The Elector Charles Theodore, who had at first favored him, became offended on discovering that Montgelas was associated with the Illuminati, a secret society in Bavaria that held the most anti-clerical propositions of the Enlightenment.

When his employer succeeded to the Duchy, Montgelas was named a Minister, and in that capacity he attended the Second Congress of Rastatt in 1798, where the reconstruction of Germany, which was the consequence of the French Revolution, was in full swing.

Montgelas was the inspirer and director of the policy by which in 1806 the Electorate was turned into a kingdom and was also greatly increased in size by the annexation of church lands, free towns, and small lordships, such as Wallerstein.

As this end was achieved by undeviating servility to Napoleon, and by the most cynical disregard of the rights of Bavaria's German-speaking neighbors, Montgelas became the type of an unpatriotic politician in the eyes of all Germans who revolted against the supremacy of France.

As late as 1813, when Napoleon's power was visibly breaking down, and Montgelas knew the internal weakness of his empire well from visits to Paris, he still continued to maintain that France was necessary to Bavaria.

In internal affairs, Montgelas carried out a policy of secularization and of administrative centralization by determined means, which showed that he had never wholly renounced his opinions of the time of the Enlightenment movement.

In the field in interior politics he can be regarded as the most successful[citation needed] German politician of the early 19th century with a long list of achievements.

In order to reduce the political and cultural influence of the Catholic Church in Bavaria in favor of the secular state, Montgelas extended civil rights, including citizenship, to Protestants.

Monastic life as such was viewed by Montgelas, in keeping with the most religiously hostile forms of Enlightenment thinking, as useless, at best, and as a breeding ground of "superstition."

His enemies persuaded the king to dismiss him in 1817, and he spent the remainder of his life as a member of the Bavarian House of Lords ("Kammer der Reichsräte") till his death in 1838.

In 2009, his 250th birth anniversary has been celebrated with the creation of honorific "Montgelas Prize" ("Montgelas-Preis" in German), awarded each year to French leaders to acknowledge their actions in favor of French-German cooperation.

[6] It has been awarded to Jean Arthuis (Head of the Committee on Budgets in the European parliament), Philippe Richert (President of the Regional Council of Alsace) and Thierry Breton (CEO of Atos and former Minister of the Economy).