See F. Krones von Marchland, _Grundriss der Oesterreichischen Geschichte_ (1882); F. Wagner, _Historia Josephi Caesaris_ (1746); J. C. Herchenhahn, _Geschichte der Regierung Kaiser Josephs I._ (1786-1789); C. van Noorden, _Europäische Geschichte im 18. Jahrhundert_ (1870-1882). JOSEPH II. (1741-1790), Roman emperor, eldest son of the empress Maria Theresa and her husband Francis I., was born on the 13th of March 1741, in the first stress of the War of the Austrian Succession. Maria Theresa gave orders that he was only to be taught as if he were amusing himself; the result was that he acquired a habit of crude and superficial study. His real education was given him by the writings of Voltaire and the encyclopaedists, and by the example of Frederick the Great. His useful training was conferred by government officials, who were directed to instruct him in the mechanical details of the administration of the numerous states composing the Austrian dominions and the Empire. In 1761 he was made a member of the newly constituted council of state (_Staatsrath_) and began to draw up minutes, to which he gave the name of "reveries," for his mother to read. These papers contain the germs of his later policy, and of all the disasters which finally overtook him. He was a friend to religious toleration, anxious to reduce the power of the church, to relieve the peasantry of feudal burdens, and to remove restrictions on trade and on knowledge. So far he did not differ from Frederick, Catherine of Russia or his own brother and successor Leopold II., all enlightened rulers of the 18th-century stamp. Where Joseph differed from great contemporary rulers, and where he was very close akin to the Jacobins, was in the fanatical intensity of his belief in the power of the state when directed by reason, of his right to speak for the state uncontrolled by laws, and of the reasonableness of his own reasons. Also he had inherited from his mother all the belief of the house of Austria in its "august" quality, and its claim to acquire whatever it found desirable for its power or its profit. He was unable to understand that his philosophical plans for the moulding of mankind could meet with pardonable opposition. The overweening character of the man was obvious to Frederick, who, after their first interview in 1769, described him as ambitious, and as capable of setting the world on fire. The French minister Vergennes, who met Joseph when he was travelling incognito in 1777, judged him to be "ambitious and despotic."