What if Maria Theresa married the heir to the French throne instead of someone from the House of Lorraine.
Thanks.Others have said all necessary about the profound improbability and unworkability of the scenario, I just wanted to contribute a small pedantry, which is that Maria Theresa wasn't the only daughter of Charles VI. Her younger sister Maria Anna lived to adulthood, married the younger brother of her brother-in-law Francis of Lorraine, and died from complications following the birth of a stillborn child. Oh, and it's Leszczyńska. Easy. Did I cheat and paste that in? You betcha.
Domenic said:Others have said all necessary about the profound improbability and unworkability of the scenario, I just wanted to contribute a small pedantry, which is that Maria Theresa wasn't the only daughter of Charles VI. Her younger sister Maria Anna lived to adulthood, married the younger brother of her brother-in-law Francis of Lorraine, and died from complications following the birth of a stillborn child. Oh, and it's Leszczyńska. Easy. Did I cheat and paste that in? You betcha.
kasumigenx said:The reason I was posting this is because Austro-Hungary broke apart while France didn't, Hungary did Magyarization in the Austro-Hungary and France did the same..
You pointed one of the reasons you stated are the reasons why Spain and France were hard to break because both speak romance languages.My bad on the fact Charles VI had another daughter. I didn't know that.
As for Leszczynska, I'll admit I'm beaten. I didn't wrote it as I couldn't rememeber it eaxctly and you have to admit it's not easy to wright (I know few names with "szcz" combination, but that might be due to a lack of polish names).
Sorry, but that comparison doesn't really make sense to me...
France has always been inhabited by one, and only one, kind of people who spoke the same language, which is French. Sure, you have the many regional dialects, but French is rather unified language compared to other : a Toulousain's maner of speach is not different from a Parisian, or Alsacian except for small different accent.
You may mention Occitan, but that's a languages derived from Latin, like French. There are several similarities (as there are with other Romance Languages) and a French can partially understands an Occitan if he pays attention.
Lastly, you tend to forgot the work of Francis I who had the François (an old form of French) become the National Language with the Ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts. Thus, you had language unity starting around the 1500s, at least for the elite. Local dialects were still used, I'll admit, but French was the administrative language and it later played heavily on how people spoke, leading to a National Language unity.
Another thing that played out is that the French Kings heavily contributed in making French the National Language of France : they inherited every fiefs that made France and the French Royal Dosmaine became the whole kingdom with Henri IV in 1589. And France never experience Personnal Union, except with the small Kingdom of Navarra.
One last thing is that Bretons, Gascons, Parisians, Alsatians or Marseillais all shared a lot of common points in their culture. Divergences were relatively few.
Austria-Hungary is a complete different story : it was born out of what the Hapsburgs had inherited. They were Archdukes of Austria, Kings of Bohemia, Hungary, Croatia-Slavonia and Galicia, etc...
Austria is completely Germanophone, even if it doesn't have the same dialect as Germany. Bohemia also had a Germanophone population, but the main language is Czech, a slavic language who has few similarities to the germanic languages such as German or English.
Croatia-Slavonia and Galicia were majorly inhabited by slavic people, (Slovenians, Croatians, Poles, Ukrainians) who spoke different slavic dialect, who (as I said with Czechs) have few similarities with German.
And what about Hungary? Hungarian isn't even an Indo-European language! Similarities to German or Slavic Languages are very VERY few.
Not to mention that you have very different cultures cohabiting in the same country. There never was National Unity in the Austro-Hungarian Unity : it was impossible to make. The whole Austro-Hungarian Empire was born out of several personnal Union caused by the Hapsburgs.
You can't compare what is uncomparable.
France was composed by people speaking one language with very close dialects while Austria-Hungary was composed by people speaking several different languages.
France had national unity, Austria-Hungary didn't.
The French people have few differences in culture. Austrians are completely different to Hungarians, Czechs or Poles.