Charles VII of Bavaria (Charles Albert)
Charles VII was the one interruption in three centuries of Habsburg emperors, and he spent almost his whole reign unable to enter his own capital. Born in 1697, he was Elector of Bavaria from 1726 and had a claim on the Austrian inheritance through his wife, a daughter of the Emperor Joseph I, and through a will of Ferdinand I that his lawyers read generously. His father had signed the Pragmatic Sanction, the instrument by which Charles VI secured the Habsburg lands for his daughter Maria Theresa, and Charles Albert repudiated it the moment the emperor died in October 1740. Frederick the Great invaded Silesia that December, and the War of the Austrian Succession began. With French and Prussian support he invaded Upper Austria and Bohemia, had himself crowned King of Bohemia at Prague in December 1741, and was elected Holy Roman Emperor in January 1742 — the first non-Habsburg since 1440. Austrian troops took Munich on the day of his imperial coronation at Frankfurt. He spent most of the next three years as an emperor in exile at Frankfurt, dependent on French subsidies, losing Bohemia within months and Bavaria repeatedly, and suffering badly from gout. He recovered Munich in October 1744 with Prussian help and died there in January 1745, aged forty-seven. His son renounced every claim to the Austrian inheritance at Füssen three months later in exchange for the return of Bavaria, and voted for Maria Theresa's husband. The Habsburgs held the title until the empire was abolished. His reign is the standing proof that the imperial title without territory to support it was worth very little.
- Lived: 1697 CE – 1745 CE
- Nationality: German
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state
