Munich

In the autumn of 1805 Elector Maximilian Joseph had to choose between neighbouring Austria and distant France. He chose France, withdrew his army from the Austrians and let the Grande Armée through. The calculation was sound: after the capitulation of Ulm, Napoleon entered Munich on 24 October 1805 as the liberator of an ally, not as an occupier.

The reward came with the Treaty of Pressburg. On 1 January 1806 Bavaria became a kingdom; it received the Tyrol, Augsburg, Swabian and Franconian territories, and nearly doubled its population. In July it was a pillar of the Confederation of the Rhine. The French civil code was adapted there and the administration reorganised on the departmental model by the minister Montgelas.

A marriage sealed the alliance. On 14 January 1806 Eugène de Beauharnais, Joséphine's son and viceroy of Italy, married Augusta Amalia of Bavaria, daughter of the new king, who had had to break off an engagement. Napoleon adopted Eugène that same month. Against all odds for a union arranged in weeks, the couple proved one of the closest in the imperial constellation.

The alliance had a price. Bavaria supplied a corps to every campaign, occupied the Tyrol and put down Andreas Hofer's rising there in 1809, and lost thousands of men in Russia. On 8 October 1813, by the Treaty of Ried, it joined the coalition and fought the French at Hanau three weeks later. It kept both crown and territories: of all the German allies, it played its hand best.