The new king of Bavaria was the most important of the princes belonging to the Confederation of the Rhine, and remained Napoleon’s ally until the eve of the battle of Leipzig, when by the convention of Ried (Oct. 8, 1813) he made the guarantee of the integrity of his kingdom the price of his joining the Allies. By the first treaty of Paris (June 3, 1814), however, he ceded Tirol to Austria in exchange for the former duchy of Würzburg. At the congress of Vienna, too, which he attended in person, Maximilian had to make further concessions to Austria, ceding the quarters of the Inn and Hausruck in return for a part of the old Palatinate. The king fought hard to maintain the contiguity of the Bavarian territories as guaranteed at Ried; but the most he could obtain was an assurance from Metternich in the matter of the Baden succession, in which he was also doomed to be disappointed (see [Baden]: History, iii. 506).
At Vienna and afterwards Maximilian sturdily opposed any reconstitution of Germany which should endanger the independence of Bavaria, and it was his insistence on the principle of full sovereignty being left to the German reigning princes that largely contributed to the loose and weak organization of the new German Confederation. The Federal Act of the Vienna congress was proclaimed in Bavaria, not as a law but as an international treaty. It was partly to secure popular support in his resistance to any interference of the federal diet in the internal affairs of Bavaria, partly to give unity to his somewhat heterogeneous territories, that Maximilian on the 26th of May 1818 granted a liberal constitution to his people. Montgelas, who had opposed this concession, had fallen in the previous year, and Maximilian had also reversed his ecclesiastical policy, signing on the 24th of October 1817 a concordat with Rome by which the powers of the clergy, largely curtailed under Montgelas’s administration, were restored. The new parliament proved so intractable that in 1819 Maximilian was driven to appeal to the powers against his own creation; but his Bavarian “particularism” and his genuine popular sympathies prevented him from allowing the Carlsbad decrees to be strictly enforced within his dominions. The suspects arrested by order of the Mainz Commission he was accustomed to examine himself, with the result that in many cases the whole proceedings were quashed, and in not a few the accused dismissed with a present of money. Maximilian died on the 13th of October 1825 and was succeeded by his son Louis I.
In private life Maximilian was kindly and simple. He loved to play the part of Landesvater, walking about the streets of his capital en bourgeois and entering into conversation with all ranks of his subjects, by whom he was regarded with great affection. He was twice married: (1) in 1785 to Princess Wilhelmine Auguste of Hesse-Darmstadt, (2) in 1797 to Princess Caroline Friederike of Baden.
See G. Freiherr von Lerchenfeld, Gesch. Bayerns unter König Maximilian Joseph I. (Berlin, 1854); J. M. Söltl, Max Joseph, König von Bayern (Stuttgart, 1837); L. von Kobell, Unter den vier ersten Königen Bayerns. Nach Briefen und eigenen Erinnerungen (Munich, 1894).
MAXIMILIAN II. (1811-1864), king of Bavaria, son of king Louis I. and of his consort Theresa of Saxe-Hildburghausen, was born on the 28th of November 1811. After studying at Göttingen and Berlin and travelling in Germany, Italy and Greece, he was introduced by his father into the council of state (1836). From the first he showed a studious disposition, declaring on one occasion that had he not been born in a royal cradle his choice would have been to become a professor. As crown prince, in the château of Hohenschwangau near Füssen, which he had rebuilt with excellent taste, he gathered about him an intimate society of artists and men of learning, and devoted his time to scientific and historical study. When the abdication of Louis I. (March 28, 1848) called him suddenly to the throne, his choice of ministers promised a liberal régime. The progress of the revolution, however, gave him pause. He strenuously opposed the unionist plans of the Frankfort parliament, refused to recognize the imperial constitution devised by it, and assisted Austria in restoring the federal diet and in carrying out the federal execution in Hesse and Holstein. Although, however, from 1850 onwards his government tended in the direction of absolutism, he refused to become the tool of the clerical reaction, and even incurred the bitter criticism of the Ultramontanes by inviting a number of celebrated men of learning and science (e.g. Liebig and Sybel) to Munich, regardless of their religious views. Finally, in 1859, he dismissed the reactionary ministry of von der Pfordten, and met the wishes of his people for a moderate constitutional government. In his German policy he was guided by the desire to maintain the union of the princes, and hoped to attain this as against the perilous rivalry of Austria and Prussia by the creation of a league of the “middle” and small states—the so-called Trias. In 1863, however, seeing what he thought to be a better way, he supported the project of reform proposed by Austria at the Fürstentag of Frankfort. The failure of this proposal, and the attitude of Austria towards the Confederation and in the Schleswig-Holstein question, undeceived him; but before he could deal with the new situation created by the outbreak of the war with Denmark he died suddenly at Munich, on the 10th of March 1864.
