War of the Bavarian Succession

Charles IV Theodore

The Sulzbach branch of the Wittelsbach family inherited the Electorate 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.[12] Thomas Carlyle referred to Charles Theodore as a "poor idle creature, of purely egoistical, ornamental, dilettante nature; sunk in theatricals, [and] bastard children".[13] The French foreign minister Vergennes, 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 electress [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.[14]

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.[15] With this host of male offspring, although Charles Theodore certainly wished to acquire more territory, he needed it to be territory that he could bequeath through his testament, rather than territory encumbered by a legal entailment that could only pass to a legitimate child.[16]

Archduke Joseph (portrait by Georg Decker)

Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, Archduke of Austria, and co-ruler with his mother, Empress Maria Theresa, coveted Bavaria. He felt the War of the Austrian Succession had shown that the House of Habsburg-Lorraine needed a wider sphere of influence in the German-speaking parts of the Holy Roman Empire.[17] 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 to 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 (generally better-developed economically), not lands in the eastern region of the Habsburg empire, even such strategic territories as Bukovina.[18]

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.[18] 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 electorate.[19] Charles Theodore also hoped to acquire from Joseph some unencumbered parts of the Austrian Netherlands and parts of Further 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.[20] 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 electorate, especially in its territorial integrity.[21]

Charles II August, Duke of Zweibrücken

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 II August (Charles August). Some historians maintain the active negotiator was Max Joseph's widow, Maria Anna Sophia of Saxony. Others assert it was Max Joseph's sister, Maria Antonia of Bavaria, who was also Charles August's mother-in-law and 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.[22]

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 Ferdinand, Duke of Parma.[23] After this disappointment, Charles II August married Maria Amalia of Saxony in 1774; she was the daughter of Frederick Christian, Elector of Saxony (d. 1763) and his wife Maria Antonia, Max Joseph's sister. In 1769, the reigning Saxon elector, Frederick Augustus III, 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 Elector: both his mother- and brother-in-law wanted to ensure that Maria Amalia's husband received his rightful inheritance.[21]

Count Karl-Wilhelm Finck von Finckenstein, Frederick the Great's prime minister, believed that any Austrian acquisition in Bavaria would shift the balance of power in the Holy Roman Empire, diminishing Prussia's influence.[24] 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, and now, with the economy and society modernizing under his direction, Prussia was emerging as a great power. In the Silesian Wars and the Seven Years' War, Frederick had earned a new, if grudging, respect for his kingdom's military and diplomatic prowess from the European powers of France, Russia, Britain and Austria.[25] 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.[24]

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, she wished to avoid a continental engagement; she could do more damage to the British in North America than in Europe.[24] The Diplomatic Revolution in 1756 had gone against two hundred years of French foreign policy of opposition to the House of Habsburg, arguably bringing France massive territorial gains in repeated wars with Habsburg Austria and Spain.[26] A reversal of this policy in 1756 tied French foreign policy in Europe to Vienna which, although it could give France additional influence and leverage, could also cripple the country's diplomatic maneuvers with the other power players: Britain, Russia, and Prussia. Despite this restructuring, there existed in the French Court at Versailles, and in France generally, a strong anti-Austrian sentiment.[24] The personal union (the diplomatic term for marriage) of Louis, then the Dauphin, 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."[26] The French foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes, maintained deep-seated hostility to the Austrians that antedated the alliance of 1756. He had not approved of the shift in France's traditional bonds and considered the Austrians untrustworthy. Consequently, he managed to extricate France from immediate military obligations to Austria by 1778.[24]

On 3 January 1778, a few days after Max Joseph's death, the electoral equerry proclaimed the succession of Charles Theodore. Dragoons rode through the streets of Munich, some banging drums and some blowing trumpets, and others shouting, "Long Live our Elector Charles Theodore."[27] According to 3 January agreement between Joseph and Charles Theodore, fifteen thousand 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 Bavaria, or even a portion 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 Further Austria, most of which lay in southwestern Germany, but Joseph would never release any sizable portion of territory, and certainly not any territory of strategic military or commercial value.[28]

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 this slighted prince to lodge protests with the Imperial Diet in Regensburg.[29] Joseph's troops remained in portions of Bavaria, even establishing an Austrian administration at Straubing, precipitating a diplomatic crisis.[24] Austrian occupation of Bavaria was unacceptable to Charles August's champion, Frederick.[25] Prussian troops mobilized near Prussia's border with Bohemia, reminiscent of the invasion in 1740 that so endangered Maria Theresa's succession to the Habsburg hereditary lands. 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.[24] Britain, Prussia's strongest ally, was already mired in a war in North America, but Prussia's military had recovered from the Seven Years' War and Frederick did not require any help. Prussia's other ally, Saxony, aligned by two marriages with Charles August, was strategically prepared for war against Austria and ready to contribute twenty thousand troops.[30] Watching from Saint Petersburg, Catherine II was willing to mop up the spoils of war for the Russian Empire but did not want to get involved in another costly European conflict.[31]

For four months, negotiators shuttled between Vienna and Berlin, Dresden and Regensburg, and Zweibrücken, Munich and Mannheim.[25] 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.[32]

A few days after Wunsch's encounter with Nauendorf, Frederick entered Bohemia. His eighty thousand troops occupied Náchod but advanced no further. The Habsburg army stood on the heights of the Elbe river, nominally under Joseph but with Count Franz Moritz von Lacy in practical command.[37] Lacy had served under Marshal Daun during the Seven Years' War and knew his military business. He established the Austrian army on the most defensible position available: centered at Jaroměř,[38] a triple line of redoubts extended 15 kilometers (9.3 mi) southwest along the river to Königgrätz. The Austrians also augmented this defensive line with their six hundred artillery pieces.[39]

This outline map of the 20th-century Czech Republic includes most of 18th-century Bohemia. Joseph was outnumbered and nearly surrounded, but Frederick chose not to engage because of Joseph's superior position on the heights above the Elbe river.

