LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Bavaria: Upper Palatinate
built 646 days ago
The chief mineral deposits in Bavaria are coal, iron ore, graphite and salt. The coal mines lie principally in the districts of Amberg, Kissingen, Steben, Munich and the Rhine Palatinate. Salt is obtained on a large scale partly from brine springs and partly from mines, the principal centres being Halle, Berchtesgaden, Traunstein and Rosenheirn. The government monopoly which had long existed was abolished in 1867 and free trade was established in salt between the members of the customs-union. Of quicksilver there are several mines, chiefly in the Palatinate of the Rhine; and small quantities of copper, manganese and cobalt are obtained. There are numerous quarries of excellent marble, alabaster, gypsum and building stone; and the porcelain-clay is among the finest in Europe.
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When Napoleon abolished the Holy Roman Empire, Bavaria became a kingdom in 1806, and its area reduplicated. Tyrol and Salzburg were temporarily reunited with Bavaria but finally ceded to Austria. In return the Rhenish Palatinate and Franconia were annexed to Bavaria in 1815. Between 1799 and 1817 the leading minister count Montgelas followed a strict policy of modernisation and laid the foundations of administrative structures that survived even the monarchy and are (in their core) valid until today. In 1818 a modern constitution (by the standards of the time) was passed, that established a bicameral Parliament with a House of Lords ("Kammer der Reichsräte") and a House of Commons ("Kammer der Abgeordneten"). The constitution was valid until the collapse of the monarchy at the end of the First World War.
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In 1792 the revolutionary armies overran the Palatinate; in 17 9 5 the French, under Moreau, invaded Bavaria itself, advanced to Munich - where they were received with joy by the long-suppressed Liberals - and laid siege to Ingolstadt. Charles Theodore, who had done nothing to prevent or to resist the invasion, fled to Saxony, leaving a regency, the members of which signed a convention with Moreau, by which he granted an armistice in return for a heavy contribution (September 7th, 1796). Immediately afterwards he was forced to retire.
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A consolidation began when Duke Albert IV the Wise of Bavaria-Munich (reigned 1467–1508) established in 1506 the principle of primogeniture in Bavaria. Albert ... made Munich the capital of his duchy. Albert's son William IV (reigned 1508–50) was finally able to reunify Bavaria into one duchy in 1545. William IV opposed the Protestant Reformation as a threat to his authority, but he did not allow his Roman Catholicism to interfere with political considerations. He was usually to be found in opposition to the Austrian Habsburgs and allied himself with the Protestant princes of the Schmalkaldic League. In 1546, however, Bavarian policy changed abruptly to an alliance with the Habsburgs, following the introduction of the Reformation in the Palatinate.
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The agricultural wealth and the strategic position of Bavaria made it a coveted prize and a frequent battleground then and later. Bavaria was overrun by foreign armies, notably in the War of the Spanish Succession, the War of the Austrian Succession, the War of the Bavarian Succession (1778, by which Bavaria lost the Inn Quarter to Austria), and the French Revolutionary Wars. Elector Maximilian IV Joseph, who in 1799 united all Wittelsbach lands, allied himself with Napoleon I, joined the Confederation of the Rhine, and in 1806 was proclaimed king of Bavaria as Maximilian I. In 1813 Maximilian abandoned Napoleon and joined the allies, who at the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) left him in possession of virtually all of present-day Bavaria, including the Rhenish Palatinate.
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Upper Palatinate