ABSTRACT
Maria Theresa had agreed to the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle with the less reluctance because even she had become convinced that peace was necessary, and that she had more to gain from it than from prolonging the war. She saw that the road to the recovery of Silesia lay rather through allowing her resources to recuperate and through reforms in her army and her administration than through a war which offered little prospect of a satisfactory issue. For France the treaty was the step on a path which was to lead to humiliation and defeat, to loss of prestige and of position, which was to bring her appreciably nearer the Revolution. The key to the reforms of Maria Theresa is to be found in her wish to free the authority of the central government from the trammels which the continued existence of what had once been a feudal constitution imposed upon it.
