War of Bavarian Succession
Encyclopedia
The War of the Bavarian Succession (July 1778 – May 1779) was fought between the Habsburg Monarchy
and a Saxon
–Prussia
n alliance to prevent the Habsburg acquisition of the Duchy of Bavaria
. The war had no battles beyond a few minor skirmishes, but still resulted in significant casualties, as several thousand soldiers died from disease and starvation. Reflecting the soldiers' frustrating quest for food and forage, the conflict was also called the Kartoffelkrieg (Potato War) in Prussia
and Saxony
; in Habsburg Austria
, it was sometimes called the Zwetschgenrummel (Plum Fuss).
On 30 December 1777, Maximilian Joseph, the last of the junior line of Wittelsbach
, died of smallpox
, leaving no children. Charles IV Theodore
, a scion of a senior branch of the House of Wittelsbach, held the closest claim of kinship, but he, too, had no legitimate children to succeed him. His cousin, Charles II August, Duke of Zweibrücken
, therefore had a legitimate legal claim as Charles Theodore's heir presumptive
. Across Bavaria's southern border, Joseph, Archduke of Austria
, coveted the Bavarian territory and had married Max Joseph's sister in 1765 to strengthen any claim he could extend. His agreement with the heir, Charles Theodore, to partition the territory did not take into account any claims of the heir presumptive, Charles August.
The acquisition of territory in the German-speaking states was an essential part of Joseph's policy to expand his family's influence in Central Europe. For Frederick II of Prussia
, Joseph's claim threatened the Hohenzollern ascendancy in German politics, but he questioned whether or not he should preserve the status quo through war or through diplomacy. Empress Maria Theresa, who co-ruled with Joseph, considered any conflict over the Bavarian electorate not worth the cost. Neither Maria Theresa nor Frederick saw any point in pursuing hostilities. Joseph would not drop his claim, despite his mother's insistence. Frederick Augustus I of Saxony
wanted to preserve the territorial integrity of the Duchy for his brother-in-law, Charles August, and had no interest in seeing the Habsburgs acquire additional territory on his southern and western borders. France became involved to maintain the balance of power
. Finally, Catherine II of Russia
's threat to intervene on the side of Prussia with 50,000 Russian troops forced Joseph to reconsider his position. With Catherine's assistance, he and Frederick negotiated a solution to the problem of the Bavarian succession with the Treaty of Teschen
, signed on 13 May 1779.
For some historians, the War of the Bavarian Succession was the last of the old-style Cabinet Wars (Kabinettskriege
) of the Ancien Régime in which troops maneuvered while diplomats traveled between capitals to resolve their monarchs' complaints. The subsequent French Revolutionary Wars
and Napoleonic Wars
differed in scope, strategy, organization and tactics. Historians of 19th- and 20th-century Germany have also found the roots of German dualism
in this brief war.
, established a line of succession that passed over the children of his sisters and the female children of his brother and settled the Habsburg territories on his own sons, if he had any, or his daughters. To protect the Habsburg inheritance, he coerced, cajoled, and persuaded the crowned heads of Europe to accept the Pragmatic Sanction
. In this agreement, they acknowledged any of his legitimate daughters as the rightful Queen of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, and Archduchess of Austria, a break from the tradition of male succession
.
Holy Roman Emperor
s had been elected from the House of Habsburg for most of the previous three centuries. Charles VI arranged a marriage of his eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, to Francis of Lorraine
. Francis relinquished the Duchy of Lorraine near France in exchange for the Grand Duchy of Tuscany
near Austria, to make himself a more appealing candidate for eventual election as Holy Roman Emperor
. On paper, many heads of state and, most importantly, the rulers of the German states of the Holy Roman Empire
, accepted the Pragmatic Sanction and the idea of Francis as the next Holy Roman Emperor. Two key exceptions, the Duchy of Bavaria
and Saxony
, held important electoral votes and could impede or even block Francis's election. When Charles died in 1740, his daughter, Maria Theresa, had to fight for her family's entitlements in Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, and her husband faced competition in his election as the Holy Roman Emperor.
Charles, Prince Elector and Duke of Bavaria
, claimed the German territories of the Habsburg dynasty as a son-in-law of Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor
, and, furthermore, presented himself as Charles VI's legitimate Imperial successor. Charles of Bavaria's claim to the crown
reflected the genealogical raison d'état. If women were going to inherit, he claimed, then he should be first in line: his wife, Maria Amalia
, was the daughter of Joseph I
. Both Charles VI and his predecessor Joseph I had died without sons. Charles of Bavaria suggested that the legitimate succession pass to Joseph's female children, rather than to the daughters of the younger brother, Charles VI. For different reasons, Prussia, France, Spain and the Polish-Saxon monarchy supported Charles of Bavaria's claim to the Habsburg territory and the Imperial title and reneged on the Pragmatic Sanction.
Charles of Bavaria needed military assistance to take the Imperial title by force and he secured this with the treaty of Nymphenburg
(July 1741). During the subsequent War of the Austrian Succession
, he successfully captured Prague
, where he was crowned King of Bohemia. He invaded Upper Austria
, planning to capture Vienna
, but diplomatic exigencies complicated his plans. His French allies redirected their troops into Bohemia
, where Frederick II of Prussia
, himself newly king, had taken advantage of the chaos in Austria and Bavaria to annex Silesia.
Charles' military options disappeared with the French. Adopting a new plan, he subverted the Imperial election. He sold the County of Glatz to Frederick of Prussia for a reduced price in exchange for Frederick's electoral vote. Charles' brother, Klemens August of Bavaria, archbishop and prince-elector
of the Electorate of Cologne, voted for him in the Imperial election and personally crowned him on 12 February 1742 in the traditional ceremony in Frankfurt am Main. The next day, Charles' Bavarian capital city of Munich
capitulated to the Austrians to avoid being plundered by Maria Theresa's troops. In the following weeks, her army overran most of Charles' territories, occupied Bavaria
, and barred him from his ancestral lands and from Bohemia.
Charles VII spent most of his three-year reign as Emperor residing in Frankfurt while Maria Theresa battled Prussia for her patrimony in Bohemia and Hungary. Frederick could not secure Bohemia for Charles, but he did manage to push the Austrians out of Bavaria. For the last three months of his short reign, the gout-ridden
Charles lived in Munich, where he died in January 1745. His son, Maximilian III Joseph—known as Max Joseph—inherited his father's Electoral dignities, but not his father's Imperial ambition. With the Peace of Füssen (22 April 1745), Max Joseph promised to vote for Francis of Lorraine, Maria Theresa's husband, in the pending Imperial election. He also acknowledged the Pragmatic Sanction. In return, he obtained the restitution of his family's Electoral position and territories. For his subjects, his negotiations ended five years of warfare and brought a generation of peace and relative prosperity that began with his father's death in 1745 and ended with his own in 1777.
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As the Duke of Bavaria, Max Joseph was the prince of one of the largest states in the German-speaking portion of the Holy Roman Empire
. As a Prince-elector
, he stood in the highest rank of the Empire, with broad legal, economic, and juridical rights. As an Elector, he was one of the men who selected the Holy Roman Emperor from a group of candidates. He was the son of one Holy Roman Emperor (Charles VII), and the grandson of another (Joseph I). Despite the Peace of Füssen, any of his children could lay a claim to the Imperial title. When he died of smallpox
on 30 December 1777, this genealogical claim became moot: he left no children to succeed him and several ambitious men prepared to carve his patrimony into pieces.
branch of the Wittelsbach family inherited the Duchy
of Bavaria. In this line, the 55-year-old Charles IV Theodore
, the Duke of Berg-Jülich
, held the first claim. Unfortunately for Charles Theodore, he was already the Elector Palatine. By the terms of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia
, he had to cede the Palatine Electorate to his own heir before he could claim the Bavarian Electorate. He was not eager to do so, even though Bavaria was larger and more important. He preferred living in the Palatinate, with its salubrious climate and compatible social scene. He patronized the arts, and had developed in Mannheim
, his capital city, an array of theaters and museums at tremendous cost to his subjects. He hosted Voltaire
at one of his many palaces. During the visit, he had enticed Voltaire's secretary, the Florentine
noble, Cosimo Alessandro Collini (1727–1806), into his own employment, considered a coup in some of the Enlightenment circles. Thomas Carlyle referred to Charles Theodore as a "poor idle creature, of purely egoistical, ornamental, dilettante nature; sunk in theatricals, [and] bastard children". The French foreign minister, Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes
, who knew him, described Charles Theodore's foibles more forcefully:
The Electress had provided him with a son, who had immediately died, but Charles Theodore's particular penchant for secret liaisons, most of whom were French actresses that he had raised to the status of countess, had produced several natural
children. By the time of Max Joseph's death, he had legitimated seven of the males of his various alliances, and was considering the legitimation of two more. With this host of male offspring, although Charles Theodore certainly wished to acquire more territory, he needed territory that he could bequeath through his testament
, rather than territory encumbered by a legal entailment
that could only pass to a legitimate child.
Joseph
, Archduke of Austria, King of the Romans, and co-ruler with his mother, Empress Maria Theresa, coveted Bavaria. The lessons his mother had learned in the War of the Austrian Succession
had not been lost on him. The House of Habsburg-Lorraine sought a wider sphere of influence in the German-speaking parts of the Holy Roman Empire. Without this, the family could not count on the election of their chosen male candidate as Emperor, nor could the family count on an uncontested succession in the Habsburg territories of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia. For most of Joseph's adult life, he sought to strengthen his family's influence in German-speaking lands. For him, this meant the acquisition of German lands, not lands in the eastern region of the Habsburg empire, even such strategic territories as Bukovina
.
Joseph married Max Joseph's sister, Maria Josepha, in 1765, hoping he could claim the Bavarian Electorate for his offspring. After two years of unhappy marriage, Maria Josepha died without issue. When Max Joseph died ten years later, Joseph could only present a weak legal claim to Lower Bavaria
through a dubious and ancient grant made by the Emperor Sigismund to the House of Habsburg in 1425. Knowing its poor legal grounds, Joseph negotiated a secret agreement with Charles Theodore shortly after Max Joseph's death. In this agreement (3 January 1778), Charles Theodore ceded Lower Bavaria to Austria in exchange for uncontested succession to the remainder of the duchy. Charles Theodore also hoped to acquire from Joseph some unencumbered parts of the Austrian Netherlands and parts of Anterior Austria that he could bequeath to his bastards, but this was not written into the agreement and Joseph was not a particularly generous man. Furthermore, the agreement entirely ignored the interests of Charles Theodore's own heir presumptive, Charles II August
, of the House of Palatinate-Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld
. Charles August was the presumptive heir of Charles Theodore's domains and titles. He had a clear and direct interest in the disposition of the Bavarian duchy, especially in its territorial integrity.
. Others assert it was not Max Joseph's widow but Max Joseph's sister, who was also Charles August's mother-in-law. This widow, Maria Antonia, was the mother of the reigning Elector of Saxony. Ernest Henderson even maintained she was the "only manly one among the many Wittelsbach parties" involved in the issue.
Charles August was no great admirer of Joseph's. As a younger man, he had sought the hand of Joseph's sister, Archduchess Maria Amalia. She had been quite content to take him, but Joseph and their mother insisted she marry instead the better connected Duke of Parma
. After this disappointment, Charles August married Maria Amalia of Saxony
in 1774; she was the daughter of the Elector Christian (d. 1765) and his wife Maria Antonia, Max Joseph's sister. In 1769, the reigning Elector, Frederick Augustus I of Saxony
, had married Charles August's sister. Charles August, sometimes called duc de Deux-Ponts (a French translation of Zweibrücken, or two bridges), was a French client
and could theoretically draw on French support for his claim. However, he had especially good relations with the Saxon Electors: both his mother- and brother-in-law wanted to ensure that Maria Amalia's husband received his rightful inheritance.
