Welcome to the history tricks where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.

Hello and welcome back to the show. Today is part two of our coverage of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria.

Obviously, you might want to go back and listen to part one,

but here's a quick recap because it's been a couple of weeks. We took Maria Theresa from her contentious

place in the order of succession, thanks to her papa, through the chaos that erupted in Europe

when she did come to power, both from internal family forces and the warring forces of Europe,

she was married to the man that she wanted to be married to,

and began having children almost every year.

When at last the wars were over, and she had succeeded. and began having children almost every year.

When at last the wars were over and she had secured most of her borders from the outside.

RIP Cilasia, a little salute for you.

She began to look inward to see how she could take this broken piece of pottery

called an empire and make it into some kind of vessel that held water.

When we left her she was about 46 years old.

She had been ruling for half of her life

and was kind of cracking her knuckles

and rolling up her sleeves for that next phase.

In part one, we talked about her beginning efforts to circumvent the administrations in the different districts

and bringing them on to Central Government Control with regard to taxes, which was sort of unpopular

among the authorities there,

but it gave her the power to plan her business.

Instead of doing that dance of negotiation

...