Bavaria and Austria: Conflicts

    
Fig. 3: Mediaeval Bavarian town

The areas held by Germanic Duchies were extensive – and it causes no surprise that the territories shrank and grew as a result of military or political activity from their very inception. The mediæval and renaissance periods experienced extraordinary upheaval, not least of which was religious. In the wake of the Reformation in much of Germany, most of the Germanic lands became Protestant – but Bavaria, largely because of the actions of William IV of Bavaria which were continued by his son Albert V (by ensuring education remained the province of the Jesuits in Bavaria), remained largely Roman Catholic. This state of affairs continues even today (Franconia is the sole exception and is largely Lutheran), and is one of the striking differences one encounters between Bavaria and the rest of Germany.

At some stages (after 955 A.D.), Bavaria expanded its territories to include areas north of the Danube, but much of these areas became Austria-held after 1156, when a dispute over Bavarian monarchist succession was resolved. The seesaw changes of territory illustrate that relations between Austria and Bavaria have often been tumultuous, and this helps us to understand that the events of the 1800s between Austria and Bavaria should not be seen in isolation, but as part of an historical variability.

Maximilian II Emanuel, for instance, by his actions made Bavaria vulnerable to Austrian control, and his dominions ended up controlled by Austria and the elector palatine between 1704 and 1714. During that period, a famous Bavarian peasant uprising against the occupying Austrians was brutally crushed in 1706, and it was only with the Treaty of Baden (the ending of hostilities between France and the Holy Roman Empire, in which various territories bearing the brunt of favour-wooing between pro-French and anti-French lands were re-distributed, rather like the swapping of properties in Monopoly) that a rather ravaged Bavaria was restored to her prince-elector, Maximilian II Emanuel.

His son, Charles VII Albert, had a strong grudge to repay – he and his family had been under house arrest in Austria for years, and the family was reunited only when he was 18. Perhaps his marriage to Marie Amelia, Archduchess of Austria, may be seen as a political manoeuvre in that light. After the death of Karl IV Josef Franz (Holy Roman Emperor, ruler of Austria), Charles VII Albert disputed the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 and claimed the German territories of the Habsburgs. He had already secured an alliance with France and, fortified by this alliance, invaded Upper Austria in 1741. He was planning to march onto Vienna, but France instructed him to take Prague instead. He conquered it to take the throne as King of Bohemia (1741) and became Holy Roman Emperor (crowned at Frankfurt) in 1742.

But what of Bavaria herself in all of this? Bavaria was invaded by the Austrians, and occupied once again by them for two years, until the invasion of Bohemia by Frederick II of Prussia reshuffled the political situation. Charles was given back Munich as a humiliating scrap, and his son Maximilian III Joseph negotiated for the return of Bavaria and associated dominions after his father’s death, by formally accepting the Pragmatic Sanction in 1745.

Maximilian’s lack of an heir led, after his death, to the rulership passing to Charles Theodor, elector palatine. This re-united the Palatinate with Bavaria (for the first time in more than 400 years), and Austria found this a disturbing increase of power in Bavaria, with whom she’d suffered such recent and turbulent relations. But Austria had a good fellow-conspirator in Charles Theodor himself who – incredibly – conspired secretly with Austria to have Lower Bavaria invaded by Austria under the claim that the lordships thereof were lapsed fiefdoms belonging to Austria and Bohemia. This led to the War of the Bavarian Succession (1788-1789), better known as the Kartoffelkrieg (Potato War), a term referring to the lengthy amount of time spent by the Austrian and Prussian troops in controlling food supply to the enemy.