, First Minister (or prime minister) for Frederick the Great
, believed that any Austrian acquisition in Bavaria
would shift the balance of power in the Holy Roman Empire, diminishing Prussia's influence. Prussia's recent gains had been hard-won. Thirty years earlier, Frederick had engaged in protracted wars
in Silesia
and Bohemia
, resulting in Prussia's annexation of most of Silesia. In the Silesian wars and the Seven Years War, he had earned a new, if grudging, respect for his kingdom's military and diplomatic prowess from the European power-states of France, Russia, Britain and Austria. To protect Prussia's status and territory, Finck and Frederick constructed an alliance with the Electorate of Saxony
, ostensibly to defend the rights of Charles II August, Duke of Zweibrücken, Charles Theodore's heir presumptive.
Although equally interested in maintaining its influence among the German states, France had a double problem. As a supporter of the rebellious British colonies in North America, it was in France's interest to avoid a continental engagement. France could do more damage to the British in North America than in Europe. The diplomatic realignment in 1756 had overthrown 200 years of French foreign policy that united the French Crown and the French populace against the House of Habsburg, arguably bringing to France massive territorial gains in repeated wars with Habsburg Austria and Habsburg Spain. A reversal of this policy in 1756 tied French foreign policy in Europe to Vienna. Despite this restructuring, there existed in the French Court at Versailles, and in France generally, a strong anti-Austrian sentiment. The diplomatic revolution
of 1756, sealed in 1770 with the personal union (the diplomatic term for marriage) of Louis
, the Dauphin of Viennois, and the Austrian Archduchess Marie Antoinette
, was considered both a political and matrimonial mésalliance
in the eyes of many Frenchmen. It flew in the face of 200 years of French foreign policy, in which the central axiom "had been hostility to the House of Habsburg." The French foreign minister, Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes
, maintained deep-seated hostility to the Austrians that pre-dated the alliance of 1756. He had not approved of the shift of France's traditional bonds, and considered the Austrians untrustworthy. He managed to extricate France from immediate military obligations to Austria by 1778.
proclaimed Charles Theodore as Duke. Dragoons rode through the streets of Munich, some banging drums and some blowing trumpets, and others shouting, "Long Live our Elector Charles Theodore." According to the 3 January agreement between Joseph and Charles Theodore, 15,000 Austrian troops occupied Mindelheim
, ultimately more territory than had been granted to Joseph. Charles Theodore, who had dreamed of rebuilding the Burgundian empire
, realized that Joseph was not seriously planning to exchange a portion of Bavaria, or even all of it, for the entirety of the Austrian Netherlands. At best, he might acquire a few portions of it, perhaps Hainaut
or Guelders
, Luxembourg
, Limburg
, or various dispersed possessions in Anterior Austria, most of which lay in southwestern Germany.
While Charles Theodore's dream of a Burgundian renaissance receded, Joseph continued on his course to annex part of Bavaria. The widow—Max Joseph's widow or the mother-in-law or both—petitioned Prussia on behalf of Charles II August. Frederick's envoys to the heir presumptive convinced the slighted prince to lodge protests with the Reichstag
(Imperial Diet) in Regensburg. Joseph's troops remained in portions of Bavaria, even establishing an Austrian administration at Straubing
, precipitating a diplomatic crisis. Austrian occupation of Bavaria was unacceptable to Charles August's champion, Frederick. Prussians troops mobilized near Prussia's border with Bohemia, reminiscent of the invasion in 1740, which was unacceptable to Joseph. Meanwhile, the French wriggled out of their diplomatic obligations to Austria, telling Joseph that there would be no military support from Paris for a war against Prussia. Britain, Prussia's strongest ally, was already mired in a war in North America. Prussia's other ally, Saxony, aligned by two marriages with Charles August, was strategically prepared for war against Austria and ready to contribute 20,000 troops. Watching from Moscow, Catherine II of Russia was willing to mop up the spoils of war for her own empire, but did not want to get involved in another costly European conflict.
For four months, negotiators shuttled between Vienna and Berlin, Dresden and Regensburg, and Zweibrücken Munich and Mannheim. By early spring 1778, Austria and Prussia faced each other with armies several times the size of their forces during the Seven Years War and their confrontation had the potential to explode into another European-wide war.
partition of Bavaria, Joseph and his foreign minister, Anton, Count von Kaunitz, scoured the Habsburg realm for troops and concentrated 600 guns and an 180,000–190,000-man Austrian army in Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia. This army amounted to most of Austria's 200,000 effectives, leaving much of the Habsburg border regions with the Ottoman Empire
under-guarded. On 6 April 1778, Frederick of Prussia established his army of 80,000 men on the Prussian border with Bohemia, near Neisse-Schweidnitz, in the County of Glatz, which Frederick had acquired from the Wittelsbach contender in 1741, in exchange for his electoral support of Charles VII. At Glatz, Frederick completed his preparations for invasion: he gathered supplies, arranged a line of march, brought up his artillery and drilled his soldiers. His younger brother, Prince Henry
, formed a second army of 75,000–100,000 men to the north and west, in Saxony. In April, Frederick and Joseph officially joined their armies in the field, and diplomatic negotiations ended.
(1717–1788) crossed into Bohemia near the fortified town of Náchod
with several hundred men. The local garrison, commanded by Friedrich Joseph, Freiherr (Baron) von Nauendorf
, then a mere Rittmeister
(Captain of Cavalry), included only 50 Hussars. Despite the poor numerical odds, Nauendorf and his 50 Hussars sallied out to engage Wunsch's men. When his small force encountered Wunsch's, which was more than triple its size, Nauendorf greeted the Prussians as friends; by the time the Prussians were close enough to realize the allegiance of the Hussars, Nauendorf and his small band had acquired the upper hand. Wunsch withdrew. The next day, Nauendorf was promoted to major. The news of Nauendorf's successful encounter with Wunsch pleased Joseph enormously. In a letter to her son, the Empress Maria Theresa wrote: "They say you were so pleased with Nauendorf, a rookie from Carlstadt or Hungary, who killed seven men, that you gave him 12 ducat
s."
during the Seven Years War, and knew his military business. He established the Austrian army on the most defensible position available. Centered at Jaroměř
, a triple line of redoubt
s extended 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) southwest along the river to Königgrätz. The Austrians also augmented this defensive line with their 600 artillery.
While the main Habsburg army faced Frederick at the Elbe, a smaller army under the command of Baron Ernst Gideon von Laudon guarded the passes from Saxony
and Lusatia
into Bohemia. Laudon was another battle-hardened and cagey commander with extensive field experience, but even he could not cover the long frontier completely. Shortly after Frederick crossed into Bohemia, Prince Henry, a brilliant strategist in his own right, maneuvered around Laudon's troops and entered Bohemia at Hainspach (Haňšpach, in Lipová (Děčín District)
, in the modern Czech Republic
). To avoid being flanked, Laudon withdrew across the Iser River, but by mid-August, the main Austrian army was in danger of being outflanked by Henry on its left wing. At its center and right, it faced a well-disciplined army commanded by Frederick, arguably the best general of the age.
While his main army was entrenched on the heights above the Elbe, Joseph encouraged raids against the Prussian troops. On 7 August 1778, with two squadrons of his regiment, the intrepid "rookie", now Major Nauendorf, led a raid against a Prussian convoy at Berbersdorf
in the Kingdom of Saxony
. The surprised convoy surrendered and Nauendorf captured its officers, 110 men, 476 horses, 240 wagons of flour, and 13 transport wagons. This kind of action characterized the entire war. There were no major battles. The war consisted of a series of raids and counter-raids during which the opposing sides lived off the country-side and tried to deny each other access to supplies and fodder. Soldiers later said they spent more time foraging for food than they did fighting.
The armies remained in their encampments for the campaign season while men and horses ate all the provisions and forage within miles. Prince Henry wrote to his brother, suggesting they complete their operations by 22 August, at which time he estimated he would have exhausted local supplies of food for his men and fodder for his horses. Frederick agreed. He laid plans to cross the Elbe and approach the Austrian force from the rear, but the more he examined the conditions of Joseph's entrenchments, the more he realized the campaign was already lost. Even if he and Henry executed simultaneous attacks on the Königgrätz heights, such a plan exposed Henry to a flanking attack from Laudon. A coordinated frontal and rear assault was also unlikely to succeed. If it did succeed, the Prussian losses would be unacceptable and would demolish his army's capacity to resist other invaders. From Frederick's perspective, the Russians and the Swedes were always ready to take advantage of any perceived Prussian weakness. The French also could not be trusted to keep their distance. For Frederick, it was a risk not worth taking. Despite this realization, the four armies—two Austrian, two Prussian—remained in place until September, eating as much of the country's resources as they could.
The battle-less war was not without incident and these may have lost no luster in the telling. One story from the war captured the imagination of the historical painter, Bernhard Rode
. From their advantageous height by Königgrätz, the Austrians frequently bombarded the Prussian army encamped below them. On the same day that Frederick's doctors bled
him, an Austrian cannonade grew so strong that Frederick rode out to observe the damage. During the ride, his vein opened. A company medic bound his wound (see painting by Bernhard Rohde in the Infobox). In his less-than-complimentary history of Frederick the Great, the English historian Thomas Carlyle
(1795–1881) relayed the story of Frederick and a Croatian marksman. As Frederick was reconnoitering, Carlyle maintained, the King encountered the Croat taking aim at him. Reportedly, he wagged his finger at the man, as if to say, do not do that. The Croat thought better of shooting the King, and disappeared into the woods. Some reports maintained the Croat actually knelt before the king and kissed his hand.
Nauendorf continued his raids, the soldiers foraged for food and dug up the local potato crop, and Joseph and Frederick glared at one another by Königgrätz. Maria Theresa had sent Kaunitz on a secret mission to Berlin to offer a truce. In a second trip, she offered a settlement, and finally wrote to Catherine in Russia to ask for assistance. When Joseph discovered his mother's maneuvering behind his back, he furiously offered to resign. His mother enlisted the assistance she needed. Catherine offered to mediate the dispute; if her assistance was unacceptable, she was willing to send 50,000 troops to augment the Prussian force. Frederick started to withdraw portions of his force in mid-September. In October, Joseph withdrew most of his army to the Bohemian border and Frederick withdrew his remaining troops into Prussia. Two small forces of hussars and dragoons remained in Bohemia to provide a winter cordon; these forces allowed Joseph and Frederick to keep an eye on each other while their diplomats negotiated at Teschen.
ordered a small assault column under the command of Colonel Wilhelm Klebeck to attack the village of Dittersbach.Shortly afterward, Klebeck was elevated to the rank of Baron (Freiherr), and awarded the Knights Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa
(15 February 1779). Digby Smith. Klebeck. Leonard Kudrna and Digby Smith, compilers. A biographical dictionary of all Austrian Generals in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1792–1815. Napoleon Series. Robert Burnham, Editor in Chief. April 2008. Accessed 22 March 2010. Klebeck led a column of Croats into the village. During the action, 400 Prussians were killed, another 400 made prisoner, and eight colors were captured. Following his successes against the Prussians in 1778, Joseph awarded Wurmser the Knights Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa
on 21 October 1778.
In another raid, in January 1779, Wurmser advanced into the County of Glatz in five columns, two of which, commanded by Major General Franz Joseph, Count Kinsky, surrounded Habelschwerdt on 17–18 January. While one column secured the approach, the other, under the leadership of Colonel Pallavicini,This officer was probably Colonel, later Count, Carlo Pallavicini, of the House of Pallavicini
, who had been in Habsburg service since the latter days of the Seven Years War. Erik Lund. War for the every day: generals, knowledge and warfare in early modern Europe. Westport, Ct: Greenwood Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0-313-31041-6, p. 152. stormed the village and captured the Prince of Hessen-Philippsthal and 700 men, three cannon and seven colors. Wurmser himself led the third column in an assault on the so-called Swedish blockhouse at Oberschwedeldorf. It and the village of Habelschwerdt were set on fire by howitzers. Major General Ludwig, Baron of Terzi (1730–1800), who was covering with the remaining two columns, threw back the enemy support and took 300 Prussian prisoners. Meanwhile, Wurmser maintained his position at the nearby villages of Rückerts and Reinerz. His forward patrols reached the outskirts of Glatz, and patrolled much of the Silesian border with Prussia, near Schweidnitz. Halberschwerdt and Oberschedeldorf were both destroyed.
