Maria Theresa’s appeal to the Hungarian Diet was a plea for military support in 1741, when Frederick the Great’s invasion of Silesia put the Austrian Empress’s authority under immediate pressure. At the Diet of Pressburg, she sought Hungarian aid and received a promise of loyalty framed in the language of shared peril: “We will die for our ruler”.

Causes and Setting

The crisis began in 1740, when Frederick the Great of Prussia invaded Silesia, an Austrian province. Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria from 1740 to 1780, appealed to the Hungarian Diet the following year at Pressburg, now Bratislava. The request placed the security of her rule before an assembly whose response would demonstrate whether Hungary would stand with her against the invasion.

The Appeal and Its Response

Maria Theresa’s appeal was answered with the declaration, “We will die for our ruler”. The pledge expressed a willingness to risk life in her service; the account gives the response as a collective commitment by those at the Diet, not as a negotiation or a description of military action. Its force lies in the stark contrast between the danger posed by the invasion and the emphatic loyalty promised in reply.

Significance

The episode presents political allegiance as an answer to a direct appeal in a moment of external threat. Its remembered wording turns the Diet’s response into a concise emblem of support for Maria Theresa, while the circumstances—an invasion of Silesian territory and an appeal at Pressburg in 1741—locate that pledge in a specific crisis. The evidence records the appeal and the promise, but does not detail the subsequent military consequences.