ABSTRACT
On 20 October 1740 Emperor Charles VI died suddenly. Both his reign and personality have usually been viewed in a very negative light; yet the absence of an authoritative biography reinforces the impression that Charles VI was often to act merely as a foil to the much grander reform age of his daughter Maria Theresia. Such was the legacy she inherited from her father that she herself bitterly complained about it in her ‘Political Testament’: chaotic state finances, exhausted provinces, an army utterly discouraged by recent defeats and a staff of advisers much too advanced in years to cope with the life-and-death struggle into which the Monarchy was now plunged by its enemies.