On 3 March 1779, Nauendorf raided Berbersdorf again with a large force of infantry and hussars and captured the entire Prussian garrison. Following this action, Joseph awarded him the Knight's Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa (19 May 1779).
(May 1779), Maria Theresa returned Lower Bavaria
to Charles Theodore, but kept the so-called Innviertel
, a 2200 square kilometre strip of land in the drainage basin of the Inn River. She and Joseph were surprised to find that the small territory had 120,000 inhabitants. Saxony received a financial reward of six million gulden
from the principal combatants for its role in the intervention.
The War of the Bavarian Succession was the last war for both Frederick and Maria Theresa, whose reigns began and ended with wars against one another. Although they deployed armies three to four times the size of the armies of the Seven Years War, neither monarch used the entirety of the military force each had at his or her disposal, making this war-without-battles remarkable. Despite the restraint of the monarchs, some early 19th-century casualty estimates suggest that tens of thousands died of starvation and hunger-related disease. Carlyle's more moderate estimate lies at about 10,000 Prussians and probably another 10,000 Austrian dead. Michael Hochedlinger assesses combined casualties at approximately 30,000, Robert Kann gives no estimate of casualties, but suggests the primary causes of death were cholera
and dysentery
. Gaston Bodart
, whose 1915 work is still considered the authority on Austrian military losses, is specific: five Austrian generals (he does not name them), over 12,000 soldiers, and 74 officers died of disease. In minor actions and skirmishes, nine officers and 265 men were killed and four officers and 123 men were wounded, but not fatally. Sixty-two officers and 2,802 men were taken prisoner, and 137 men were missing. Over 3,000 Imperial soldiers deserted. Finally, 26 officers and 372 men were discharged with disabilities. Bodart also gives Prussian losses: one general killed (he does not say which), 87 officers and 3,364 men killed, wounded or captured. Overall, he assumes losses of ten percent of the fighting force. Little has been discovered of civilian casualties, although certainly the civilians also suffered from starvation and diseases. There were other damages: for example, Habelschwerdt and one of its hamlets were destroyed by fire.
Despite its short duration, the war itself cost Prussia 33 million florins
. For the Austrians, the cost was higher: 65 million florins, for a state with an annual revenue of 50 million florins. Joseph himself described war as "a horrible thing ... the ruin of many innocent people."
, and shortly after, in the Napoleonic Wars
, though, this six-month engagement seems mild. Yet, while historians often dismissed it as the last of the archaic mode of Ancien Régime warfare, elements of the war foreshadowed conflicts to come: the sheer sizes of the armies deployed reflected emerging abilities and willingness to conscript, train, equip and field larger armies than had been done in previous generations.
The war also reflected a new height in military spending, especially by the Habsburgs. After the Seven Years War, the size of the Habsburg military shrank, from 201,311 men in arms in 1761 to 163,613 in 1775. In preparing for a second summer's campaign, Joseph's army grew from 195,108 effectives in the summer of 1778 to 308,555 men in arms in Spring 1779. Habsburg military strength never dropped below 200,000 effectives between 1779 and 1792, when Austria entered the War of the First Coalition. Several times it surged above 300,000 men in arms, responding to needs on the borders with the Ottoman Empire or the revolt in the Austrian Netherlands. The military also underwent a massive organizational overhaul.
In the vernacular
, the Austrians called the war Zwetschgenrummel (Plum Fuss), and for the Prussians and Saxons, it was Kartoffelkrieg (Potato War). In the historiography of European warfare, historians almost always described the War of the Bavarian Succession "in dismissive or derisive terms [as] the apotheosis (or perhaps caricature) of old regime warfare," despite its grand name. Some historians have maintained that the focus on the consumption of the produce of the land gave the war its popular name: the Potato War. Others suggest that the two armies lobbed potatoes instead of cannonballs or mortars. A third theory maintains that the war acquired its popular name because it took place during the potato harvest.
, or the Union of Princes, comprising the influential princes of the northern German states, and these individuals jointly pressured Joseph to relinquish his ambitious plans. In 1799, the duchy passed to Maximilian IV Joseph, brother of Charles August, whose only child had died in 1784.
. Although the Habsburgs and their successor house of Habsburg-Lorraine had, with two exceptions, held the position of Emperor since the early 15th century, the basis of 18th-century Habsburg power lay not in the Holy Roman Empire itself, but in Habsburg territories in Eastern Europe, where the family had vast domains, the Italian peninsula, and the Lowlands. For Joseph or his successors to wield influence in the German-speaking states, they needed to acquire additional German-speaking territories. Acquisition of Central European territories with German-speaking subjects would strengthen the Austrian position in the Holy Roman Empire. As far as Joseph was concerned, only this could shift the center of the Habsburg empire into German-speaking Central Europe. This agenda made dispensable both the Austrian Netherlands—Habsburg territories which lay furthest west—and Galicia—Habsburg territories which lay furthest east. It also made the reacquisition of German-speaking Silesia and acquisition of new territories in Bavaria essential.
By the late 1770s, Joseph also faced important diplomatic obstacles in consolidating Habsburg influence in central Europe. When the British had been Austria's allies, Austria could count on British support in its wars, but Britain was now allied with Prussia. In the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756
, the French replaced the British as Austria's ally, but they were fickle, as Joseph discovered when Charles Gravier extricated Versailes from its obligations. Russia, which also had been an important Austrian ally for most of the Seven Years War, sought opportunities for expansion at the expense of its weak neighbors. In 1778, that meant Poland
and the Ottoman Empire
, but Joseph fully understood the danger of appearing weak in Russia's eyes: Habsburg lands could be carved off easily by the cagey Catherine's diplomatic knife. For Joseph, Frederick of Prussia was the enemy, as he had been throughout the reigns of Theresa and Franz before him, when the Prussian state's emergence as a player on the European stage had occurred at Habsburg expense, first with the loss of Silesia, and later in the 1750s and 1760s. Joseph sought to unify the different portions of his realm, not the German states as a whole, and to establish Habsburg hegemony in German-speaking central Europe beginning with the partition of Bavaria.
The broad geographic outlines of European states changed rapidly in the last 50 years of the century, with partitions of Poland and territorial exchanges through conquest and diplomacy. Rulers sought to centralize their control over their domains and create well-defined borders within which their writ was law. For Joseph, the acquisition of Bavaria, or at least parts of it, would link Habsburg territories in Bohemia with those in the Tyrol, and partially compensate Austria for its loss of Silesia. The Bavarian succession crisis provided Joseph with a viable opportunity to consolidate his influence in the Central European states, to bolster his financially strapped government with much-needed revenue, and to strengthen his army with German-speaking conscripts. Supremacy in the German states was worth a war. For Frederick, the preservation of Charles August's inheritance was not worth a war. Frederick had had sufficient war in the first years of his reign, and in its last 20 years, he sought to preserve the status quo
, not to enter into risky adventures that might upset it. If he had to withdraw from engagement with Joseph's army, such a sacrifice was a temporary measure. Warfare was only one means of diplomacy, and he could employ others in this contest with Austria. The Austro-Prussian dualism
that dominated the next century's unification movement rumbled ominously in the War of the Bavarian Succession.
19th century Reimann, Eduard. Geschichte des bairischen Erbfolgekrieges no publication information. 1869. Geschichte des Baierischen Erbfolgestreits [microform] : nebst Darstellung der Lage desselben im Jenner 1779. Frankfurt & Leipzig: [s.n.], 1779. Neufchâteau, Nicolas Louis François de (comte). Histoire de l'occupation de la Baviere par les Autrichiens, en 1778 et 1779 ; contenant les details de la guerre et des negotiations que ce different occasionna, et qui furent terminées, en 1779, par la paix de Teschen. Paris: Imprimerieimperiale, [1805]. Thamm, A. T. G. Plan des Lagers von der Division Sr. Excel. des Generals der Infanterie von Tauenzien zwischen Wisoka und Praschetz vom 7ten bis 18ten July 1778. no publication information, 1807.
18th century Historische Dokumentation zur Eingliederung des Innviertels im Jahre 1779: Sonderausstellung: Innviertler Volkskundehaus u. Galerie d. Stadt Ried im Innkreis, 11. Mai bis 4. Aug. 1979. (Documents relating to the annexation of the Innviertel in 1779.) Geschichte des Baierischen Erbfolgestreits nebst Darstellung der Lage desselben im Jenner 1779. Frankfurt: [s.n.], 1779. [Seidl, Carl von]. Versuch einer militärischen Geschichte des Bayerischen Erbfolge-Krieges im Jahre 1778, im Gesichtspunkte der Wahrheit betrachtet von einem Königl. Preussischen Officier. no publication information. Bourscheid, J. Der erste Feldzug im vierten preussischen Kriege: Im Gesichtspunkte der Strategie beschreiben. Wien: [s.n.], 1779. Keith, Robert Murray. Exposition détaillée des droits et de la conduite de S.M. l'imṕératrice reine apostolique rélativement à la succession de la Bavière: pour servir de réponse à l'Exposé des motifs qui ont engagé S.M. le roi de Prusse à s'opposer au démembrement de la Bavière. Vienne: Chez Jean Thom. Nob. de Trattnern, 1778.
Habsburg Monarchy
The Habsburg Monarchy covered the territories ruled by the junior Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg , and then by the successor House of Habsburg-Lorraine , between 1526 and 1867/1918. The Imperial capital was Vienna, except from 1583 to 1611, when it was moved to Prague...
and a Saxon
Electorate of Saxony
The Electorate of Saxony , sometimes referred to as Upper Saxony, was a State of the Holy Roman Empire. It was established when Emperor Charles IV raised the Ascanian duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg to the status of an Electorate by the Golden Bull of 1356...
–Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
n alliance to prevent the Habsburg acquisition of the Duchy of Bavaria
Duchy of Bavaria
The Duchy of Bavaria was the only one of the stem duchies from the earliest days of East Francia and the Kingdom of Germany to preserve both its name and most of its territorial extent....
. The war had no battles beyond a few minor skirmishes, but still resulted in significant casualties, as several thousand soldiers died from disease and starvation. Reflecting the soldiers' frustrating quest for food and forage, the conflict was also called the Kartoffelkrieg (Potato War) in Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
and Saxony
Electorate of Saxony
The Electorate of Saxony , sometimes referred to as Upper Saxony, was a State of the Holy Roman Empire. It was established when Emperor Charles IV raised the Ascanian duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg to the status of an Electorate by the Golden Bull of 1356...
; in Habsburg Austria
Habsburg Monarchy
The Habsburg Monarchy covered the territories ruled by the junior Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg , and then by the successor House of Habsburg-Lorraine , between 1526 and 1867/1918. The Imperial capital was Vienna, except from 1583 to 1611, when it was moved to Prague...
, it was sometimes called the Zwetschgenrummel (Plum Fuss).
On 30 December 1777, Maximilian Joseph, the last of the junior line of Wittelsbach
Treaty of Pavia (1329)
The Treaty of Pavia which divided the House of Wittelsbach two branches, was signed in Pavia in 1329. Under the accord, Emperor Louis IV granted during his stay in Italy the Palatinate including the Bavarian Upper Palatinate to his brother Duke Rudolph's descendants, Rudolph II, Rupert I and...
