Maximilian I (born May 27, 1756, Mannheim, Palatinate [Germany]—died October 13, 1825, Munich, Bavaria) was the last Wittelsbach prince-elector of Bavaria (1799–1806) and first king of Bavaria (1806–25). His alliance with Napoleon gained him a monarch’s crown and enabled him to turn the scattered, poorly administered Bavarian holdings into a consolidated modern state.
Maximilian Joseph, the second son of Prince Frederick Michael of Palatinate-Zweibrücken, served in the French regiment of Alsace from 1777 to the outbreak of the French Revolution, developing the affinity for France that he was to retain for the rest of his life. In 1795, when he succeeded his elder brother as duke of Zweibrücken, France was already in possession of the duchy, but on the death of the elector Charles Theodore of Bavaria and the Palatinate in 1799 he inherited all the Wittelsbach territories as Prince-Elector Maximilian IV Joseph. Widely scattered and ill-administered, most of them were occupied by Austria. With his able minister Maximilian Joseph, Graf (count) von Montgelas de Garnerin, the new elector was to make Bavaria into an efficient liberal state.
Forced by Austrian pressure to enter the war against France (1799), Maximilian IV Joseph signed a separate peace in 1801, which, though formalizing the loss of his lands west of the Rhine, guaranteed compensation elsewhere. Distrustful of Austria, which tried repeatedly to annex Bavarian territories, the elector remained faithful to his French alliance for more than a decade. In 1803 he received Würzburg, Bamberg, Freising, Augsburg, and other lands. In 1805 Ansbach was added, and on January 1, 1806, the elector crowned himself king of Bavaria as Maximilian I. Bavaria’s membership in the Confederation of the Rhine—the league of German princes sponsored by Napoleon—and contributions to the French war effort against Austria (1805), Prussia and Russia (1806–07), and, again, Austria (1809) led to the acquisition of most of Western Austria. Thirty thousand men of the Bavarian contingent fought with Napoleon in Russia, but after the French defeat there Maximilian entered into an alliance with Austria in return for a guarantee of the integrity of his kingdom. After returning sections of Western Austria in 1814 and 1816, Bavaria received sizable territories on the west bank of the Rhine.
With the restoration of peace (1815), Maximilian reorganized his administration. He dismissed Montgelas (1817) largely on the insistence of his son, the future Louis I; and the kingdom, which already had received a liberal constitution in 1808, was granted a new charter in 1818, providing for a bicameral parliament. These measures made Bavaria one of Germany’s most liberal states during the last years of Maximilian’s reign.