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.[40] 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 tactical general of the age and feared for his victories against France and Austria in the previous war.[41]

While his main army remained 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 Bieberdorf in the County of Glatz. The surprised convoy surrendered and Nauendorf captured its officers, 110 men, 476 horses, 240 wagons of flour, and thirteen transport wagons.[42] 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 countryside and tried to deny each other access to supplies and fodder.[43] Soldiers later said they spent more time foraging for food than they did fighting.[44]

The armies remained in their encampments for the campaign season while men and horses ate all the provisions and forage for miles around.[25] 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.[45] 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 that 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. Even if it did, 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, and 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.[25]

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, an incident later depicted by the painter Bernhard Rode.[46] In his admiring history of Frederick the Great, the British historian Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) relayed the story of Frederick and a Croatian marksman. As Frederick was reconnoitring, 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 maintain he actually knelt before the king and kissed his hand.[47]

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 the Empress Catherine in Russia to ask for assistance. When Joseph discovered his mother's maneuvering behind his back, he furiously offered to abdicate. His mother enlisted the assistance she needed. Catherine offered to mediate the dispute; if her assistance was unacceptable, she was willing to send fifty thousand troops to augment the Prussian force, even though she disliked Frederick and her alliance with him was strictly defensive. Frederick withdrew 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's troops while their diplomats negotiated at Teschen.[25]

Appointed as the commander of the Austrian winter cordon, Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser ordered a small assault-column under the command of Colonel Wilhelm Klebeck to attack the village of Dittersbach.[Note 1] Klebeck led a column of Croats into the village. During the action, four hundred Prussians were killed, another four hundred made prisoner, and eight colors were captured.[48] Following his successes against the Prussians in 1778, Joseph awarded Wurmser the Knight's Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa on 21 October 1778.[49]

In another raid, on 1 January 1779, Colonel Franz Levenehr led 3,200 men (four battalions, six squadrons, and 16 artillery) into Zuckmantel, a village in Silesia on the Prussian border, 7 kilometers (4 mi) south of Ziegenhals. There he ran against a 10,000-man Prussian force commanded by General Johann Jakob von Wunsch; the Austrians decisively defeated the Prussians, with a loss of 20 men (wounded) against the Prussian losses of 800.[50][Note 2] Two weeks later, 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,[Note 3] stormed the village and captured the Landgrave of Hessen-Philippsthal, 37 officers, plus 700 to 1,000 men, three cannon and seven colors; in this action, the Prussians lost 400 men dead or wounded. Wurmser himself led the third column in an assault on the so-called Swedish blockhouse at Oberschwedeldorf.[51] It and the village of Habelschwerdt were set on fire by howitzers. Major General Terzy (1730–1800), who was covering with the remaining two columns, threw back the enemy support and took three hundred Prussian prisoners. Meanwhile, Wurmser maintained his position at the nearby villages of Rückerts and Reinerz.[41] His forward patrols reached the outskirts of Glatz and patrolled much of the Silesian border with Prussia near Schweidnitz.[48] Halberschwerdt and Oberschedeldorf were both destroyed.[52]

On 3 March 1779, Nauendorf again raided Berbersdorf with a large force of infantry and hussars and captured the entire Prussian garrison. Joseph awarded him the Knight's Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa (19 May 1779).[42]

This was the last European war of the old style, in which armies maneuvered sedately at a distance while diplomats hustled between capitals to resolve the monarchs' 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 Wars and Napoleonic Wars, though, this six-month engagement seems mild.[64] 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.[65]

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.[66] Habsburg military strength never dropped below two hundred thousand effectives between 1779 and 1792, when Austria entered the War of the First Coalition. Several times it surged above three hundred thousand men in arms, responding to needs on the Ottoman border or the revolt in the Austrian Netherlands. The military also underwent a massive organizational overhaul.[67]

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 describe 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.[68] Some historians have maintained that the focus on the consumption of the produce of the land gave the war its popular name. Others suggest that the two armies lobbed potatoes instead of cannonballs or mortars.[69] A third theory maintains that the war acquired its popular name because it took place during the potato harvest.[70]

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 a territorial deal with Charles Theodore, again offering to trade portions of Bavarian territory for portions of the Austrian Netherlands. This time it would be a straight trade: territory for territory, not a partition.[71] 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.[72] 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.[73]

Even if Joseph 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."[59] Again, Charles II August, Duke of Zweibrücken, resented the possible loss of his Bavarian expectancy, and again, Frederick of Prussia offered aid. This time, no war developed, not even a "Potato War". Instead, Frederick founded the Fürstenbund, 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. Rather than increasing Austria's influence in German affairs, Joseph's actions increased Prussian influence, making Prussia seem like a protector state against greedy Habsburg imperialism (an ironic contrast to the earlier stage of the Austro-Prussian rivalry, in which Frederick seized German-speaking lands with military force and without formal declaration of war, causing most of the German states to join Austria). In 1799, Bavaria and the Palatinate passed to Maximilian IV Joseph, brother of Charles August, whose only child had died in 1784.[74]

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