, died of smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
, leaving no children. Charles IV Theodore
Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria
Charles Theodore, Prince-Elector, Count Palatine and Duke of Bavaria reigned as Prince-Elector and Count palatine from 1742, as Duke of Jülich and Berg from 1742 and also as Prince-Elector and Duke of Bavaria from 1777, until his death...
, a scion of a senior branch of the House of Wittelsbach, held the closest claim of kinship, but he, too, had no legitimate children to succeed him. His cousin, Charles II August, Duke of Zweibrücken
Charles II August, Duke of Zweibrücken
Charles II/III August Christian was Duke of Zweibrücken from 1775 to 1795. He was the son of Frederick Michael of Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld and Maria Franziska of Sulzbach...
, therefore had a legitimate legal claim as Charles Theodore's heir presumptive
Heir Presumptive
An heir presumptive or heiress presumptive is the person provisionally scheduled to inherit a throne, peerage, or other hereditary honour, but whose position can be displaced by the birth of an heir or heiress apparent or of a new heir presumptive with a better claim to the position in question...
. Across Bavaria's southern border, Joseph, Archduke of Austria
Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor
Joseph II was Holy Roman Emperor from 1765 to 1790 and ruler of the Habsburg lands from 1780 to 1790. He was the eldest son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis I...
, coveted the Bavarian territory and had married Max Joseph's sister in 1765 to strengthen any claim he could extend. His agreement with the heir, Charles Theodore, to partition the territory did not take into account any claims of the heir presumptive, Charles August.
The acquisition of territory in the German-speaking states was an essential part of Joseph's policy to expand his family's influence in Central Europe. For Frederick II of Prussia
Frederick II of Prussia
Frederick II was a King in Prussia and a King of Prussia from the Hohenzollern dynasty. In his role as a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, he was also Elector of Brandenburg. He was in personal union the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel...
, Joseph's claim threatened the Hohenzollern ascendancy in German politics, but he questioned whether or not he should preserve the status quo through war or through diplomacy. Empress Maria Theresa, who co-ruled with Joseph, considered any conflict over the Bavarian electorate not worth the cost. Neither Maria Theresa nor Frederick saw any point in pursuing hostilities. Joseph would not drop his claim, despite his mother's insistence. Frederick Augustus I of Saxony
Frederick Augustus I of Saxony
Frederick Augustus I was King of Saxony from the House of Wettin. He was also Elector Frederick Augustus III of Saxony and Duke Frederick Augustus I of Warsaw...
wanted to preserve the territorial integrity of the Duchy for his brother-in-law, Charles August, and had no interest in seeing the Habsburgs acquire additional territory on his southern and western borders. France became involved to maintain the balance of power
European balance of power
The Balance of Power in Europe is an international relations concept that applies historically and currently to the nations of Europe...
. Finally, Catherine II of Russia
Catherine II of Russia
Catherine II, also known as Catherine the Great , Empress of Russia, was born in Stettin, Pomerania, Prussia on as Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg...
's threat to intervene on the side of Prussia with 50,000 Russian troops forced Joseph to reconsider his position. With Catherine's assistance, he and Frederick negotiated a solution to the problem of the Bavarian succession with the Treaty of Teschen
Treaty of Teschen
The Treaty of Teschen was signed on May 13, 1779, in Cieszyn , Austrian Silesia, between Austria and Prussia, which officially ended the War of the Bavarian Succession sparked by the death of Elector Maximilian III Joseph...
, signed on 13 May 1779.
For some historians, the War of the Bavarian Succession was the last of the old-style Cabinet Wars (Kabinettskriege
Kabinettskriege
Kabinettskriege is the German expression referring to the type of wars which affected Europe during the period of absolute monarchies, from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia to the 1789 French Revolution...
) of the Ancien Régime in which troops maneuvered while diplomats traveled between capitals to resolve their monarchs' complaints. The subsequent French Revolutionary Wars
French Revolutionary Wars
The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of major conflicts, from 1792 until 1802, fought between the French Revolutionary government and several European states...
and Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
differed in scope, strategy, organization and tactics. Historians of 19th- and 20th-century Germany have also found the roots of German dualism
German dualism
Austria and Prussia had a long running conflict and rivalry for supremacy in Central Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries, called in Germany. While wars were a part of the rivalry, it was also a race for prestige to be seen as the legitimate political force of the German-speaking peoples...
in this brief war.
Imperial competition
In 1713, Charles VI, Holy Roman EmperorCharles VI, Holy Roman Emperor
Charles VI was the penultimate Habsburg sovereign of the Habsburg Empire. He succeeded his elder brother, Joseph I, as Holy Roman Emperor, King of Bohemia , Hungary and Croatia , Archduke of Austria, etc., in 1711...
, established a line of succession that passed over the children of his sisters and the female children of his brother and settled the Habsburg territories on his own sons, if he had any, or his daughters. To protect the Habsburg inheritance, he coerced, cajoled, and persuaded the crowned heads of Europe to accept the Pragmatic Sanction
Pragmatic Sanction of 1713
The Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 was an edict issued by Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI to ensure that the throne of the Archduchy of Austria could be inherited by a daughter....
. In this agreement, they acknowledged any of his legitimate daughters as the rightful Queen of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, and Archduchess of Austria, a break from the tradition of male succession
Primogeniture
Primogeniture is the right, by law or custom, of the firstborn to inherit the entire estate, to the exclusion of younger siblings . Historically, the term implied male primogeniture, to the exclusion of females...
.
Holy Roman Emperor
Holy Roman Emperor
The Holy Roman Emperor is a term used by historians to denote a medieval ruler who, as German King, had also received the title of "Emperor of the Romans" from the Pope...
s had been elected from the House of Habsburg for most of the previous three centuries. Charles VI arranged a marriage of his eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, to Francis of Lorraine
Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor
Francis I was Holy Roman Emperor and Grand Duke of Tuscany, though his wife effectively executed the real power of those positions. With his wife, Maria Theresa, he was the founder of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty...
. Francis relinquished the Duchy of Lorraine near France in exchange for the Grand Duchy of Tuscany
Grand Duchy of Tuscany
The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was a central Italian monarchy that existed, with interruptions, from 1569 to 1859, replacing the Duchy of Florence. The grand duchy's capital was Florence...
near Austria, to make himself a more appealing candidate for eventual election as Holy Roman Emperor
Holy Roman Emperor
The Holy Roman Emperor is a term used by historians to denote a medieval ruler who, as German King, had also received the title of "Emperor of the Romans" from the Pope...
. On paper, many heads of state and, most importantly, the rulers of the German states of the Holy Roman Empire
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
, accepted the Pragmatic Sanction and the idea of Francis as the next Holy Roman Emperor. Two key exceptions, the Duchy of Bavaria
Duchy of Bavaria
The Duchy of Bavaria was the only one of the stem duchies from the earliest days of East Francia and the Kingdom of Germany to preserve both its name and most of its territorial extent....
and Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
, held important electoral votes and could impede or even block Francis's election. When Charles died in 1740, his daughter, Maria Theresa, had to fight for her family's entitlements in Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, and her husband faced competition in his election as the Holy Roman Emperor.
Charles VII, Holy Roman Emperor
Charles VII Albert a member of the Wittelsbach family, was Prince-elector of Bavaria from 1726 and Holy Roman Emperor from 24 January 1742 until his death in 1745...
, claimed the German territories of the Habsburg dynasty as a son-in-law of Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor
Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor
Joseph I , Holy Roman Emperor, King of Bohemia, King of Hungary, King of the Romans was the elder son of Emperor Leopold I and his third wife, Eleonor Magdalene of Neuburg....
, and, furthermore, presented himself as Charles VI's legitimate Imperial successor. Charles of Bavaria's claim to the crown
Order of succession
An order of succession is a formula or algorithm that determines who inherits an office upon the death, resignation, or removal of its current occupant.-Monarchies and nobility:...
reflected the genealogical raison d'état. If women were going to inherit, he claimed, then he should be first in line: his wife, Maria Amalia
Maria Amalia of Austria
Maria Amalia of Austria was the younger daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I and Wilhelmine Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg...
, was the daughter of Joseph I
Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor
Joseph I , Holy Roman Emperor, King of Bohemia, King of Hungary, King of the Romans was the elder son of Emperor Leopold I and his third wife, Eleonor Magdalene of Neuburg....
. Both Charles VI and his predecessor Joseph I had died without sons. Charles of Bavaria suggested that the legitimate succession pass to Joseph's female children, rather than to the daughters of the younger brother, Charles VI. For different reasons, Prussia, France, Spain and the Polish-Saxon monarchy supported Charles of Bavaria's claim to the Habsburg territory and the Imperial title and reneged on the Pragmatic Sanction.
Charles of Bavaria needed military assistance to take the Imperial title by force and he secured this with the treaty of Nymphenburg
Nymphenburg Palace
The Nymphenburg Palace , i.e. "Nymph's Castle", is a Baroque palace in Munich, Bavaria, southern Germany. The palace was the main summer residence of the rulers of Bavaria.-History:...
(July 1741). During the subsequent War of the Austrian Succession
War of the Austrian Succession
The War of the Austrian Succession – including King George's War in North America, the Anglo-Spanish War of Jenkins' Ear, and two of the three Silesian wars – involved most of the powers of Europe over the question of Maria Theresa's succession to the realms of the House of Habsburg.The...
, he successfully captured Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
, where he was crowned King of Bohemia. He invaded Upper Austria
Upper Austria
Upper Austria is one of the nine states or Bundesländer of Austria. Its capital is Linz. Upper Austria borders on Germany and the Czech Republic, as well as on the other Austrian states of Lower Austria, Styria, and Salzburg...
, planning to capture Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, but diplomatic exigencies complicated his plans. His French allies redirected their troops into Bohemia
Bohemia
Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...
, where Frederick II of Prussia
Frederick II of Prussia
Frederick II was a King in Prussia and a King of Prussia from the Hohenzollern dynasty. In his role as a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, he was also Elector of Brandenburg. He was in personal union the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel...
, himself newly king, had taken advantage of the chaos in Austria and Bavaria to annex Silesia.
Charles' military options disappeared with the French. Adopting a new plan, he subverted the Imperial election. He sold the County of Glatz to Frederick of Prussia for a reduced price in exchange for Frederick's electoral vote. Charles' brother, Klemens August of Bavaria, archbishop and prince-elector
Prince-elector
The Prince-electors of the Holy Roman Empire were the members of the electoral college of the Holy Roman Empire, having the function of electing the Roman king or, from the middle of the 16th century onwards, directly the Holy Roman Emperor.The heir-apparent to a prince-elector was known as an...
of the Electorate of Cologne, voted for him in the Imperial election and personally crowned him on 12 February 1742 in the traditional ceremony in Frankfurt am Main. The next day, Charles' Bavarian capital city of Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
capitulated to the Austrians to avoid being plundered by Maria Theresa's troops. In the following weeks, her army overran most of Charles' territories, occupied Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
, and barred him from his ancestral lands and from Bohemia.
Charles VII spent most of his three-year reign as Emperor residing in Frankfurt while Maria Theresa battled Prussia for her patrimony in Bohemia and Hungary. Frederick could not secure Bohemia for Charles, but he did manage to push the Austrians out of Bavaria. For the last three months of his short reign, the gout-ridden
Gout
Gout is a medical condition usually characterized by recurrent attacks of acute inflammatory arthritis—a red, tender, hot, swollen joint. The metatarsal-phalangeal joint at the base of the big toe is the most commonly affected . However, it may also present as tophi, kidney stones, or urate...
Charles lived in Munich, where he died in January 1745. His son, Maximilian III Joseph—known as Max Joseph—inherited his father's Electoral dignities, but not his father's Imperial ambition. With the Peace of Füssen (22 April 1745), Max Joseph promised to vote for Francis of Lorraine, Maria Theresa's husband, in the pending Imperial election. He also acknowledged the Pragmatic Sanction. In return, he obtained the restitution of his family's Electoral position and territories. For his subjects, his negotiations ended five years of warfare and brought a generation of peace and relative prosperity that began with his father's death in 1745 and ended with his own in 1777.
