But to come back to my forbears: not only did they give away most of the Crown estates, but on top of this, they took on themselves the debts of the properties confiscated in times of rebellion, a burden from which the exchequer is still not yet free. The Emperor Leopold found not much left to give away, but owing, presumably, to the large-scale wars of his reign, such Crown estates as remained were pledged and farmed out, and there came no improvement under his successors, so that the yield of the Crown revenues when I came to the throne hardly amounted to 80,000 gulden; moreover, under my forbears the Ministers received big emoluments from the Emperors themselves and from the Provinces, because not only did they succeed in making flattering appeals to the well-known liberality, grace, and Austrian munificence, representing to each what fame his predecessors had acquired thereby, but also, since they usually possessed the ear of the Prince and of the clergy, got everything that they wanted. Their prestige became such that they were more feared and honored in their Provinces than the Prince himself. And when, in the end, the Crown’s resources began to dry up, these Ministers turned for remuneration to the Provinces, in which they achieved enormous authority. And when at last complaints reached the Princes, yet they, out of goodness of heart and patience, let the practices go on awhile unchecked.
And although the possibilities of big donations had in this way been largely exhausted, yet under Joseph and Charles the Ministers took advantage of every opportunity to enrich themselves or their kinsfolk through donations or concessions.
Under all these Emperors, the position and prestige of these Ministers was unshakable because each Minister in practice played the sovereign in the department assigned to him. Such Ministers almost always, in any Province, enjoyed a free hand in dealing with the Estates; the Minister in charge of a Province was usually the biggest landowner in it and thus enjoyed the greatest respect and authority among the Estates, and for that reason, many of them received large annual remunerations from the Estates. If then the sovereign wished to obtain from the Provinces the subsidies necessary for the maintenance of his armies and the assurance of the general welfare, he was forced to grant the Ministers, who alone were able to secure these for him, whatever grace and favor they required.
This chance now gave the Ministers such prestige that the Monarch himself thought it expedient in his own interests to support them, having learned by experience that the greater the prestige enjoyed by the men at the heads of the Provinces, the easier it was for them to get their demands accepted by the Provinces.
The merciful and gracious disposition of the House of Austria, which forbade the removal of anyone from his post unless he had proved himself totally unworthy of it, emboldened many of them actually to oppose the Monarch and his interests in the Provinces, and so the Ministers enjoyed such authority that they flattered themselves that they were to be regarded not as mere “Ministers,” as at other Courts, but as co-regents or at least as pares curiae.
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