After the conclusion of the Peace of Utrecht, Charles VI carried on the war against France single-handed for some months; but on 7 March 1714, Prince Eugene signed, in Charles's name, the Peace of Rastatt, under which Charles held his Italian possessions and the Spanish Netherlands, subject to agreement with Holland on a Barrier Treaty. The treaty with France was ratified for the Empire in the following year and the Barrier Treaty concluded at Antwerp on 15 March 1715. No agreement was yet reached with Spain.

Meanwhile, Charles had to regulate the position in his own dominions. His election to the imperial throne had at least been unanimous, even though the Perpetual Capitulation which he was required to sign left him with powers more limited than those of his father or brother. In the Austrian and Bohemian Lands, the Estates possessed neither the power nor, in most cases, the wish to query either his succession or the continuation of the now established system of government, which not only left the determination of central policy to the monarch's free discretion but also abandoned the main administrative functions to his Statthalters in the different lands. It was only in Hungary that the position was still unregulated. Joseph I had lived long enough to see the negotiation of the Peace of Szatmár in 1712, which put an end to the long and bitter fighting led by Ferenc Rákóczi, but the Peace was actually signed only after Joseph's death, and still awaited ratification. It was, moreover, rather an armistice than a true treaty of peace: it provided for the cessation of hostilities, and for a general amnesty, and it continued in general terms the rights and liberties of Hungary (including Croatia) and of Transylvania; but it reserved discussion of all specific points for a Diet to be convoked in 1712.