Contenders
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
. As a Prince-elector
Prince-elector
The Prince-electors of the Holy Roman Empire were the members of the electoral college of the Holy Roman Empire, having the function of electing the Roman king or, from the middle of the 16th century onwards, directly the Holy Roman Emperor.The heir-apparent to a prince-elector was known as an...
, he stood in the highest rank of the Empire, with broad legal, economic, and juridical rights. As an Elector, he was one of the men who selected the Holy Roman Emperor from a group of candidates. He was the son of one Holy Roman Emperor (Charles VII), and the grandson of another (Joseph I). Despite the Peace of Füssen, any of his children could lay a claim to the Imperial title. When he died of smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
on 30 December 1777, this genealogical claim became moot: he left no children to succeed him and several ambitious men prepared to carve his patrimony into pieces.
Heir apparent
The SulzbachPalatinate-Sulzbach
Palatinate-Sulzbach was the name of two separate states of the Holy Roman Empire located in modern Amberg-Sulzbach, Bavaria, Germany.-Palatinate-Sulzbach :...
branch of the Wittelsbach family inherited the Duchy
Duchy
A duchy is a territory, fief, or domain ruled by a duke or duchess.Some duchies were sovereign in areas that would become unified realms only during the Modern era . In contrast, others were subordinate districts of those kingdoms that unified either partially or completely during the Medieval era...
of Bavaria. In this line, the 55-year-old Charles IV Theodore
Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria
Charles Theodore, Prince-Elector, Count Palatine and Duke of Bavaria reigned as Prince-Elector and Count palatine from 1742, as Duke of Jülich and Berg from 1742 and also as Prince-Elector and Duke of Bavaria from 1777, until his death...
, the Duke of Berg-Jülich
Duchy of Jülich
The Duchy of Jülich comprised a state within the Holy Roman Empire from the 11th to the 18th centuries. The duchy lay left of the Rhine river between the Electorate of Cologne in the east and the Duchy of Limburg in the west. It had territories on both sides of the river Rur, around its capital...
, held the first claim. Unfortunately for Charles Theodore, he was already the Elector Palatine. By the terms of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia
Peace of Westphalia
The Peace of Westphalia was a series of peace treaties signed between May and October of 1648 in Osnabrück and Münster. These treaties ended the Thirty Years' War in the Holy Roman Empire, and the Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Dutch Republic, with Spain formally recognizing the...
, he had to cede the Palatine Electorate to his own heir before he could claim the Bavarian Electorate. He was not eager to do so, even though Bavaria was larger and more important. He preferred living in the Palatinate, with its salubrious climate and compatible social scene. He patronized the arts, and had developed in Mannheim
Mannheim
Mannheim is a city in southwestern Germany. With about 315,000 inhabitants, Mannheim is the second-largest city in the Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, following the capital city of Stuttgart....
, his capital city, an array of theaters and museums at tremendous cost to his subjects. He hosted Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
at one of his many palaces. During the visit, he had enticed Voltaire's secretary, the Florentine
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
noble, Cosimo Alessandro Collini (1727–1806), into his own employment, considered a coup in some of the Enlightenment circles. Thomas Carlyle referred to Charles Theodore as a "poor idle creature, of purely egoistical, ornamental, dilettante nature; sunk in theatricals, [and] bastard children". The French foreign minister, Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes
Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes
Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes was a French statesman and diplomat. He served as Foreign Minister from 1774 during the reign of Louis XVI, notably during the American War of Independence....
, who knew him, described Charles Theodore's foibles more forcefully:
Although by nature intelligent, he [Charles Theodore] has never succeeded in ruling by himself; he has always been governed by his ministers or by his father-confessor or (for a time) by the [E]lectress [his wife]. This conduct has increased his natural weakness and apathy to such a degree that for a long time he has had no opinions save those inspired in him by his entourage. The void which this indolence has left in his soul is filled with the amusements of the hunt and of music and by secret liaisons, for which His Electoral Majesty has at all times had a particular penchant.
The Electress had provided him with a son, who had immediately died, but Charles Theodore's particular penchant for secret liaisons, most of whom were French actresses that he had raised to the status of countess, had produced several natural
Legitimacy (law)
At common law, legitimacy is the status of a child who is born to parents who are legally married to one another; and of a child who is born shortly after the parents' divorce. In canon and in civil law, the offspring of putative marriages have been considered legitimate children...
children. By the time of Max Joseph's death, he had legitimated seven of the males of his various alliances, and was considering the legitimation of two more. With this host of male offspring, although Charles Theodore certainly wished to acquire more territory, he needed territory that he could bequeath through his testament
Will (law)
A will or testament is a legal declaration by which a person, the testator, names one or more persons to manage his/her estate and provides for the transfer of his/her property at death...
, rather than territory encumbered by a legal entailment
Entailment
In logic, entailment is a relation between a set of sentences and a sentence. Let Γ be a set of one or more sentences; let S1 be the conjunction of the elements of Γ, and let S2 be a sentence: then, Γ entails S2 if and only if S1 and not-S2 are logically inconsistent...
that could only pass to a legitimate child.
Deal-maker
Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor
Joseph II was Holy Roman Emperor from 1765 to 1790 and ruler of the Habsburg lands from 1780 to 1790. He was the eldest son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis I...
, Archduke of Austria, King of the Romans, and co-ruler with his mother, Empress Maria Theresa, coveted Bavaria. The lessons his mother had learned in the War of the Austrian Succession
War of the Austrian Succession
The War of the Austrian Succession – including King George's War in North America, the Anglo-Spanish War of Jenkins' Ear, and two of the three Silesian wars – involved most of the powers of Europe over the question of Maria Theresa's succession to the realms of the House of Habsburg.The...
had not been lost on him. The House of Habsburg-Lorraine sought a wider sphere of influence in the German-speaking parts of the Holy Roman Empire. Without this, the family could not count on the election of their chosen male candidate as Emperor, nor could the family count on an uncontested succession in the Habsburg territories of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia. For most of Joseph's adult life, he sought to strengthen his family's influence in German-speaking lands. For him, this meant the acquisition of German lands, not lands in the eastern region of the Habsburg empire, even such strategic territories as Bukovina
Bukovina
Bukovina is a historical region on the northern slopes of the northeastern Carpathian Mountains and the adjoining plains.-Name:The name Bukovina came into official use in 1775 with the region's annexation from the Principality of Moldavia to the possessions of the Habsburg Monarchy, which became...
.
Joseph married Max Joseph's sister, Maria Josepha, in 1765, hoping he could claim the Bavarian Electorate for his offspring. After two years of unhappy marriage, Maria Josepha died without issue. When Max Joseph died ten years later, Joseph could only present a weak legal claim to Lower Bavaria
Lower Bavaria
Lower Bavaria is one of the seven administrative regions of Bavaria, Germany, located in the east of the state.- Geography :Lower Bavaria is subdivided into two regions - Landshut and Donau-Wald. Recent election results mark it as the most conservative part of Germany, generally giving huge...
through a dubious and ancient grant made by the Emperor Sigismund to the House of Habsburg in 1425. Knowing its poor legal grounds, Joseph negotiated a secret agreement with Charles Theodore shortly after Max Joseph's death. In this agreement (3 January 1778), Charles Theodore ceded Lower Bavaria to Austria in exchange for uncontested succession to the remainder of the duchy. Charles Theodore also hoped to acquire from Joseph some unencumbered parts of the Austrian Netherlands and parts of Anterior Austria that he could bequeath to his bastards, but this was not written into the agreement and Joseph was not a particularly generous man. Furthermore, the agreement entirely ignored the interests of Charles Theodore's own heir presumptive, Charles II August
Charles II August, Duke of Zweibrücken
Charles II/III August Christian was Duke of Zweibrücken from 1775 to 1795. He was the son of Frederick Michael of Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld and Maria Franziska of Sulzbach...
, of the House of Palatinate-Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld
House of Palatinate-Birkenfeld
Palatinate-Birkenfeld , later Palatinate-Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld, was the name of a collateral line of the Palatine Wittelsbachs. The Counts Palatine from this line initially ruled over only a relatively unimportant territory, namely the Palatine share of the Rear County of Sponheim; however, their...
. Charles August was the presumptive heir of Charles Theodore's domains and titles. He had a clear and direct interest in the disposition of the Bavarian duchy, especially in its territorial integrity.
Heir presumptive
Unbeknownst to either Charles Theodore or Joseph, a widow—historians are uncertain which widow—opened secret negotiations with Prussia to secure the eventual succession of Charles August. Some historians maintain the active negotiator was Max Joseph's widow, Maria Anna Sophia of SaxonyMaria Anna Sophia of Saxony
Maria Anna Sophia of Saxony was a daughter of King Augustus III of Poland and his wife Maria Josepha of Austria who became Electress of Bavaria.-Biography:...
. Others assert it was not Max Joseph's widow but Max Joseph's sister, who was also Charles August's mother-in-law. This widow, Maria Antonia, was the mother of the reigning Elector of Saxony. Ernest Henderson even maintained she was the "only manly one among the many Wittelsbach parties" involved in the issue.
Charles August was no great admirer of Joseph's. As a younger man, he had sought the hand of Joseph's sister, Archduchess Maria Amalia. She had been quite content to take him, but Joseph and their mother insisted she marry instead the better connected Duke of Parma
Ferdinand, Duke of Parma
Ferdinand Maria Philip Louis Sebastian Francis James of Parma was Duke of Parma from 1765 to 1802. He was the second child and only son of Philip, Duke of Parma and Princess Louise-Élisabeth of France, eldest daughter of Louis XV of France and Maria Leszczyńska...
. After this disappointment, Charles August married Maria Amalia of Saxony
Maria Amalia of Saxony (1757–1831)
Maria Amalia of Saxony was a daughter of Frederick Christian, Elector of Saxony and his wife Maria Antonia Walpurgis of Bavaria...
in 1774; she was the daughter of the Elector Christian (d. 1765) and his wife Maria Antonia, Max Joseph's sister. In 1769, the reigning Elector, Frederick Augustus I of Saxony
Frederick Augustus I of Saxony
Frederick Augustus I was King of Saxony from the House of Wettin. He was also Elector Frederick Augustus III of Saxony and Duke Frederick Augustus I of Warsaw...
, had married Charles August's sister. Charles August, sometimes called duc de Deux-Ponts (a French translation of Zweibrücken, or two bridges), was a French client
Client state
Client state is one of several terms used to describe the economic, political and/or military subordination of one state to a more powerful state in international affairs...
and could theoretically draw on French support for his claim. However, he had especially good relations with the Saxon Electors: both his mother- and brother-in-law wanted to ensure that Maria Amalia's husband received his rightful inheritance.
Interested parties
Prussia also expressed an interest in the disposition of the duchy. Count Karl-Wilhelm Finck von FinckensteinCount Karl-Wilhelm Finck von Finckenstein
Karl Wilhelm Finck von Finckenstein was a Prussian diplomat and later Prime Minister of Prussia.He was the son of Count Albrecht Konrad Finck von Finckenstein, who was a Field Marshal and Governor of the Crown Prince, the future King Frederick II. Karl Wilhelm studied in Geneva and traveled in...
, First Minister (or prime minister) for Frederick the Great
Frederick II of Prussia
Frederick II was a King in Prussia and a King of Prussia from the Hohenzollern dynasty. In his role as a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, he was also Elector of Brandenburg. He was in personal union the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel...
, believed that any Austrian acquisition in Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
would shift the balance of power in the Holy Roman Empire, diminishing Prussia's influence. Prussia's recent gains had been hard-won. Thirty years earlier, Frederick had engaged in protracted wars
Silesian Wars
The Silesian Wars were a series of wars between Prussia and Austria for control of Silesia. They formed parts of the larger War of the Austrian Succession and Seven Years' War. They eventually ended with Silesia being incorporated into Prussia, and Austrian recognition of this...
in Silesia
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
and Bohemia
Bohemia
Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...
