Augustus III of Poland

“ He then attacked Swedish Pomerania. He was handicapped by the mutual jealousy of the Saxons and the Poles, and a struggle broke out in Poland which was only ended when the king promised to limit the number of his army in that country to 18,000 men. Peace was made with Sweden in December 1719 at Stockholm after the death of Charles XII., and Augustus was recognized as king of Poland. His remaining years were spent in futile plans to make Poland a hereditary monarchy, to weaken the power of the Saxon nobles, and to gain territory for his sons in various parts of Europe. ”

“ Augustus endeavoured, quite fruitlessly, to negotiate with Charles on his own account, while the diet was much more zealous to curtail his powers than to resist the Swedish monarch, and was determined that, at any price, the Saxon troops should leave Poland. Intrigues were going on on all sides. Presently Charles set his forces in motion. When Augustus learned that there was to be no peace till Poland had a new king, he resolved to fight. Charles's star did not desert him. He won a complete victory. ”

“ The establishment of Augustus on the throne of Poland was in some measure owing to the conduct of Peter the czar of Muscovy, who having formed great designs against the Ottoman Porte, was very unwilling to see the crown of Poland possessed by a partizan of France, which was in alliance with the grand seignor. He therefore interested himself warmly in the dispute, and ordered his general to assemble an army on the frontiers of Lithuania, which by over-awing the Poles that were in the interest of the prince of Conti, considerably influenced the election. ”

“ This year, however, Augustus had been defeated. The Swedes had taken from him the electoral crown of Poland, and the almost dethroned King, chased from the kingdom, had returned to the Kurfürsten-neste, to weep over the millions he had spent in vain, and the fearful ingratitude of the Poles. The Saxons could not understand how anyone could fail to admire such a good and noble lord, or how anyone could be unwilling to die for his sake. ”

“ Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, owes his place in the world's memory to his brawny muscles and to his conquest of women. Like the third Alexander of Russia of later years, he could, with his powerful arms, convert a thick iron bar into a necklace, crush a pewter tankard by the pressure of a mighty hand, toss a heavy anvil into the air and catch it as another man would catch a ball, or with a wrench straighten out the stoutest horse-shoe ever forged. ”

“ Augustus was obliged to resign the crown of Poland in favour of Stanislaus Leszczynski, and in 1706 a treaty was signed at Altranstadt, but the Swedes did not leave Saxony.
During the war, and all the bloody horrors that accompanied it, Augustus remained still the same; love played the most important part in his life. He lost kingdoms, but he conquered hearts. He still loved the Countess Cosel, but whenever he was absent from her, he led a life of dissipation. ”

“ And now a new difficulty arose to embroil Europe in trouble. When Charles XII., like a thunderbolt of war, burst upon Poland, he drove Augustus II. from the throne, and placed upon it Stanislaus Leczinski, a Polish noble, whom he had picked up by the way, and whose heroic character secured the admiration of this semi-insane monarch. Augustus, utterly crushed, was compelled by his eccentric victor to send the crown jewels and the archives, with a letter of congratulation, to Stanislaus. ”

“ The morals of the nobility now became nearly as bad as their political constitution. What need have we to dwell on the personal war which Augustus II. commenced against Charles XII. of Sweden; the defeats he sustained; his forced resignation of the crown; the appointment of Stanislaus in his stead; and his own restoration after the battle of Pultawa? The leading point in his history is this: that with him the Russian ascendency in Poland was established. All the rest of Europe was rapidly advancing in culture; the only change in Poland was the predominance of Russia. ”

“ Your Majesty will find thousands of loyal hands ready to defend your rights. We have only to go, and the victory is ours."
The crown, relinquished after such heavy sacrifices, was very tempting to the Kurfürst. He had planned to create a great and hereditary monarchy there. Even were he obliged to give up one of his own provinces to his envious neighbours, Poland united to Saxony would be a very powerful state. He must, therefore, hasten to win back the crown, and change it from an elective to an hereditary one.
Augustus accepted Flemming's advice, and decided to return to Poland. ”

