Upon the death of Charles VI on 19 October 1740, Saxony, Prussia, Bavaria, and France all repudiated the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 which had paved the way for Charles' daughter Maria Theresa to succeed him. Frederick II of Prussia almost immediately invaded Austria in December 1740 and took the affluent Habsburg province of Silesia in the seven-year conflict known as the War of the Austrian Succession. This conflict proved to be primarily a land-based war for Austria, which led to naval affairs being neglected by the newly crowned Maria Theresa, who spent the entirety of the war preoccupied with securing her inheritance of the throne of Austria as opposed to rebuilding her father's former fleet in the Adriatic.