, resulting in Prussia's annexation of most of Silesia. In the Silesian wars and the Seven Years War, he had earned a new, if grudging, respect for his kingdom's military and diplomatic prowess from the European power-states of France, Russia, Britain and Austria. To protect Prussia's status and territory, Finck and Frederick constructed an alliance with the Electorate of Saxony
Electorate of Saxony
The Electorate of Saxony , sometimes referred to as Upper Saxony, was a State of the Holy Roman Empire. It was established when Emperor Charles IV raised the Ascanian duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg to the status of an Electorate by the Golden Bull of 1356...
, ostensibly to defend the rights of Charles II August, Duke of Zweibrücken, Charles Theodore's heir presumptive.
Although equally interested in maintaining its influence among the German states, France had a double problem. As a supporter of the rebellious British colonies in North America, it was in France's interest to avoid a continental engagement. France could do more damage to the British in North America than in Europe. The diplomatic realignment in 1756 had overthrown 200 years of French foreign policy that united the French Crown and the French populace against the House of Habsburg, arguably bringing to France massive territorial gains in repeated wars with Habsburg Austria and Habsburg Spain. A reversal of this policy in 1756 tied French foreign policy in Europe to Vienna. Despite this restructuring, there existed in the French Court at Versailles, and in France generally, a strong anti-Austrian sentiment. The diplomatic revolution
Diplomatic Revolution
The Diplomatic Revolution of 1756 is a term applied to the reversal of longstanding diplomatic alliances which were upheld until the War of the Austrian Succession and then reversed in the Seven Years' War; the shift has also been known as "the great change of partners"...
of 1756, sealed in 1770 with the personal union (the diplomatic term for marriage) of Louis
Louis XVI of France
Louis XVI was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792, before being executed in 1793....
, the Dauphin of Viennois, and the Austrian Archduchess Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette ; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was an Archduchess of Austria and the Queen of France and of Navarre. She was the fifteenth and penultimate child of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I....
, was considered both a political and matrimonial mésalliance
Mesalliance
A mesalliance is a marriage with a person of inferior social position....
in the eyes of many Frenchmen. It flew in the face of 200 years of French foreign policy, in which the central axiom "had been hostility to the House of Habsburg." The French foreign minister, Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes
Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes
Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes was a French statesman and diplomat. He served as Foreign Minister from 1774 during the reign of Louis XVI, notably during the American War of Independence....
, maintained deep-seated hostility to the Austrians that pre-dated the alliance of 1756. He had not approved of the shift of France's traditional bonds, and considered the Austrians untrustworthy. He managed to extricate France from immediate military obligations to Austria by 1778.
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Tensions rise
In January 1778, tensions began to rise. On 3 January, a few days after Max Joseph's death, the ducal EquerryEquerry
An equerry , and related to the French word "écuyer" ) is an officer of honour. Historically, it was a senior attendant with responsibilities for the horses of a person of rank. In contemporary use, it is a personal attendant, usually upon a Sovereign, a member of a Royal Family, or a national...
proclaimed Charles Theodore as Duke. Dragoons rode through the streets of Munich, some banging drums and some blowing trumpets, and others shouting, "Long Live our Elector Charles Theodore." According to the 3 January agreement between Joseph and Charles Theodore, 15,000 Austrian troops occupied Mindelheim
Mindelheim
Mindelheim is a town in the German Bundesland of Bavaria. The town is the capital of the Unterallgäu district. At various points in history it was the chief settlement of an eponymous state.- Geography :...
, ultimately more territory than had been granted to Joseph. Charles Theodore, who had dreamed of rebuilding the Burgundian empire
Duchy of Burgundy
The Duchy of Burgundy , was heir to an ancient and prestigious reputation and a large division of the lands of the Second Kingdom of Burgundy and in its own right was one of the geographically larger ducal territories in the emergence of Early Modern Europe from Medieval Europe.Even in that...
, realized that Joseph was not seriously planning to exchange a portion of Bavaria, or even all of it, for the entirety of the Austrian Netherlands. At best, he might acquire a few portions of it, perhaps Hainaut
County of Hainaut
The County of Hainaut was a historical region in the Low Countries with its capital at Mons . In English sources it is often given the archaic spelling Hainault....
or Guelders
Guelders
Guelders or Gueldres is the name of a historical county, later duchy of the Holy Roman Empire, located in the Low Countries.-Geography:...
, Luxembourg
Luxembourg
Luxembourg , officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg , is a landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. It has two principal regions: the Oesling in the North as part of the Ardennes massif, and the Gutland in the south...
, Limburg
Duchy of Limburg
The Duchy of Limburg, situated in the Low Countries between the river Meuse and the city of Aachen, was a state of the Holy Roman Empire. Its territory is now divided between the Belgian provinces of Liège and Limburg , the Dutch province of Limburg , and a small part of North Rhine-Westphalia in...
, or various dispersed possessions in Anterior Austria, most of which lay in southwestern Germany.
While Charles Theodore's dream of a Burgundian renaissance receded, Joseph continued on his course to annex part of Bavaria. The widow—Max Joseph's widow or the mother-in-law or both—petitioned Prussia on behalf of Charles II August. Frederick's envoys to the heir presumptive convinced the slighted prince to lodge protests with the Reichstag
Reichstag (Holy Roman Empire)
The Imperial Diet was the Diet, or general assembly, of the Imperial Estates of the Holy Roman Empire.During the period of the Empire, which lasted formally until 1806, the Diet was not a parliament in today's sense; instead, it was an assembly of the various estates of the realm...
(Imperial Diet) in Regensburg. Joseph's troops remained in portions of Bavaria, even establishing an Austrian administration at Straubing
Straubing
Straubing is an independent city in Lower Bavaria, southern Germany. It is seat of the district of Straubing-Bogen. Annually in August the Gäubodenvolksfest, the second largest fair in Bavaria, is held....
, precipitating a diplomatic crisis. Austrian occupation of Bavaria was unacceptable to Charles August's champion, Frederick. Prussians troops mobilized near Prussia's border with Bohemia, reminiscent of the invasion in 1740, which was unacceptable to Joseph. Meanwhile, the French wriggled out of their diplomatic obligations to Austria, telling Joseph that there would be no military support from Paris for a war against Prussia. Britain, Prussia's strongest ally, was already mired in a war in North America. Prussia's other ally, Saxony, aligned by two marriages with Charles August, was strategically prepared for war against Austria and ready to contribute 20,000 troops. Watching from Moscow, Catherine II of Russia was willing to mop up the spoils of war for her own empire, but did not want to get involved in another costly European conflict.
For four months, negotiators shuttled between Vienna and Berlin, Dresden and Regensburg, and Zweibrücken Munich and Mannheim. By early spring 1778, Austria and Prussia faced each other with armies several times the size of their forces during the Seven Years War and their confrontation had the potential to explode into another European-wide war.
Action
When it became clear that other monarchs of Europe were not going to acquiesce to a de factoDe facto
De facto is a Latin expression that means "concerning fact." In law, it often means "in practice but not necessarily ordained by law" or "in practice or actuality, but not officially established." It is commonly used in contrast to de jure when referring to matters of law, governance, or...
partition of Bavaria, Joseph and his foreign minister, Anton, Count von Kaunitz, scoured the Habsburg realm for troops and concentrated 600 guns and an 180,000–190,000-man Austrian army in Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia. This army amounted to most of Austria's 200,000 effectives, leaving much of the Habsburg border regions with the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
under-guarded. On 6 April 1778, Frederick of Prussia established his army of 80,000 men on the Prussian border with Bohemia, near Neisse-Schweidnitz, in the County of Glatz, which Frederick had acquired from the Wittelsbach contender in 1741, in exchange for his electoral support of Charles VII. At Glatz, Frederick completed his preparations for invasion: he gathered supplies, arranged a line of march, brought up his artillery and drilled his soldiers. His younger brother, Prince Henry
Prince Henry of Prussia
Frederick Henry Louis , commonly known as Henry , was a Prince of Prussia. He also served as a general and statesman, and, in 1786, was suggested as a candidate for a monarch for the United States....
, formed a second army of 75,000–100,000 men to the north and west, in Saxony. In April, Frederick and Joseph officially joined their armies in the field, and diplomatic negotiations ended.
First skirmish
In early July 1778, the Prussian General Johann Jakob von WunschJohann Jakob von Wunsch
Johann Jakob von Wunsch was soldier of fortune and Prussian general of infantry, and a particularly adept commander of light infantry. The son of a Württemberg furrier, he served in several armies in the course of his lengthy career....
(1717–1788) crossed into Bohemia near the fortified town of Náchod
Náchod
Náchod -History:Náchod was founded in 14th century by knight Hron of Načeradice, who founded a castle on a strategical place, where local trade road reaches the defile called Branka. The first written note dates back to 1254.-Castle:...
with several hundred men. The local garrison, commanded by Friedrich Joseph, Freiherr (Baron) von Nauendorf
Friedrich Joseph, Count of Nauendorf
Friedrich Joseph of Nauendorf, a general and field marshal in Habsburg service during the French Revolutionary Wars, was noted for his intrepid and daring raids....
, then a mere Rittmeister
Rittmeister
Rotamaster was the military rank of a commissioned cavalry officer in charge of a squadron , the equivalent of O3 or Captain, in the German-speaking armies, Austro-Hungarian, Polish-Lithuanian, Russian and some other states.The exact name of this rank maintains a variety of spellings in different...
(Captain of Cavalry), included only 50 Hussars. Despite the poor numerical odds, Nauendorf and his 50 Hussars sallied out to engage Wunsch's men. When his small force encountered Wunsch's, which was more than triple its size, Nauendorf greeted the Prussians as friends; by the time the Prussians were close enough to realize the allegiance of the Hussars, Nauendorf and his small band had acquired the upper hand. Wunsch withdrew. The next day, Nauendorf was promoted to major. The news of Nauendorf's successful encounter with Wunsch pleased Joseph enormously. In a letter to her son, the Empress Maria Theresa wrote: "They say you were so pleased with Nauendorf, a rookie from Carlstadt or Hungary, who killed seven men, that you gave him 12 ducat
Ducat
The ducat is a gold coin that was used as a trade coin throughout Europe before World War I. Its weight is 3.4909 grams of .986 gold, which is 0.1107 troy ounce, actual gold weight...
s."
Invasion
A few days after Wunsch's encounter with Nauendorf, Frederick and his 80,000 troops entered Bohemia. They occupied Náchod, but advanced no further. The Habsburg army with its 600 guns stood on the heights of the Elbe River. Joseph exercised nominal command, and Count Franz Moritz von Lacy held actual command. Lacy had served under Marshal DaunLeopold Josef Graf Daun
Count Leopold Joseph von Daun , later Prince of Thiano, Austrian field marshal, was born at Vienna, as son of Count Wirich Philipp von Daun.- Background :...
during the Seven Years War, and knew his military business. He established the Austrian army on the most defensible position available. Centered at Jaroměř
Jaromer
Jaroměř is a town in the Hradec Králové Region of the Czech Republic. It is located 15 kilometers northeast of the district town of Hradec Králové. The town lies at the confluence of three rivers, notably the Mettau and the Elbe...
, a triple line of redoubt
Redoubt
A redoubt is a fort or fort system usually consisting of an enclosed defensive emplacement outside a larger fort, usually relying on earthworks, though others are constructed of stone or brick. It is meant to protect soldiers outside the main defensive line and can be a permanent structure or a...
s extended 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) southwest along the river to Königgrätz. The Austrians also augmented this defensive line with their 600 artillery.
