... was the fifteenth and second youngest child of Empress Maria Theresa and the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I. She was born at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, in 1755.
Maria Theresa was the only female ruler of the Habsburg dominions, and the last of the House of Habsburg. She was the sovereign of Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Transylvania, Mantua, Milan, Lodomeria and Galicia, the Austrian Netherlands and Parma, from 1740 until her death in 1780. With her, the House of Habsburg died out and was replaced by the House of Habsburg–Lorraine. She was succeeded by her son Joseph, who was already co–sovereign of the Habsburg dominions. Her longtime rival Frederick II of Prussia, on hearing of her death, said that she had honoured her throne and her sex, and though he had fought against her in three wars, he never considered her his enemy.
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