When he only became Master of the Empire, with the death of his mother (1780), he undertook to unify his States by imposing everywhere the same language, German, and the same centralized administrative organization. He proclaimed the equality of all in front of the law, abolishes serfdom, supported the access of the farming community to the property and establishes a payable tax on land by all, noble understood.

However, some of these measurements caused deep resistances and the end of the reign difficult, was marked in particular by reverses in the war against the Turks (1788) and by the revolt of the Netherlands (1789).