The Ladies’ Carousel in the Court Riding School on 2 January 1743

To mark the recapture of Prague, Maria Theresa held a Ladies Carousel in the Winter Riding School of the Hofburg on 2 January 1743. The carriages were driven by cavaliers, and the ladies had to stab with a sword at models of Turks’ heads impaled on poles. The participation of ladies seems to have been unusual. Popular at the Viennese court in the seventeenth century, this sport survived as an amusement among the common people in the Habsburg Monarchy until the nineteenth century.