Fürstenbund

The alliance, which initially comprised the three major northern states of Prussia, Hanover and Saxony, was set up officially to safeguard the constitutional integrity and territorial status quo of the Empire, but more immediately to oppose the long-cherished ambition of Joseph II to add Bavaria to the Habsburg domains.

Had the plan been brought to fruition, the Habsburgs would have augmented their core domains with a large contiguous German-speaking territory while at the same time getting rid of far-away provinces that has proven to be difficult and costly to defend whenever Austria had been at war with France.

The rumored deal proved unpalatable both to the ambitious Frederick II, who saw himself as the foremost German monarch, and to the Electors of Hanover and Saxony who were disturbed by the far-reaching political and strategic implications of the projected territorial swap.

Once they publicly declared their opposition though the creation of a Deutsche Fürstenbund, the rulers of lesser Protestant states, including Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Saxe-Gotha, Saxe-Weimar, Mecklenburg, Baden and Brandenburg-Ansbach, soon joined them.

The Archbishop-Elector of Mainz, Archchancellor of the Empire, eventually gave his support, not least because it was known that Karl Theodor and Joseph II also mulled over the possible secularization of the Archbishopric of Salzburg, inconveniently wedged between Bavaria and Austria.