The Habsburg Empire continues to expand in the east at Turkish expense, but Charles VI recognizes that defense of Austria's position in Europe requires greater economic and political centralization to foster the development of a stronger economic base.

Because he lacks a male heir, however, the continued unity of the Habsburg Empire is jeopardized.

In 1713 Charles promulgates the Pragmatic Sanction to establish the legal basis for transmission of the Habsburg lands to his daughter Maria Theresa (r. 1740-80).

The price extracted by local diets and rival European powers for approval of the Pragmatic Sanction, however, is abandonment of many centralizing reforms.

Nonetheless, Charles's concessions does not prevent the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48) from breaking out on his death in 1740.

Prussia occupies Bohemia's Silesian duchies this same year.

Late in 1741, the elector-prince of Bavaria, Charles Albert, occupies Prague, the capital of Bohemia, with the aid of Saxon and French troops and is crowned king of Bohemia.

This paves the way for his election as Holy Roman Emperor in 1742, thus breaking the Habsburgs' three-hundred-year hold on the imperial crown.