“ He was the natural son of Duke Augustus II. of Saxony, who later became King of Poland, and who is known in history as Augustus the Strong.
Augustus was a giant in stature and in strength, handsome, daring, unscrupulous, and yet extremely fascinating. His life was one of revelry and fighting and display. When in his cups he would often call for a horseshoe and twist it into a knot with his powerful fingers. Many were his mistresses; but the one for whom he cared the most was a beautiful and high-spirited Swedish girl of rank, Aurora von Konigsmarck. ”

“ Under the protection of this army the minority held another diet at Kamien (on the 5th of October) , a village just outside the suburbs of Warsaw, and chose as the sovereign of Poland Augustus, son of the deceased king. The minority, aided by the Russian and imperial armies, were too strong for the majority. They took possession of Warsaw, and crowned their candidate king, with the title of Augustus III. Stanislaus, pressed by an overpowering force, retreated to Dantzic, at the mouth of the Vistula, about two hundred miles from Warsaw. ”

“ He left school with a sound classical training and with an early developed passion for his country. Already Timoleon was his favourite hero of antiquity because, so he told a friend fifty years later, "he was able to restore his nation's freedom, taking nothing for himself."
In 1763 the long and dreary reign of Augustus III, the last Saxon king of Poland, came to an end. Russian diplomacy, supported by Russian cannon, placed Stanislas Augustus Poniatowski, the lover of Catherine II, upon the Polish throne in 1764. ”

“ In Poland, the diet being assembled by the cardinal-primate, Stanislaus Lezinski, palatine of Posnania, was elected and proclaimed king, and recognised by Charles of Sweden, who still maintained his army by contributions in that country, more intent upon the ruin of Augustus than upon the preservation of his own dominions; for he paid no regard to the progress of the Muscovites, who had ravaged Livonia, reduced Narva, and made incursions into Sweden. Augustus retreated into his Saxon dominions, which he impoverished in order to raise a great army with which he might return to Poland ”

“ A still higher name as a patron of literature and the arts, is the uncle of king Stanislaus Augustus, prince Adam Czartoryski. He was marshal of the diet in 1764, when the ill-famed liberum veto was abolished, which gave to every deputy, singly, the right of overthrowing the otherwise unanimous resolutions of the diet, and thus was the principal cause of the lawless disorder which disgraced the sessions of that body. His merits as a statesman and a Mecænas are equal. Several historical works, designed to advance the honour of Poland, were published under his care and at his instigation. ”

“ GROWTH OP THE POWER OF PRUSSIA: THE DESTRUCTION OF POLAND. THE PRAGMATIC SANCTION.—On the death of Augustus II., there were two competitors for the Polish crown,—his son, Augustus III. of Saxony, and Stanislaus Lesczinski whom France supported. After a contest, by the consent of the Emperor Charles VI., Lesczinski, whose daughter had married Louis XV., obtained the duchy of Lorraine, which thus became a possession of France (1735) . In return, the emperor's son-in-law, Francis Stephen (afterwards Francis I.) , was to have Tuscany ”

“ The nomination of the new king was placed in the hands of Charles, who proposed Stanislaus Leszczynski, a young nobleman distinguished for his accomplishments, who was accordingly declared king of Poland and grand duke of Lithuania. But Lithuania had not as yet sent in her adherence to either side; and Peter, still taking a deep interest in the fortunes of Augustus, whose Saxon troops were every day suffering fresh discomfitures from the Swedish army, sent that monarch a reinforcement of twelve thousand men to support his claims in the undecided province. ”

“ He formed a secret alliance with Denmark and Poland against Sweden.
CONDITION OF POLAND.—In 1697 _Frederick Augustus _II.,—Augustus the Strong,—Duke of Saxony, was elected king of Poland: he became a Roman Catholic that he might get the crown. But the Polish nobles took care to increase their power, which was already far too great to be compatible with unity or order. Under the anarchical but despotic nobility and higher clergy, stood the serfs, embracing nine-tenths of the whole population, who were without protection against the greed and tyranny of their lords. ”

