Bavarian Succession Crisis and Treaty of Teschen (1777–1779)

Key Figures: Maximilian Joseph III (Elector of Bavaria, d. 1777), Maria Theresa (Austrian Empress), Joseph II (Holy Roman Emperor), Frederick the Great (Prussian King), Charles Theodore (Elector Palatine, successor to Bavaria), Catherine the Great (Russian Empress, mediator), Wenzel Anton, Prince of Kaunitz (Austrian Chancellor)

Summary

On December 30, 1777, Elector Maximilian Joseph III of Bavaria died without a direct heir, igniting the Bavarian succession crisis — a dangerous contest between Austria and Prussia over the future of the most strategically located German electorate. Austria immediately negotiated a treaty with the heir, Charles Theodore, ceding large portions of Bavaria to Habsburg control; Frederick the Great of Prussia mobilized to block what he saw as a violation of the European balance of power. The resulting conflict — the brief and largely bloodless War of the Bavarian Succession (July 1778 – May 1779), known mockingly as the “Potato War” — ended with the Treaty of Teschen (May 13, 1779), mediated by Catherine the Great of Russia. The crisis and its resolution reshaped German power politics, confirmed Russian diplomatic stature in European affairs, and illustrated how 18th-century great powers could substitute negotiation and supply-line attrition for large-scale battle — a harbinger of 19th-century Concert of Europe diplomacy.

December 1777: The Succession Crisis Begins

On December 30, 1777, Maximilian Joseph III died without legitimate issue after a reign of nearly three decades. Under the Golden Bull of 1356, the Bavarian electorate passed to the next branch of the Wittelsbach dynasty: Charles Theodore, Elector Palatine and a childless, dissolute ruler who had little attachment to Bavaria and several illegitimate children he wished to legitimize and endow with noble territory.

Joseph II of Austria moved with unusual speed. Within days of Maximilian Joseph’s death, Habsburg diplomats in Munich had drafted a preliminary convention with Charles Theodore. On January 3, 1778, Austria and the new Elector signed an agreement transferring roughly 10,000 square kilometers of lower Bavaria to Habsburg control on the basis of archaic claims predating the Thirty Years’ War. The Habsburgs justified this transfer as recovery of ancestral territories rather than conquest — a legal fiction that fooled no one.

Frederick the Great of Prussia, then 65 years old and determined to block any Austrian encroachment on German territory, issued a formal protest in January 1778 and began mobilizing his armies by March. Frederick framed his objection not as mere self-interest but as the defense of German constitutional law — specifically the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) and its guarantees of territorial status quo — and appealed to the princes of the Holy Roman Empire for support. Most princes, wary of Austrian aggrandizement, sided rhetorically with Prussia.

The War of the Bavarian Succession (July 1778 – May 1779)

The resulting war bore little resemblance to the Seven Years’ War that both sides had fought seventeen years earlier. Both Austria and Prussia fielded large armies — Austria approximately 180,000 troops and Prussia 160,000 — but commanders on both sides were reluctant to risk decisive engagement. Frederick, facing supply difficulties in the Bohemian mountains, directed his forces to march, countermarching to exhaust Austrian supply lines rather than force pitched battle. Soldiers foraged desperately for food in depopulated winter landscapes, giving rise to the nickname “Kartoffelkrieg” (Potato War).

Casualties from actual combat were negligible; deaths from disease and starvation numbered in the thousands. The war demonstrated that after the Seven Years’ War’s catastrophic human cost (roughly 1.4 million military and civilian deaths), European powers were unwilling to repeat the experience over territorial adjustments that could, in principle, be negotiated.

Maria Theresa, now 61 and in failing health (she would die in November 1780), strongly opposed the war she believed her son Joseph had rushed into. She opened back-channel communications with Frederick and appealed to France and Russia as guarantors of the 1756 Treaty of Versailles to facilitate a settlement.

Diplomatic Resolution and Russian Mediation

Catherine the Great of Russia seized the opportunity the crisis presented. Having consolidated her position on the Crimean frontier (see Catherine the Great and Russian Expansion in 1777), Catherine offered herself as mediator in early 1779. France, simultaneously managing its entry into the American Revolutionary War alongside the United States (see Franco-American Diplomacy of 1777), supported mediation to avoid a European land war that would distract from Atlantic operations.

