However, thousands of soldiers died from disease and starvation, earning the conflict the name Kartoffelkrieg (Potato War) in Prussia and Saxony; in Habsburg Austria, it was sometimes called the Zwetschgenrummel (Plum Fuss).

For King Frederick the Great of Prussia, Joseph's claim threatened Prussian influence in German politics, but he questioned whether he should preserve the status quo through war, diplomacy, or trade.

Finally, Empress Catherine the Great of Russia's threat to intervene on the side of Prussia with fifty thousand Russian troops forced Joseph to reconsider his position.

[4] When Charles died in 1740, Maria Theresa had to fight for her family's entitlements in Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, and her husband faced competition in his election as the Holy Roman emperor.

[5] For different reasons, Prussia, France, Spain, and the Polish-Saxon monarchy supported Charles of Bavaria's claim to the Habsburg territory and the Imperial title and reneged on the Pragmatic Sanction.

His French allies redirected their troops into Bohemia, where Frederick the Great, himself newly King of Prussia, had taken advantage of the chaos in Austria and Bavaria to annex Silesia.

Charles's brother, Klemens August of Bavaria, archbishop and prince-elector of the Electorate of Cologne, voted for him in the imperial election and personally crowned him on 12 February 1742 in the traditional ceremony in Frankfurt am Main.

[12] Thomas Carlyle referred to Charles Theodore as a "poor idle creature, of purely egoistical, ornamental, dilettante nature; sunk in theatricals, [and] bastard children".

[14]The Electress had provided him with a son, who had immediately died, but Charles Theodore's "particular penchant" for secret liaisons, most of whom were French actresses that he had raised to the status of countess, had produced several natural children.

He felt the War of the Austrian Succession had shown that the House of Habsburg-Lorraine needed a wider sphere of influence in the German-speaking parts of the Holy Roman Empire.

[21] Count Karl-Wilhelm Finck von Finckenstein, Frederick the Great's prime minister, believed that any Austrian acquisition in Bavaria would shift the balance of power in the Holy Roman Empire, diminishing Prussia's influence.

[25] To protect Prussia's status and territory, Finck and Frederick constructed an alliance with the Electorate of Saxony, ostensibly to defend the rights of Charles II August, Duke of Zweibrücken.

[24] The personal union (the diplomatic term for marriage) of Louis, then the Dauphin, and the Austrian Archduchess Marie Antoinette, was considered both a political and matrimonial mésalliance in the eyes of many Frenchmen.

Prussia's other ally, Saxony, aligned by two marriages with Charles August, was strategically prepared for war against Austria and ready to contribute twenty thousand troops.

[35] In a letter to her son, the Empress Maria Theresa wrote: "They say you were so pleased with Nauendorf, a rookie from Carlstadt or Hungary, who killed seven men, that you gave him twelve ducats.

The Habsburg army stood on the heights of the Elbe river, nominally under Joseph but with Count Franz Moritz von Lacy in practical command.

He established the Austrian army on the most defensible position available: centered at Jaroměř,[38] a triple line of redoubts extended 15 kilometers (9.3 mi) southwest along the river to Königgrätz.

At its center and right, it faced a well-disciplined army commanded by Frederick, arguably the best tactical general of the age and feared for his victories against France and Austria in the previous war.

[25] Prince Henry wrote to his brother, suggesting they complete their operations by 22 August, at which time he estimated he would have exhausted local supplies of food for his men and fodder for his horses.

Catherine offered to mediate the dispute; if her assistance was unacceptable, she was willing to send fifty thousand troops to augment the Prussian force, even though she disliked Frederick and her alliance with him was strictly defensive.

[49] In another raid, on 1 January 1779, Colonel Franz Levenehr led 3,200 men (four battalions, six squadrons, and 16 artillery) into Zuckmantel, a village in Silesia on the Prussian border, 7 kilometers (4 mi) south of Ziegenhals.

[50][Note 2] Two weeks later, Wurmser advanced into the County of Glatz in five columns, two of which, commanded by Major General Franz Joseph, Count Kinsky, surrounded Habelschwerdt on 17–18 January.

[42] In the Treaty of Teschen (May 1779), Maria Theresa returned Lower Bavaria to Charles Theodore, but kept the so-called Innviertel, a 2,200-square-kilometer (850 sq mi) strip of land in the drainage basin of the Inn river.

[70] The underlying problem was not solved: Joseph's foreign policy dictated the expansion of Habsburg influence over German-speaking territories, and only this, he believed, would counter Prussia's growing strength in Imperial affairs.

[73] Even if Joseph had to give up the Austrian Netherlands, it meant "the barter of an indefensible strategic position and ... an economic liability for a great territorial and political gain, adjacent to the monarchy.

In 1778, that meant Poland and the Ottomans, but Joseph fully understood the danger of appearing weak in Russia's eyes: Habsburg lands could be carved off easily by Catherine's diplomatic knife.

Still, Frederick of Prussia was the most definite enemy, as he had been throughout the reigns of Theresa and Franz before him, when the Prussian state's emergence as a player on the European stage had occurred at Habsburg expense, first with the loss of Silesia, and later in the 1750s and 1760s.

[75] Joseph sought to unify the different portions of his realm, not the German states as a whole, and to establish Habsburg hegemony in German-speaking central Europe beginning with the partition of Bavaria.

[76] The broad geographic outlines of European states changed rapidly in the last fifty years of the century, with partitions of Poland and territorial exchanges through conquest and diplomacy.

The Bavarian succession crisis provided Joseph with a viable opportunity to consolidate his influence in the Central European states, to bolster his financially strapped government with much-needed revenue, and to strengthen his army with German-speaking conscripts.