For nearly two centuries, the Suebi ruled a kingdom in modern Galicia and northern Portugal. Its story begins with the collapse of Rome and ends with a legacy still visible in place names, language, and the history of the Swabians.
Salzburg changed hands repeatedly during Europe’s Napoleonic upheavals, leaving a divided borderland, Bavarian forests in Austria, and a 1921 vote for union with Germany that changed nothing.
In the late eighteenth century, Bavaria nearly became the price of a grand dynastic bargain. This is the story of Karl Theodore, the Bavarian Succession crisis, Prussian diplomacy, and the young woman who stopped Austria’s final attempt to take control.