MAXIMILIAN I. (MAXIMILIAN JOSEPH) ( I , king of Bavaria, the son of the count palatine Frederick of Zwei briicken-Birkenfeld, was born May 27, 1756. He took service in 1777 as a colonel in the French army, and rose rapidly to the rank of major-general. From 1782 to 1789 he was stationed at Stras bourg, but at the outbreak of the revolution he exchanged the French for the Austrian service, taking part in the opening cam paigns of the revolutionary wars. On April 1, 1795 he succeeded his brother, Charles II., as duke of Zweibrikken, and on Feb. 16, 1799 became elector of Bavaria on the extinction of the Sulzbach line with the death of the elector Charles Theodore.
The sympathy with France and with French ideas which char acterized his reign was at once manifested. In the newly organized ministry Count von Montgelas (q.v.) was the most potent in fluence. Agriculture and commerce were fostered, the laws were ameliorated, a new criminal code drawn up, taxes and imposts equalized without regard to traditional privileges, while a num ber of religious houses were suppressed and their revenues used for educational and other useful purposes. In foreign politics Maximilian Joseph's attitude was from the German point of view less commendable. With the growing sentiment of German nationality he had from first to last no sympathy, and his attitude throughout was dictated by wholly dynastic, or at least Bavarian, considerations. Until 1813 he was the most faithful of Napoleon's German allies, the relation being cemented by the marriage of his daughter to Eugene Beauharnais. His reward came with the Treaty of Pressburg (Dec. 26, 1805), by the terms of which he was to receive the royal title and important territorial acquisi tions in Swabia and Franconia to round off his kingdom. He assumed the style of king on Jan. 1, 1806.
The new king of Bavaria was the most important member of 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 Wiirzburg. At the congress of Vienna, 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 assur ance from Metternich in the matter of the Baden succession, in which he was also disappointed (see BADEN : History).
At Vienna and afterwards Maximilian opposed any reconstitu tion of Germany which should endanger the independence of Bavaria, and his insistence on full sovereignty for the German reigning princes 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 of any interference of the federal diet in the internal affairs of Bavaria, partly to give unity to his somewhat hetero geneous territories, that Maximilian on May 26, 1818 granted a liberal constitution to his people. Montgelas had fallen in 1817, and Maximilian had also reversed his ecclesiastical policy, signing on Oct. 24, 1817 a concordat with Rome by which the powers of the clergy were restored. The new parliament proved so intract able that in 1819 Maximilian appealed 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 examined 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 Oct. 13, 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 Konig Maxi milian Joseph I. (1854) ; J. M. &MU, Max Joseph, Konig von Bayern (Stuttgart, 1837) ; L. von Kobell, Unter den vier ersten Konigen Bayerns. Nach Briefen and eigenen Erinnerungen (Munich, 1894) ; A. Steinberger, Vater Max, der erste Bayernkonig (1906).