Soon after he became sole ruler of the Habsburg lands at the death of his mother Maria Theresa in 1780, Joseph II revived an old ambition and entered into negotiations with Elector Karl Theodor of the Palatinate and Bavaria with the aim of trading Bavaria for the Austrian Netherlands. Had the plan been brought to fruition, the Habsburgs would have augmented their core domains with a large contiguous German-speaking territory while at the same time getting rid of far-away provinces that has proven to be difficult and costly to defend whenever Austria had been at war with France. For Karl Theodor, his interest in the projected deal was mostly a matter of prestige as he envisioned himself as the ruler, possibly with the title of king, of a reconstructed Duchy of Burgundy composed of the Southern Netherlands plus his existing possessions in the Lower and Upper Rhine region, such as the Palatinate of the Rhine and the duchy of Berg-Jülich.