While the main Habsburg army faced Frederick at the Elbe, a smaller army under the command of Baron Ernst Gideon von Laudon guarded the passes from Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
and Lusatia
Lusatia
Lusatia is a historical region in Central Europe. It stretches from the Bóbr and Kwisa rivers in the east to the Elbe valley in the west, today located within the German states of Saxony and Brandenburg as well as in the Lower Silesian and Lubusz voivodeships of western Poland...
into Bohemia. Laudon was another battle-hardened and cagey commander with extensive field experience, but even he could not cover the long frontier completely. Shortly after Frederick crossed into Bohemia, Prince Henry, a brilliant strategist in his own right, maneuvered around Laudon's troops and entered Bohemia at Hainspach (Haňšpach, in Lipová (Děčín District)
Lipová (Děčín District)
Lipová is a village and municipality in Děčín District in the Ústí nad Labem Region of the Czech Republic.The municipality covers an area of , and has a population of 657 ....
, in the modern Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
). To avoid being flanked, Laudon withdrew across the Iser River, but by mid-August, the main Austrian army was in danger of being outflanked by Henry on its left wing. At its center and right, it faced a well-disciplined army commanded by Frederick, arguably the best general of the age.
While his main army was entrenched on the heights above the Elbe, Joseph encouraged raids against the Prussian troops. On 7 August 1778, with two squadrons of his regiment, the intrepid "rookie", now Major Nauendorf, led a raid against a Prussian convoy at Berbersdorf
Striegistal
Striegistal is a municipality in the district of Mittelsachsen, in Saxony, Germany. In 1994, the unification of the communities of Berbersdorf, Schmalbach, Goßberg, Mobendorf and Pappendorf with Kaltofen im Rahmen in the community regional reform, created the Community of Striegistal...
in the Kingdom of Saxony
Kingdom of Saxony
The Kingdom of Saxony , lasting between 1806 and 1918, was an independent member of a number of historical confederacies in Napoleonic through post-Napoleonic Germany. From 1871 it was part of the German Empire. It became a Free state in the era of Weimar Republic in 1918 after the end of World War...
. The surprised convoy surrendered and Nauendorf captured its officers, 110 men, 476 horses, 240 wagons of flour, and 13 transport wagons. This kind of action characterized the entire war. There were no major battles. The war consisted of a series of raids and counter-raids during which the opposing sides lived off the country-side and tried to deny each other access to supplies and fodder. Soldiers later said they spent more time foraging for food than they did fighting.
The armies remained in their encampments for the campaign season while men and horses ate all the provisions and forage within miles. Prince Henry wrote to his brother, suggesting they complete their operations by 22 August, at which time he estimated he would have exhausted local supplies of food for his men and fodder for his horses. Frederick agreed. He laid plans to cross the Elbe and approach the Austrian force from the rear, but the more he examined the conditions of Joseph's entrenchments, the more he realized the campaign was already lost. Even if he and Henry executed simultaneous attacks on the Königgrätz heights, such a plan exposed Henry to a flanking attack from Laudon. A coordinated frontal and rear assault was also unlikely to succeed. If it did succeed, the Prussian losses would be unacceptable and would demolish his army's capacity to resist other invaders. From Frederick's perspective, the Russians and the Swedes were always ready to take advantage of any perceived Prussian weakness. The French also could not be trusted to keep their distance. For Frederick, it was a risk not worth taking. Despite this realization, the four armies—two Austrian, two Prussian—remained in place until September, eating as much of the country's resources as they could.
The battle-less war was not without incident and these may have lost no luster in the telling. One story from the war captured the imagination of the historical painter, Bernhard Rode
Bernhard Rode
Bernhard Rode was a Prussian artist and engraver well-known for portraying historical scenes and allegorical works. He knew most of the central figures in the Berlin Enlightenment as Friedrich Nicolai and Gotthold Lessing, and the philosophical and political discussions of the Berlin Philosophs...
. From their advantageous height by Königgrätz, the Austrians frequently bombarded the Prussian army encamped below them. On the same day that Frederick's doctors bled
Bloodletting
Bloodletting is the withdrawal of often little quantities of blood from a patient to cure or prevent illness and disease. Bloodletting was based on an ancient system of medicine in which blood and other bodily fluid were considered to be "humors" the proper balance of which maintained health...
him, an Austrian cannonade grew so strong that Frederick rode out to observe the damage. During the ride, his vein opened. A company medic bound his wound (see painting by Bernhard Rohde in the Infobox). In his less-than-complimentary history of Frederick the Great, the English historian Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was...
(1795–1881) relayed the story of Frederick and a Croatian marksman. As Frederick was reconnoitering, Carlyle maintained, the King encountered the Croat taking aim at him. Reportedly, he wagged his finger at the man, as if to say, do not do that. The Croat thought better of shooting the King, and disappeared into the woods. Some reports maintained the Croat actually knelt before the king and kissed his hand.
Nauendorf continued his raids, the soldiers foraged for food and dug up the local potato crop, and Joseph and Frederick glared at one another by Königgrätz. Maria Theresa had sent Kaunitz on a secret mission to Berlin to offer a truce. In a second trip, she offered a settlement, and finally wrote to Catherine in Russia to ask for assistance. When Joseph discovered his mother's maneuvering behind his back, he furiously offered to resign. His mother enlisted the assistance she needed. Catherine offered to mediate the dispute; if her assistance was unacceptable, she was willing to send 50,000 troops to augment the Prussian force. Frederick started to withdraw portions of his force in mid-September. In October, Joseph withdrew most of his army to the Bohemian border and Frederick withdrew his remaining troops into Prussia. Two small forces of hussars and dragoons remained in Bohemia to provide a winter cordon; these forces allowed Joseph and Frederick to keep an eye on each other while their diplomats negotiated at Teschen.
Winter actions
Appointed to be commander of the Austrian winter cordon, Dagobert Sigmund von WurmserDagobert Sigmund von Wurmser
Dagobert Sigismund, Count Wurmser was an Austrian field marshal during the French Revolutionary Wars. Although he fought in the Seven Years War, the War of the Bavarian Succession, and mounted several successful campaigns in the Rhineland in the initial years of the French Revolutionary Wars, he...
ordered a small assault column under the command of Colonel Wilhelm Klebeck to attack the village of Dittersbach.Shortly afterward, Klebeck was elevated to the rank of Baron (Freiherr), and awarded the Knights Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa
Military Order of Maria Theresa
The Military Order of Maria Theresa was an Order of the Austro-Hungarian Empire founded on June 18, 1757, the day of the Battle of Kolin, by the Empress...
(15 February 1779). Digby Smith. Klebeck. Leonard Kudrna and Digby Smith, compilers. A biographical dictionary of all Austrian Generals in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1792–1815. Napoleon Series. Robert Burnham, Editor in Chief. April 2008. Accessed 22 March 2010. Klebeck led a column of Croats into the village. During the action, 400 Prussians were killed, another 400 made prisoner, and eight colors were captured. Following his successes against the Prussians in 1778, Joseph awarded Wurmser the Knights Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa
Military Order of Maria Theresa
The Military Order of Maria Theresa was an Order of the Austro-Hungarian Empire founded on June 18, 1757, the day of the Battle of Kolin, by the Empress...
on 21 October 1778.
In another raid, in January 1779, Wurmser advanced into the County of Glatz in five columns, two of which, commanded by Major General Franz Joseph, Count Kinsky, surrounded Habelschwerdt on 17–18 January. While one column secured the approach, the other, under the leadership of Colonel Pallavicini,This officer was probably Colonel, later Count, Carlo Pallavicini, of the House of Pallavicini
Pallavicini
The Pallavicini, Pallavicino, were an Italian noble family descended from Oberto I . The first Pallavicino fief was created by Oberto II, who received them it by Frederick Barbarossa in 1162...
, who had been in Habsburg service since the latter days of the Seven Years War. Erik Lund. War for the every day: generals, knowledge and warfare in early modern Europe. Westport, Ct: Greenwood Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0-313-31041-6, p. 152. stormed the village and captured the Prince of Hessen-Philippsthal and 700 men, three cannon and seven colors. Wurmser himself led the third column in an assault on the so-called Swedish blockhouse at Oberschwedeldorf. It and the village of Habelschwerdt were set on fire by howitzers. Major General Ludwig, Baron of Terzi (1730–1800), who was covering with the remaining two columns, threw back the enemy support and took 300 Prussian prisoners. Meanwhile, Wurmser maintained his position at the nearby villages of Rückerts and Reinerz. His forward patrols reached the outskirts of Glatz, and patrolled much of the Silesian border with Prussia, near Schweidnitz. Halberschwerdt and Oberschedeldorf were both destroyed.
On 3 March 1779, Nauendorf raided Berbersdorf again with a large force of infantry and hussars and captured the entire Prussian garrison. Following this action, Joseph awarded him the Knight's Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa (19 May 1779).
Impact
In the Treaty of TeschenTreaty of Teschen
The Treaty of Teschen was signed on May 13, 1779, in Cieszyn , Austrian Silesia, between Austria and Prussia, which officially ended the War of the Bavarian Succession sparked by the death of Elector Maximilian III Joseph...
(May 1779), Maria Theresa returned Lower Bavaria
Lower Bavaria
Lower Bavaria is one of the seven administrative regions of Bavaria, Germany, located in the east of the state.- Geography :Lower Bavaria is subdivided into two regions - Landshut and Donau-Wald. Recent election results mark it as the most conservative part of Germany, generally giving huge...
to Charles Theodore, but kept the so-called Innviertel
Innviertel
The Innviertel is a traditional Austrian region south-east of the Inn river. It forms the western part of the state of Upper Austria and borders the German state of Bavaria...
, a 2200 square kilometre strip of land in the drainage basin of the Inn River. She and Joseph were surprised to find that the small territory had 120,000 inhabitants. Saxony received a financial reward of six million gulden
South German gulden
The Gulden was the currency of the states of southern Germany between 1754 and 1873. These states included Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, Frankfurt and Hohenzollern....
from the principal combatants for its role in the intervention.
The War of the Bavarian Succession was the last war for both Frederick and Maria Theresa, whose reigns began and ended with wars against one another. Although they deployed armies three to four times the size of the armies of the Seven Years War, neither monarch used the entirety of the military force each had at his or her disposal, making this war-without-battles remarkable. Despite the restraint of the monarchs, some early 19th-century casualty estimates suggest that tens of thousands died of starvation and hunger-related disease. Carlyle's more moderate estimate lies at about 10,000 Prussians and probably another 10,000 Austrian dead. Michael Hochedlinger assesses combined casualties at approximately 30,000, Robert Kann gives no estimate of casualties, but suggests the primary causes of death were cholera
Cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...
and dysentery
Dysentery
Dysentery is an inflammatory disorder of the intestine, especially of the colon, that results in severe diarrhea containing mucus and/or blood in the faeces with fever and abdominal pain. If left untreated, dysentery can be fatal.There are differences between dysentery and normal bloody diarrhoea...
. Gaston Bodart
Gaston Bodart
Gaston Bodart was a military historian, statistician, and government official. He was born in 1867 in Vienna, Austria. He achieved distinction for his analysis of casualties of war in Austria's wars, from the Thirty Years War to the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 and for many years his studies of...
, whose 1915 work is still considered the authority on Austrian military losses, is specific: five Austrian generals (he does not name them), over 12,000 soldiers, and 74 officers died of disease. In minor actions and skirmishes, nine officers and 265 men were killed and four officers and 123 men were wounded, but not fatally. Sixty-two officers and 2,802 men were taken prisoner, and 137 men were missing. Over 3,000 Imperial soldiers deserted. Finally, 26 officers and 372 men were discharged with disabilities. Bodart also gives Prussian losses: one general killed (he does not say which), 87 officers and 3,364 men killed, wounded or captured. Overall, he assumes losses of ten percent of the fighting force. Little has been discovered of civilian casualties, although certainly the civilians also suffered from starvation and diseases. There were other damages: for example, Habelschwerdt and one of its hamlets were destroyed by fire.