“ Russia received the whole of what had hitherto been Polish Lithuania as far as the Niemen, and to the frontiers of the waiwodeships of Brzesc and Novogrodek, and thence to the Bug, together with the greater part of Samogitia. In Little Poland she obtained that part of Chelm which lies on the right bank of the Bug and the remainder of Volhinia, in all about two thousand German square miles. During the negotiations for the partition, Russia caused Stanislaus Augustus to lay down the crown. The three partitioning powers ensured him a yearly income of 200,000 ducats, and promised to pay his debts. ”

“ While he was thus providing Poland with a king, and the King of Denmark dare not harrass him, while the King of Prussia was courting his friendship and Augustus was withdrawing to his hereditary dominions, the Czar became daily more formidable. His assistance of Augustus in Poland had been feeble, but he had made powerful diversions in Ingria.
As for him, he not only began to be a great soldier himself, but also to teach his soldiers the art of war: discipline was established among his forces; he had good engineers, experienced artillery and many good officers ”

“ That he has himself no ambition, and no end to serve save to obtain peace and tranquillity for his country, and that it will be free for the people of Poland to elect their own monarch, when once Augustus of Saxony has disappeared from the scene. ”

“ She was invited by royalty to paint the Emperor Charles and the imperial court; also the King of France. The Grand-Duke of Tuscany placed her portrait in his gallery; it is painted in pastel, with one of her sisters. The style is noble and sustained; the expression is true, and the flesh-tints are so admirable, the face seems scarcely to want a soul. Augustus III., King of Poland, was her special patron ”

“ He was, like many a monarch of the like loose character, a patron of the fine arts, and founded the Dresden Picture Gallery (1670-1733) .
Augustus III., son of the preceding; beat Stanislaus Leszcynski in the struggle for the crown of Poland; proved an incompetent king (1696-1763) .
Aulic Council, supreme council in the old German Empire, from which there was no appeal, of date from 1495 to 1654; it had no constitution, dealt with judicial matters, and lived and died with the emperor. ”

“ But, when hindrances of this kind do not exist, the feeling of race, as something beyond the narrower feeling of nationality, is beginning to be a powerful agent in the feelings and actions of men and of nations. A long series of mutual wrongs, conquest, and oppression on one side, avenged by conquest and oppression on the other side, have made the Slav of Poland and the Slav of Russia the bitterest of enemies. No such hindrance exists to stop the flow of natural and generous feeling between the Slav of Russia and the Slav of the Southeastern lands. ”

“ The nobility of France, keeping the most oppressive social and personal privileges, had been shorn of all political and even administrative power; the tyrants of the people were the slaves of the king. In Poland sixty thousand gentlemen, rich and poor, famous andPoland. obscure, but all alike gentlemen, rode out to choose a king by a unanimous vote, and to bind him when chosen by such conditions as they thought good. Those sixty thousand, like the populus of Rome, formed a narrow oligarchy as regarded the rest of the nation, but a wild democracy among themselves. ”

“ But his compatriots looked on him as simply the chief citizen of their republic. They considered that of their own free will, to escape the dangers of further civil war, they had chosen to confer upon [Pg xii] one man, eminently "safe and sane," all the high offices whose holders had previously battled against one another. So Augustus was Emperor or Imperator, which meant no more than general of the armies of the Republic; he was Consul, or chief civil administrator of the Republic; he was Pontifex Maximus, high-priest of the Republic. ”

“ See Cleopatra's Conquest of Caesar and Antony, page 295.]
[Footnote 21: See Rome Becomes a Monarchy, page 333.]
Note, however, that the term "world" is still one of boast, not truth. Emperor over many men, Augustus was; but the powers of nature still shut many races safe beyond his mastery. The ocean bounded his dominion on the west; the deserts to the south and east; the German forests to the north. These last he did essay to conquer, but they proved beyond him. The wild German tribes having no cities, which they must defend at any cost, could afford to flee or hide. ”