His cause was taken up by Prussian King Frederick the Great, who refused any increase in Austrian territory, and by Saxony, whose Wettin electoral house had married into the Wittelsbach family and therefore had allodial claims to parts of the inheritance.

Difficulties in supplying the troops turned the war into a stalemate: the Prussians were not able to advance far into the Bohemian lands, but the Austrians were unwilling to invade Saxony or Prussia.

That was partly because Empress Maria Theresa (the mother of Joseph II and his co-ruler as Queen of Bohemia and Archduchess of Austria) firmly opposed the war after it became clear that a stalemate had prevailed.

However, one of the requirements was that Austria would recognize the Prussian claims to the Franconian margraviates of Ansbach and Bayreuth, ruled in personal union by Margrave Christian Alexander from the House of Hohenzollern.

In 1785, Maria Theresa's son and successor Emperor Joseph II of Austria made another try at attaching the Bavarian lands to his Habsburg possessions, and even contracted with Elector Charles Theodore to swap it for the Austrian Netherlands.