Known as the ‘plum scrum’ or ‘potato war’, the War of the Bavarian Succession was by no means as harmless a conflict as these nicknames suggest.
From 1765, Joseph II was in charge of the army but had no opportunity to put his soldiers into the field, as Maria Theresa’s inglorious experiences had made her sick of war. Shortly after her death, Joseph saw a chance to make a bid for Bavaria. Although he did not start the kind of conflagration his mother had in the Seven Years’ War, he did share her fate of falling foul of Frederick of Prussia.
Heirs to thrones regularly faced crises when it came to the succession: as the Habsburgs found in 1740, their hereditary or chartered rights did not prevent other powers from making their own claims. When the Bavarian succession came up for grabs in 1777, the boot was on the other foot: as from the Habsburg point of view the Bavarian electors Maximilian III Joseph and Karl Theodor the elector Palatine had no legitimate heirs, Joseph II saw his chance to compensate the dynasty for the loss of Silesia and laid claim to Lower Bavaria and the Upper Palatinate.
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