Negotiations took place at Teschen (now Cieszyn, in modern Poland/Czech Republic border). Russia’s chief representative, Prince Repnin, and French diplomat the Baron de Breteuil facilitated the terms alongside Austrian Chancellor Kaunitz and Prussian envoys.

The Treaty of Teschen (May 13, 1779)

The Treaty of Teschen, signed on May 13, 1779, established:

1. Austrian Territorial Gain (Innviertel): Austria retained a modest slice of Bavaria — the Innviertel, roughly 2,200 square kilometers between the Hausruck and the Inn River, including the towns of Schärding, Ried im Innkreis, and Braunau (later famous as Adolf Hitler’s birthplace). Austria abandoned all other Bavarian claims.

2. Bavarian Integrity Confirmed: The rest of Bavaria, including Munich, reverted to Charles Theodore’s full sovereignty under the Wittelsbach dynasty. The Palatinate-Sulzbach succession was confirmed; Austrian annexation of the main electorate was blocked.

3. Prussian Guarantee of German Integrity: Prussia’s role as protector of the German territorial constitution was formally affirmed. The treaty implicitly recognized Frederick’s claim to speak for the smaller German princes against Habsburg encroachment — a precedent he exploited in 1785 when he founded the League of Princes (Fürstenbund) as a formal anti-Habsburg alliance.

4. Russian and French Co-Guarantee: Both Russia and France were named as guarantors of the treaty, marking Russia’s formal debut as a co-arbiter of German (and hence European) affairs alongside the traditional Western powers.

Significance

Austrian Ambitions Checked: Joseph II had hoped to exchange the Austrian Netherlands (modern Belgium) for all of Bavaria — a far more contiguous and strategically valuable territory. The Treaty of Teschen denied him this exchange. He would attempt again in 1784–1785 (the “Belgian exchange scheme”), only to be blocked by the League of Princes Frederick organized in response.

Russia’s European Role Confirmed: Catherine’s successful mediation at Teschen was her most significant diplomatic coup before her 1780 League of Armed Neutrality (which challenged British maritime supremacy during the American Revolutionary War). By inserting Russia as treaty guarantor, she claimed a permanent stake in Central European affairs — a role Russian empires would maintain until 1918. The mediation directly followed from Russian power built in the Crimea and Black Sea region throughout 1777.

Bloodless Great-Power Adjustment: The “Potato War” demonstrated that post-1763 European powers preferred supply-line attrition and negotiation to sustained battle. This preference would not survive the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815), but it marked a brief interlude in which diplomacy rather than battlefield decision resolved territorial disputes among exhausted empires.

American Revolutionary Context: The December 1777 death of Maximilian Joseph — the very month American forces were entering winter quarters at Valley Forge — shows how interconnected European crisis management was with events across the Atlantic. Prussian and Austrian attention to Bavarian affairs, and Catherine’s mediation focus, meant these powers were diplomatically occupied during the critical months when France formalized its alliance with the United States (February 6, 1778). Britain could not count on Continental distraction to prevent French intervention, and France knew its Continental flank was secure enough to risk Atlantic war.

Balance-of-Power Stability: By confirming the Austro-Prussian dualism in the Empire and preventing either power from decisively expanding at the other’s expense, the treaty preserved the fragmented structure of the Holy Roman Empire for another generation. The 39 sovereign German states that would form the 1815 German Confederation owed their survival partly to the Teschen framework.

Timeline of Key Events

Sources

1. Blanning, T. C. W. The Old European Order 1660–1800. Oxford University Press, 2002. — Comprehensive coverage of the War of the Bavarian Succession and its diplomatic settlement.
2. Hochedlinger, Michael. Austria’s Wars of Emergence: War, State, and Society in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1683–1797. Routledge, 2003. — Detailed analysis of the Teschen treaty’s role in Austrian–Prussian rivalry.
3. Riasanovsky, Nicholas V., and Mark D. Steinberg. A History of Russia. Oxford University Press, 2011. — Discussion of Catherine the Great’s diplomacy and the Teschen mediation.
4. Scott, H. M. The Birth of a Great Power System, 1740–1815. Longman, 2006. — The Treaty of Teschen in the context of evolving great-power balance after the Seven Years’ War.
5. Ingrao, Charles. The Habsburg Monarchy, 1618–1815. Cambridge University Press, 2000. — Joseph II’s Bavarian ambitions and the limits of Austrian expansion.