A Bavarian victory in the WotAS (which I've considered) would almost certainly mean a loss of substantial Austrian territory. At the least Bavaria will take Bohemia and Tirol, and France the Low Countries; Prussia walks away with Silesia. IIRC Moravia would have gone to Saxony, and Bavaria also was interested in Upper Austria.
Maybe, although it depends on what you mean by “victory.” Maria Theresa might have disputed the legitimacy of Charles Albert’s election, but the truth was that even if she had been able to vote she wouldn’t have won since all the other electors were browbeaten into voting for Charles Albert. Now, I’ve established that Charles was not long for this world, but if the fortunes of war at the time of his death were such that Max III felt that he could safely claim the imperial throne the French might yet be able to arrange it for him. After all, three of the nine electors were Wittelsbachs; all they need is to get any two from the ranks of Saxony, Prussia, Trier, and Mainz to get a majority, which is eminently doable if the military situation looks decent.
If Max becomes emperor, then the important thing is that even if the Austrians subsequently rally, eject the French alliance from Bohemia, and end up with a status quo peace, it’s hard to imagine them stripping the crown from the duly elected Max III. Even when Maria Theresa’s armies had recaptured Upper Austria and Bohemia and driven Charles Albert from Bavaria entirely, she did not (to my knowledge) assert that her husband or son (b. 1741) was the rightful emperor. Her campaign to crown Francis Stephen did not begin until Charles was dead and the office was vacant again. So it’s quite possible to imagine a scenario in which Bavaria “loses” in a military sense and gains no territory, and yet manages to retain the imperial crown at least for the life of Max III. By some standards, at least, that’s a victory.
The territorial cessions you’re talking about are the Nymphenburg terms, which were quite ambitious but probably unrealistic. The problem was that all the signatories were highly suspicious of one another, and the treaty was especially unfavorable to Prussia. By the treaty of Nymphenburg, Frederick wasn’t even allotted all of Silesia - Upper Silesia, or at least part of it, would go to Saxony along with Moravia (which would be elevated to a kingdom, so that even if the Wettins later lost an election for the Polish crown they would still remain royal). So Frederick’s regional rival Saxony gets Moravia, part of Silesia, and a royal crown, Bavaria gets massively expanded with the addition of (at least) Bohemia, the Vorlande, Upper Austria, and the imperial crown, and Prussia gets… Lower Silesia. I’m pretty hard on Frederick but to be honest it’s no wonder he betrayed his allies with a raw deal like that. Moreover, Bavaria was entirely dependent on French troops and money to achieve the Nymphenburg goals, but France didn’t actually want a powerful Bavaria - they wanted a client emperor, and Bavaria with all that territory might end up a little too strong for their liking.
So between French hesitation and Prussian opposition, it’s hard to see Bavaria actually getting and keeping all that territory - it would require the Austrians to completely collapse and Prussia to accept an utterly intolerable situation. More likely, Prussia would switch sides entirely and fight alongside Austria with the condition that Maria Theresa accept the cession of Silesia, which is exactly what Britain wanted to happen. The only reason it didn’t happen IOTL is because Austria recovered on its own, and Frederick became more afraid of a revanchist Austria than an increasingly unlikely-looking Franco-Bavarian dominated HRE.
Last edited:
