Death
On May 28, 1767, after only two years of marriage, Maria Josepha died of smallpox as had her predecessor Isabella. Her husband did not visit her during her illness, although her mother-in-law, Maria Theresa, did. In doing so, Maria Theresa also caught the disease but survived.
Maria Josepha was buried in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna, but Joseph did not attend her burial.
The unloved young empress played a role in her husband's life once more after her death, when he laid claim to a large part of Bavaria in 1778–1779. He based his claim on, among other grounds, his marriage to his Bavarian second wife. This conflict eventually grew into the War of the Bavarian Succession. In the end, the Habsburg dynasty gained only the Innviertel.
Read more about this topic: Maria Josepha Of Bavaria
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but an immense altar on which every living thing must be sacrificed without end, without restraint, without respite until the consummation of the world, the extinction of evil, the death of death.”
—Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)
“Time turns the old days to derision,
Our loves into corpses or wives;
And marriage and death and division
Make barren our lives.”
—A.C. (Algernon Charles)
“and so this tree—
Oh, that such our death may be!—
Died in sleep, and felt no pain,
To live in happier form again:
From which, beneath Heaven’s fairest star,
The artist wrought this loved guitar;”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)