Maximilian I 1573-1651
Duke and Elector of Bavaria

The son of Duke William V, he was born in Munich and educated at the Jesuit college at Ingolstadt. From 1597 he instituted reforms of the country's legal system, army, inefficient bureaucracy and disordered finances. He placed himself at the head of the Catholic League (1609) and supported Emperor Ferdinand II in the Thirty Years War, obtaining as a reward the confiscated lands of Frederick V of the Palatinate. By the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the Lower Palatinate was returned to Frederick's heir, Charles Louis, but Maximilian retained the electoral title. Patient and worldly-wise, he was a keen defender of German liberties and resisted imperial attempts to turn the empire into a centralized Habsburg monarchy.