Joseph II

>>3073263
Good guy but didn't accomplish much of anything due to a combination of uncooperative populace (both nobility and peasants) and having kind of a haughty "my way or the highway" approach to pushing things through. It says a lot that the just as liberal Leopold reversed or cancelled a lot of his policies after succeeding him.

>>3073327
What were his policies? I know he tried to push through social reforms but why did so many people oppose them?

>>3073359
He was liberal. Peasants are ultra conservatives. He tried to help peasants with liberal policies and I believe tried to do agricultural reform as well. Peasants freaked out with NOT LIKE BACK IN THE DAY MUH TRADITION. He got incredibly angry and cynical in his reign because every attempt he did to make peoples lives better it was rejected because peasants were dumbfucks.

>>3073373
Was there anybody who was on this guy's side? It seems like literally no one liked him even though he only tried to make life better

>>3073428
Friedrich II, but then the dumbass made his play for Bavaria, 15 years after everyone figured out playing against Friedrich isn't fun for anyone.
Also his mom but she got sick of his shit almost sooner than anyone else.

>>3073428
Joseph II is kind of the Enlightenment version of a socialist or something. I don't mean that in an explicit manner but in a general "I know what's right for you and goddamn it you are going to listen to me" sense. Imagine if someone like Bernie won the presidency and then decided that all student debt was forgiven, everybody gets UHC, you now have a 30 hour work week, etc. but instead of introducing things gradually so people can get used to them he just tries to ram through everything at once and when people get upset or start asking questions like "where's the money gonna come from" he gets all huffy and pissy and acts above everyone.

That was sort of the problem with Joseph. I think if he tried to very gradually introduce reforms over a longer period of time then it could've had a better end result. But it didn't and completely poisoned the populace to the idea of enlightened absolutist style reforms.

Again his brother, Leopold II, was every bit the enlightened absolutist Joseph was having done work in Tuscany to engage in the rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents, bring humanitarian care to sanitariums and the mentally ill, abolish torture and capital punishment and was working on a constitution similar to the stuff coming out of America at the time before Joseph died and he became emperor. So it says a lot about how badly Joseph misread his situation and implemented/forced through his policies that his brother backtracked on pretty much all of them.

File: 1798 Austrian Jager.jpg (173KB, 667x959px) Image search: [Google]

173KB, 667x959px

>>3073359
There were many religious reforms that made the Austrian Empire one of the more open to jewish and other religious minorities. The minitary saw immense reforms from things like the coat tails of officers not being allowed to be too long (to visually equalize the ranks), the crackdown on officer phisical discipline on their men, the attempt to make the armed forces a more modern force and many more. Unfortunately >>3073327 >>3073373 these things happened
>>3073428
a possibility would have been Paul of Russia who would have been a progressive leader as well but his conservative mother killed him.

>>3073263
He financed Mozart, this is all that matters.