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"In late eighteenth-century Vienna, a remarkable coterie of five aristocratic women, popularly known as the 'five princesses,' achieved social preeminence and acclaim as close associates of the reforming Habsburg Emperor Joseph II. They were Princess Maria Josepha Clary; Princess Maria Sidonia Kinsky; Princess Maria Leopoldine Liechtenstein; Countess, subsequently Princess, Maria Leopoldine Kaunitz; and Princess Maria Eleonore Liechtenstein. During the Viennese social season, members of the group made their way several times each week to the inner city palace of one of the 'Dames,' as members of the group called themselves. Through analysis of the correspondence of these women and of the published and unpublished commentaries of their contemporaries, this study scrutinizes the activities of this select group of women during the co-regency period (1765-1780) when Joseph shared responsibility with his mother, Maria Theresia, and during Joseph's decade as sole ruler (1780-1790) after Maria Theresia's death--years during which the women enjoyed their special position"--

I. Diplomatic Background -- II. Joseph II, Bavaria and France -- III. Death of the Elector Max Joseph and Austrian Occupation of Bavaria -- IV. Frederick II's Counter Measures -- V. European Reactions -- VI. Preparations for War -- VII. The Potato War -- VIII. The Peace of Teschen -- IX. The Diplomacy of Joseph as Emperor -- X. Plans for a Bavarian Exchange -- XI. Exchange Negotiations -- XII. Continuing Negotiations -- XIII. Failure of the Exchange -- XIV. Epilogue.

Abstract
When censorship was reformed during the era of Joseph II publishing and the book trade underwent a liberalisation. Enlightenment conceptions helped create the image of the ideal reader—someone who reads to acquire knowledge or to improve his spiritual life. During the reign of Joseph II reading spread to all social strata, but readers' preferences did not follow a reading ideal. This is demonstrated by significant urban-rural disparities. The publishing projects of the Protestant elite met with failure in the distribution phase and with the indifference country people displayed towards spiritual literature. This relates to several other social phenomena such as literacy and living conditions. Archival sources, which are relevant to lending library research, indicate the reading preferences of the urban classes. An uncontrollable reading mania targeted literature and short political and anticlerical writing, which triggered public discussions on the dangers of uncontrolled reading. The print medium helped shape a "reading public", whose reading activities occupied an area between mainstream cultural consumption and the dissemination of political news.

On October 18, 1783, a cortege of gala carriages escorted by liveried attendants, lackeys, and trumpeters drew up in the main courtyard of the Hofburg, the Imperial palace in Vienna. Received with military honors, it bore a deputation of the Lower Austrian Estates led by Landmarschall Count Johann Anton Pergen and that included a dozen representatives of the four orders (prelates, lords, knights, and townsmen) that composed the diet. The group ascended into the ceremonial apartments to be welcomed by the Imperial grand chamberlain, who announced its arrival. The emperor's appearance in the audience chamber prompted a short address by Pergen, to whom Joseph II then personally handed his government's annual tax demand. As his mother the Empress Maria Theresa had sometimes done on these occasions, he took advantage of Estates' attendance to raise a matter of special concern. He exhorted them "avec beaucoup de noblesse" to consider ways of revising the provincial cadastre that underlay the system of direct taxation. This prefigured one of the reign's celebrated initiatives that culminated in the great tax and peasant labor reform of 1789. Joseph's participation in a court function that dated back to the middle years of the previous reign and that was rooted in a much older ritual in which the Lower Austrian Estates had in corpore received the tax request out of the monarch's own hands largely conformed to later Theresan practice. But this would be the last time that he observed the rite. In the following year, his absence from Vienna prevented its occurrence, and in 1785 he did away with it altogether.