Despite its short duration, the war itself cost Prussia 33 million florins
Austro-Hungarian gulden
The Gulden or forint was the currency of the Austrian Empire and later the Austro-Hungarian Empire between 1754 and 1892 when it was replaced by the Krone/korona as part of the introduction of the gold standard. In Austria, the Gulden was initially divided into 60 Kreuzer, and in Hungary, the...
. For the Austrians, the cost was higher: 65 million florins, for a state with an annual revenue of 50 million florins. Joseph himself described war as "a horrible thing ... the ruin of many innocent people."
Change in warfare
This also was the last European war of the old style, in which armies maneuvered sedately at a distance while diplomats hustled between capitals to resolve their Majesties' differences. Given the length of time—six months—the cost in life and treasure was high. In light of the scale of warfare experienced in Europe less than a generation later in the French Revolutionary WarsFrench Revolutionary Wars
The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of major conflicts, from 1792 until 1802, fought between the French Revolutionary government and several European states...
, and shortly after, in the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
, though, this six-month engagement seems mild. Yet, while historians often dismissed it as the last of the archaic mode of Ancien Régime warfare, elements of the war foreshadowed conflicts to come: the sheer sizes of the armies deployed reflected emerging abilities and willingness to conscript, train, equip and field larger armies than had been done in previous generations.
The war also reflected a new height in military spending, especially by the Habsburgs. After the Seven Years War, the size of the Habsburg military shrank, from 201,311 men in arms in 1761 to 163,613 in 1775. In preparing for a second summer's campaign, Joseph's army grew from 195,108 effectives in the summer of 1778 to 308,555 men in arms in Spring 1779. Habsburg military strength never dropped below 200,000 effectives between 1779 and 1792, when Austria entered the War of the First Coalition. Several times it surged above 300,000 men in arms, responding to needs on the borders with the Ottoman Empire or the revolt in the Austrian Netherlands. The military also underwent a massive organizational overhaul.
In the vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
, the Austrians called the war Zwetschgenrummel (Plum Fuss), and for the Prussians and Saxons, it was Kartoffelkrieg (Potato War). In the historiography of European warfare, historians almost always described the War of the Bavarian Succession "in dismissive or derisive terms [as] the apotheosis (or perhaps caricature) of old regime warfare," despite its grand name. Some historians have maintained that the focus on the consumption of the produce of the land gave the war its popular name: the Potato War. Others suggest that the two armies lobbed potatoes instead of cannonballs or mortars. A third theory maintains that the war acquired its popular name because it took place during the potato harvest.
Resurgence of the problem
The underlying problem was not solved: Joseph's foreign policy dictated the expansion of Habsburg influence over German-speaking territories and only this, he believed, would counter Prussia's growing strength in Imperial affairs. In 1785, Joseph again sought to make territorial deals, again with Charles Theodore, and again offering to trade portions of Bavarian territory for portions of the Austrian Netherlands, a deal similar to the one that had failed in 1778. This time it would be a straight trade: territory for territory, not a partition. Although the Austrian Netherlands was a wealthy territory, it was a thorn in Joseph's side, opposing his administrative and bureaucratic reforms and devouring military and administrative resources he desperately needed elsewhere in his realm. Despite its problems, Joseph could not afford to give up the Netherlands entirely, so his efforts to negotiate a partial territorial exchange guaranteed him some of the financial benefits of both his Netherlands possessions and the Bavarian territories. Even if he had to give up the Austrian Netherlands, it meant "the barter of an indefensible strategic position and ... an economic liability for a great territorial and political gain, adjacent to the monarchy." Again, Charles II August, Duke of Zweibrücken, resented the possible loss of his Bavarian expectancy, and again, Frederick II offered aid. This time, no war developed, not even a Potato War. Instead, Frederick resorted to pressure politics. He founded the FürstenbundFürstenbund
The Fürstenbund was a union of German minor princes in the Holy Roman Empire. It was formed in 1785 under the leadership of Frederick II of Prussia, to oppose the ambition of Emperor Joseph II to add Bavaria to the Habsburg domains....
, or the Union of Princes, comprising the influential princes of the northern German states, and these individuals jointly pressured Joseph to relinquish his ambitious plans. In 1799, the duchy passed to Maximilian IV Joseph, brother of Charles August, whose only child had died in 1784.
Long-term effect: the rise of German dualism
Joseph understood the problems facing his multi-ethnic patrimony and the ambivalent position the Austrians held in the Holy Roman EmpireHoly Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
. Although the Habsburgs and their successor house of Habsburg-Lorraine had, with two exceptions, held the position of Emperor since the early 15th century, the basis of 18th-century Habsburg power lay not in the Holy Roman Empire itself, but in Habsburg territories in Eastern Europe, where the family had vast domains, the Italian peninsula, and the Lowlands. For Joseph or his successors to wield influence in the German-speaking states, they needed to acquire additional German-speaking territories. Acquisition of Central European territories with German-speaking subjects would strengthen the Austrian position in the Holy Roman Empire. As far as Joseph was concerned, only this could shift the center of the Habsburg empire into German-speaking Central Europe. This agenda made dispensable both the Austrian Netherlands—Habsburg territories which lay furthest west—and Galicia—Habsburg territories which lay furthest east. It also made the reacquisition of German-speaking Silesia and acquisition of new territories in Bavaria essential.
By the late 1770s, Joseph also faced important diplomatic obstacles in consolidating Habsburg influence in central Europe. When the British had been Austria's allies, Austria could count on British support in its wars, but Britain was now allied with Prussia. In the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756
Diplomatic Revolution
The Diplomatic Revolution of 1756 is a term applied to the reversal of longstanding diplomatic alliances which were upheld until the War of the Austrian Succession and then reversed in the Seven Years' War; the shift has also been known as "the great change of partners"...
, the French replaced the British as Austria's ally, but they were fickle, as Joseph discovered when Charles Gravier extricated Versailes from its obligations. Russia, which also had been an important Austrian ally for most of the Seven Years War, sought opportunities for expansion at the expense of its weak neighbors. In 1778, that meant Poland
Partitions of Poland
The Partitions of Poland or Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth took place in the second half of the 18th century and ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland for 123 years...
and the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
, but Joseph fully understood the danger of appearing weak in Russia's eyes: Habsburg lands could be carved off easily by the cagey Catherine's diplomatic knife. For Joseph, Frederick of Prussia was the enemy, as he had been throughout the reigns of Theresa and Franz before him, when the Prussian state's emergence as a player on the European stage had occurred at Habsburg expense, first with the loss of Silesia, and later in the 1750s and 1760s. Joseph sought to unify the different portions of his realm, not the German states as a whole, and to establish Habsburg hegemony in German-speaking central Europe beginning with the partition of Bavaria.
The broad geographic outlines of European states changed rapidly in the last 50 years of the century, with partitions of Poland and territorial exchanges through conquest and diplomacy. Rulers sought to centralize their control over their domains and create well-defined borders within which their writ was law. For Joseph, the acquisition of Bavaria, or at least parts of it, would link Habsburg territories in Bohemia with those in the Tyrol, and partially compensate Austria for its loss of Silesia. The Bavarian succession crisis provided Joseph with a viable opportunity to consolidate his influence in the Central European states, to bolster his financially strapped government with much-needed revenue, and to strengthen his army with German-speaking conscripts. Supremacy in the German states was worth a war. For Frederick, the preservation of Charles August's inheritance was not worth a war. Frederick had had sufficient war in the first years of his reign, and in its last 20 years, he sought to preserve the status quo
Status quo
Statu quo, a commonly used form of the original Latin "statu quo" – literally "the state in which" – is a Latin term meaning the current or existing state of affairs. To maintain the status quo is to keep the things the way they presently are...
, not to enter into risky adventures that might upset it. If he had to withdraw from engagement with Joseph's army, such a sacrifice was a temporary measure. Warfare was only one means of diplomacy, and he could employ others in this contest with Austria. The Austro-Prussian dualism
German dualism
Austria and Prussia had a long running conflict and rivalry for supremacy in Central Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries, called in Germany. While wars were a part of the rivalry, it was also a race for prestige to be seen as the legitimate political force of the German-speaking peoples...
that dominated the next century's unification movement rumbled ominously in the War of the Bavarian Succession.
Further reading
20th century Kotulla, Michael, "Bayerischer Erbfolgekrieg." (1778/79), In: Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte vom Alten Reich bis Weimar (1495 1934). [Lehrbuch], Springer, Berlin: Heidelberg 2008, ISBN 978-3-540-48705-0. Ziechmann, Jürgen, Der Bayerische Erbfolge-Krieg 1778/1779 oder Der Kampf der messerscharfen Federn. Edition Ziechmann, Südmoslesfehn 2007, Groening, Monika . Karl Theodors stumme Revolution: Stephan Freiherr von Stengel, 1750–1822, und seine staats- und wirtschaftspolitischen Innovationen in Bayern, 1778-99. Obstadt-Weiher: Verlag regionalkultur, [2001]. Nersesov, G.A. . Politika Rossii na Teshenskom kongresse: 1778–1779. No publication information.- Thomas, Marvin Jr. Karl Theodor and the Bavarian Succession, 1777–1778: a thesis in history. Pennsylvania State University, 1980. Criste, Oskar. Kriege unter Kaiser Josef II. Nach den Feldakten and anderen authentischen Quellen. Wien: Verlag Seidel, 1904.
19th century Reimann, Eduard. Geschichte des bairischen Erbfolgekrieges no publication information. 1869. Geschichte des Baierischen Erbfolgestreits [microform] : nebst Darstellung der Lage desselben im Jenner 1779. Frankfurt & Leipzig: [s.n.], 1779. Neufchâteau, Nicolas Louis François de (comte). Histoire de l'occupation de la Baviere par les Autrichiens, en 1778 et 1779 ; contenant les details de la guerre et des negotiations que ce different occasionna, et qui furent terminées, en 1779, par la paix de Teschen. Paris: Imprimerieimperiale, [1805]. Thamm, A. T. G. Plan des Lagers von der Division Sr. Excel. des Generals der Infanterie von Tauenzien zwischen Wisoka und Praschetz vom 7ten bis 18ten July 1778. no publication information, 1807.
18th century Historische Dokumentation zur Eingliederung des Innviertels im Jahre 1779: Sonderausstellung: Innviertler Volkskundehaus u. Galerie d. Stadt Ried im Innkreis, 11. Mai bis 4. Aug. 1979. (Documents relating to the annexation of the Innviertel in 1779.) Geschichte des Baierischen Erbfolgestreits nebst Darstellung der Lage desselben im Jenner 1779. Frankfurt: [s.n.], 1779. [Seidl, Carl von]. Versuch einer militärischen Geschichte des Bayerischen Erbfolge-Krieges im Jahre 1778, im Gesichtspunkte der Wahrheit betrachtet von einem Königl. Preussischen Officier. no publication information. Bourscheid, J. Der erste Feldzug im vierten preussischen Kriege: Im Gesichtspunkte der Strategie beschreiben. Wien: [s.n.], 1779. Keith, Robert Murray. Exposition détaillée des droits et de la conduite de S.M. l'imṕératrice reine apostolique rélativement à la succession de la Bavière: pour servir de réponse à l'Exposé des motifs qui ont engagé S.M. le roi de Prusse à s'opposer au démembrement de la Bavière. Vienne: Chez Jean Thom. Nob. de Trattnern, 1778.
- FrederickFrederick II of PrussiaFrederick II was a King in Prussia and a King of Prussia from the Hohenzollern dynasty. In his role as a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, he was also Elector of Brandenburg. He was in personal union the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel...
. Memoirs from the Peace of Hubertsburg, to the Partition of Poland, and of the Bavarian War. London: printed for G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1789.