Maximilian was a man of amiable qualities and of intellectual attainments far above the average, but as a king he was hampered by constant ill-health, which compelled him to be often abroad, and when at home to live much in the country. By his wife, Maria Hedwig, daughter of Prince William of Prussia, whom he married in 1842, he had two sons, Louis II., king of Bavaria, and Otto, king of Bavaria, both of whom lost their reason.
See J. M. Söltl, Max der Zweite, König von Bayern (Munich, 1865); biography by G. K. Heigel in Allgem. Deutsche Biographie, vol. xxi. (Leipzig, 1885). Maximilian’s correspondence with Schlegel was published at Stuttgart in 1890.
MAXIMILIAN I. (1459-1519), Roman emperor, son of the emperor Frederick III. and Leonora, daughter of Edward, king of Portugal, was born at Vienna Neustadt on the 22nd of March 1459. On the 18th of August 1477, by his marriage at Ghent to Mary, who had just inherited Burgundy and the Netherlands from her father Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, he effected a union of great importance in the history of the house of Habsburg. He at once undertook the defence of his wife’s dominions from an attack by Louis XI., king of France, and defeated the French forces at Guinegatte, the modern Enguinegatte, on the 7th of August 1479. But Maximilian was regarded with suspicion by the states of Netherlands, and after suppressing a rising in Gelderland his position was further weakened by the death of his wife on the 27th of March 1482. He claimed to be recognized as guardian of his young son Philip and as regent of the Netherlands, but some of the states refused to agree to his demands and disorder was general. Maximilian was compelled to assent to the treaty of Arras in 1482 between the states of the Netherlands and Louis XI. This treaty provided that Maximilian’s daughter Margaret should marry Charles, the dauphin of France, and have for her dowry Artois and Franche-Comté, two of the provinces in dispute, while the claim of Louis on the duchy of Burgundy was tacitly admitted. Maximilian did not, however, abandon the struggle in the Netherlands. Having crushed a rebellion at Utrecht, he compelled the burghers of Ghent to restore Philip to him in 1485, and returning to Germany was chosen king of the Romans, or German king, at Frankfort on the 16th of February 1486, and crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle on the 9th of the following April. Again in the Netherlands, he made a treaty with Francis II., duke of Brittany, whose independence was threatened by the French regent, Anne of Beaujeu, and the struggle with France was soon renewed. This war was very unpopular with the trading cities of the Netherlands, and early in 1488 Maximilian, having entered Bruges, was detained there as a prisoner for nearly three months, and only set at liberty on the approach of his father with a large force. On his release he had promised he would maintain the treaty of Arras and withdraw from the Netherlands; but he delayed his departure for nearly a year and took part in a punitive campaign against his captors and their allies. On his return to Germany he made peace with France at Frankfort in July 1489, and in October several of the states of the Netherlands recognized him as their ruler and as guardian of his son. In March 1490 the county of Tirol was added to his possessions through the abdication of his kinsman, Count Sigismund, and this district soon became his favourite residence.