In 1785 he was married to Princess Augusta of Hesse-Darmstadt, by whom he had two sons, Ludwig (his successor) and Karl, and three daughters, one of whom died in childhood. Augusta, the second, married Eugene Beauharnais, while Charlotte, the youngest, became the fourth wife of Emperor Francis the First of Austria. Maximilian’s first wife died early, and in 1796 he formed a second and equally happy alliance with the Princess Caroline of Baden, who presented him with six daughters, of whom three became queens of Saxony and Prussia, and the two youngest, the mothers of Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria and the Empress Elizabeth, respectively. The branch of the Wittelsbachs to which Maximilian belonged was divided into two lines, both descending from the Count Palatine, Christian the First. A cousin, the Count Palatine Wilhelm of Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld, had hopes of securing the Electoral seat at Munich for himself, especially as ancient tradition required that a portion of the domain should fall to the share of the younger branch of the family. As Wilhelm had but one child, however, a son who was feeble-minded and under constant guardianship, an agreement was made between the cousins that in future there should be no division of the Wittelsbach possessions. Maximilian was to succeed to the Electorship of Bavaria undisturbed, in return for which the reigning sovereign was to treat the descendants of Count Wilhelm as his own. The younger branch was to rank equally with the older and to receive a large share of the ancestral possessions, with a handsome yearly income and the title of “Dukes in Bavaria.” In accordance with this agreement, Maximilian became Elector of Bavaria, which was raised by Napoleon to the dignity of a kingdom in 1806, and in 1818 granted a constitution by its sovereign. Maximilian was much beloved by his subjects and so simple and patriarchal in his dealings with them that he was generally known as the “Citizen King.” On his birthday, October 12, 1825, he was present at a ball given in his honor by the Russian ambassador, full of life and vigor as usual, and the next morning was found dead in his severely simple bedchamber at Schloss Nymphenburg.