills of feudalism and the exploitation of the landless squatters.

Probably the most unpopular of all his reforms was his attempted modernization of the highly traditional Catholic Church, which in medieval times had helped establish the Holy Roman Empire beginning with Charlemagne.

The Secularization Decree issued on 12 January 1782 banned several monastic orders not involved in teaching or healing and liquidated 140 monasteries (home to 1484 monks and 190 nuns).

While opposing Prussia and Turkey, Austria maintained its defensive alliance with France and was friendly to Russia though trying to remove the Danubian Principalities from Russian influence.

Mayer argues that Joseph was an excessively belligerent, expansionist leader, who sought to make the Habsburg monarchy the greatest of the European powers.

[20] Joseph's participation in the Ottoman war was reluctant, attributable not to his usual acquisitiveness, but rather to his close ties to Russia, which he saw as the necessary price to be paid for the security of his people.

The Balkan policy of both Maria Theresa and Joseph II reflected the Cameralism promoted by Prince Kaunitz, stressing consolidation of the borderlands by reorganization and expansion of the Military Frontier.

Joseph II, however, by creating a powerful imperial officialdom directed from Vienna, undercut the dominant position of the Milanese principate and the traditions of jurisdiction and administration.

Joseph refrained from staging a coronation, that later resulted in him earning the nickname "kalapos király" ("King with a hat") in Hungary, and Ferenc Széchényi pulled out of politics.

"[29] By 1790, rebellions had broken out in protest against Joseph's reforms in the Austrian Netherlands (the Brabant Revolution) and Hungary, and his other dominions were restive under the burdens of his war with the Ottomans.

[36] In 1888, Hungarian historian Henrik Marczali published a three-volume study of Joseph, the first important modern scholarly work on his reign, and the first to make systematic use of archival research.

[37] P. G. M. Dickson noted that Joseph II rode roughshod over age-old aristocratic privileges, liberties, and prejudices, thereby creating for himself many enemies, and they triumphed in the end.

With a goal of establishing a uniform legal framework to replace heterogeneous traditional structures, the reforms were guided at least implicitly by the principles of freedom and equality and were based on a conception of the state's central legislative authority.

Joseph's failures were attributed to his impatience and lack of tact, and his unnecessary military adventures, but despite all this Padover claimed the emperor was the greatest of all Enlightenment monarchs.

[42] French historian Jean Berenger concludes that despite his many setbacks, Joseph's reign "represented a decisive phase in the process of the modernization of the Austrian Monarchy".

Under Joseph the ditch was filled and carriage drives and walkways were built through the glacis, and the area planted with ornamental trees and provided with lanterns and benches.

[46] The full titulature of Joseph after he inherited the thrones of the Holy Roman Empire and the vast realms of Central and Eastern Europe from his mother Maria Theresa went as following: "His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty, Joseph II, by the Grace of God elected Holy Roman Emperor, forever Augustus, King of Germany, King of Hungary, of Bohemia, of Dalmatia, of Croatia, of Slavonia, of Galicia, of Lodomeria, of Italy, of Cumania, of Bulgaria, of Serbia, etc.