Defensive alliance between Prussia and Bavaria

The defeat of Austria and its allies in the German-German War meant the dissolution of the German Confederation. Prussia founded a federal state, the North German Confederation, which was under its domination and to which the German states north of the Main belonged. Austria was separated from Germany.

Bavaria concluded an armistice with Prussia on 28 July 1866, and signed a peace treaty in Berlin on 22 August. The regulations agreed on in this turned out to be quite moderate: for example, only a few territories in Franconia had to be ceded and 30 million guilders of war indemnity had to be paid to Prussia. Much more serious, however, was the fact that Bavaria had to enter into a "defensive and offensive alliance" with Prussia in return for this "leniency". This stipulated that in the event of war there would be a mutual obligation to stand by each other and that the supreme command of the Bavarian troops was to pass to the Prussian King. The alliance was supposed to remain secret, but became public in 1867. Prussia also imposed such an alliance on Baden, Hesse and Württemberg.

Bavaria lost a core element of its sovereignty through this pact. Its path to a German nation state under Prussian leadership was ultimately therefore already mapped out. This is the judgement of the historian Hans-Michael Körner: "Bavaria had become a satellite of Prussia". King Ludwig II was well aware of this problem: he feared for Bavarian sovereignty and for his rights of majesty. To Richard Wagner he wrote: "A mock king without power is not what I want to be."

Matthias Bader