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Despite the bond of a common religion which united them to Austria,
they felt that their proximity to their powerful neighbor made the
Habsburgs their natural enemies. In the War of the Spanish Succession,
therefore, Bavaria took the side of France against Austria, and when
Maria Theresa ascended the throne in 1740, the elector of Bavaria, who
had married a Habsburg princess disbarred by the Pragmatic Sanction of
Charles VI, immediately allied himself with Frederick of Prussia and
with France in order to dismember the Austrian dominions.
[Sidenote: Saxony]
The Saxony of the eighteenth century was but a very small fraction of
the vast Saxon duchy which once comprised all northwestern Germany and
whose people in early times had emigrated to England or had been
subjugated by Charlemagne. Saxony had been restricted since the
thirteenth century to a district on the upper Elbe, wedged in between
Habsburg Bohemia and Hohenzollern Brandenburg. Here, however, several
elements combined to give it an importance far beyond its extent or
population.


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