Maximilian III Joseph, (March 28, 1727 – December 30, 1777), was a Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire and Duke of Bavaria from 1745 to 1777. He was the last of the Bavarian Branch of the House of Wittelsbach and because of his death, the War of Bavarian Succession broke out.
Born in Munich, Prince Maximilian Joseph was the eldest son of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII Albrecht and his wife, Archduchess Maria Amalia of Austria, daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I Princess Wilhelmina Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg.
Archduchess Maria Amalia of Austria’s older sister was Archduchess Maria Josepha of Austria was the eldest child of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I and Princess Wilhelmina Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg. She was named for her father. During the reign of her grandfather, Emperor Leopold I, Archduchess Maria Josepha’s father and uncle Archduke Charles of Austria, signed the Mutual Pact of Succession of 1703, which was issued by Emperor Leopold I, and effectively made Archduchess Maria Josepha the heir presumptive to the Hereditary Habsburg Lands.
However, Emperor Charles VI’s Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 annulled the earlier Mutual Pact of Succession of 1703 and made his daughter Archduchess Maria Theresa his successor instead of Archduchess Maria Josepha.
Archduchess Maria Theresa succeeded her father, Emperor Charles VI, 1740 and was ruler of the Habsburg Hereditary until her death in 1780, and she was the only woman to hold the position suo jure (in her own right). Archduchess Maria Theresa was the sovereign of Archduchess Austria, Queen of Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia. By her marriage to Duke Franz Stephen of Lorraine, she was Duchess of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany.
However, the Holy Roman Empire was governed by the Salic Law which barred women from the Imperial throne. That crown was not settled and the battle for that crown was part of the War of the Austrian Succession.
During the War of the Austrian Succession, Prince-Elector Charles Albrecht of Bavaria (father of Maximilian Joseph) invaded Upper Austria in 1741 and planned to conquer Vienna, but his allied French troops under the Duc de Belle-Isle were instead redirected to Bohemia, and Prague was conquered in November 1741.
That meant that Prince-Elector Charles Albrecht was crowned King of Bohemia in Prague on December 19, 1741, (usurping Archduchess Maria Theresa) when the Habsburgs had not yet been defeated. Prince-Elector Charles Albrecht was unanimously elected King of Germany on January 24, 1742 and became Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII Albrecht upon his coronation on February 12, 1742.
His brother Prince Clement August of Bavaria, the Archbishop-Elector of Cologne, generally sided with the Habsburg-Lorraine faction in the disputes over the Habsburg succession but instead cast his vote for his brother and personally crowned him Emperor at Frankfurt.
Emperor Charles VII Albrecht’s reign was brief. Emperor Charles VII Albrecht was suffering severely from gout and died at Nymphenburg Palace on January 20, 1745. His brother Prince Clement August of Bavaria then leaned towards Austria, and Prince Maximilian Joseph became Prince-Elector Maximilian III Joseph of Bavaria but could not secure his election as Emperor.
Prince-Elector Maximilian III Joseph inherited a country in the process of being invaded by Austrian armies as part of the War of the Austrian Succession.
The 18-year-old Prince-Elector Maximilian III Joseph wavered between the Peace-party, led by his mother Empress Maria Amalia and Army Commander Friedrich Heinrich von Seckendorff and the War-party, led by Foreign Minister General Ignaz Count of Törring and the French envoy Chavigny.
After the decisive defeat in the Battle of Pfaffenhofen on April 15, 1745, Prince-Elector Maximilian III Joseph quickly abandoned his imperial pretenses and made peace with Empress Maria Theresa in the Treaty of Füssen, in which he agreed to support her husband, Grand Duke Franz Stephen of Tuscany, in the upcoming imperial election.
Archduchess Maria Theresa secured her husband’s election as Emperor, which took place on September 13, 1745. Emperor Franz succeeded Charles VII Albrecht, and she made him co-regent of her hereditary dominions. As Consort to her husband, Emperor Franz, Maria Theresa was Empress Maria Theresa the title and name she is most known by.
In 1747, Prince-Elector Maximilian III Joseph married his first cousin, Princess Maria Anna Sophia of Saxony, but the marriage remained childless.
Maria Anna Sophia of Saxony was a daughter of King Augustus III of Poland (also Prince-Elector Friedrich August II of Saxony) and his wife Archduchess Maria Josepha of Austria who became Princess Electress of Bavaria by marriage to Prince-Elector Maximilian III Joseph of Bavaria.
Archduchess Maria Josepha of Austria, as we have seen above, was the eldest child of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I and Princess Wilhelmina Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg.
During the Seven Years’ War Bavarian forces then fought on the Habsburg side. Prince-Elector Maximilian III Joseph’s sister Princess Maria Josepha of Bavaria was married in 1765 to Empress Maria Theresa’s son Holy Emperor Joseph II. But long-term weakening of Prussia was not in the Bavarian interest, as that country offered the only counterweight to the Habsburg monarchy.
Prince-Elector Maximilian III Joseph tried, as far as possible, to keep Bavaria out of the wars. Apart from militia troops, he sent only a small force of 4,000 men to join the Austrian army. In 1758/1759 (only a year and half into the war), he withdrew Bavarian auxiliary troops from Austrian service. Together with the Wittelsbach Prince-Elector Elector Charles Theodore of the Palatinate of the Rhine he enforced the neutrality of the Empire during the conflict.
Prince-Elector Maximilian III Joseph was a progressive and enlightened ruler who did much to improve the development of his country. He encouraged agriculture, industry, and exploitation of the mineral wealth of the country, and abolished the Jesuit censorship of the press. In 1747 the Nymphenburg Porcelain Factory was established, while the Codex Maximilianeus bavaricus civilis was written in 1756. In 1759, he founded Munich’s first academic institution, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.
During the severe famine in 1770 Prince-Elector Maximilian III Joseph sold some of the crown jewels to pay for grain imports to relieve hunger. In that year, he also issued an edict against the extravagant pomposity of the Church which contributed to the end of the era of Bavarian rococo. He also forbade the Oberammergau Passion Play. In 1771 the elector regulated general school attendance.
In December 1777 Prince-Elector Maximilian III Joseph rode in his carriage through Munich; on the ride, as he passed one of the tower clocks, the mechanism broke, and the clock struck 77 times. Commenting to the passengers, Prince-Elector Maximilian III Joseph decided this was an omen, and that his years had run out.
Within days, he was stricken with a strange disease. None of his 15 doctors could diagnose it, but by Christmas, it had become clear that it was a particularly virulent strain of smallpox, called “purple small pox” at the time.
By the last day of the month he was dead without leaving an heir. Prince-Elector Maximilian III Joseph is buried in the crypt of the Theatinerkirche in Munich.
His death sparked the War of the Bavarian Succession.