The Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 was an edict issued by Emperor Charles VI to ensure that the Habsburg hereditary possessions, which included Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, and parts of Italy and the Netherlands, could be inherited by a daughter. This was important because Charles had no male heirs, and previous agreements favored his brother Joseph I’s daughters for succession. The Mutual Pact of Succession of 1703 had originally granted succession rights to the daughters of Joseph and Charles but favored Joseph’s daughters over Charles’s.
Charles amended this by issuing the Pragmatic Sanction, which prioritized his own future daughters over his nieces. This edict, however, did not apply to the office of Holy Roman Emperor, which remained an elective position. For a decade, Charles worked to secure recognition of the sanction from European powers and his own hereditary territories. Although most major European powers accepted it, some Habsburg territories, including Hungary and Bohemia, did not initially agree.
After Charles’s death in 1740, his daughter Maria Theresa inherited his lands, but her claims were contested by Prussia and Bavaria, sparking the War of the Austrian Succession. During the war, Austria lost Silesia to Prussia and other territories. The war ended with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, which recognized Maria Theresa’s rule over the Habsburg lands. However, the Holy Roman Emperor title was held by her husband, Francis I, after his election in 1745.