 At his death, without issue, on 30 December 1777, the Bavarian line of the Wittelsbachs became extinct, and the succession passed to Charles Theodore, the elector palatine.After a separation of four and a half centuries, the Electorate of the Palatinate, to which the duchies of Jülich and Berg had been added, was thus reunited with Bavaria.So great an accession of strength to a neighbouring state, whose ambition she had so recently had just reason to fear, proved intolerable to Austria, which laid claim to a number of lordships —forming one-third of the whole Bavarian inheritance – as lapsed fiefs of the Bohemian, Austrian, and imperial crowns.