Joseph I Becomes Holy Roman Emperor

May 5, 1705

Leopold I died after forty-seven years on the throne; his son Joseph, baroque in taste and reformist in temper, inherited a war and an empire. He would rule only six years before smallpox took him, throwing the Succession War into a crisis that would eventually end it. His sudden death meant that the allied candidate for Spain, his brother Charles, now stood to inherit Austria as well.