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Friedrich August I
(1670—1733)

Frederick Augustus I, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland (as Augustus II the Strong) was as Frederick Augustus I the Elector of Saxony 1694-1733, later also King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania 1697-1704 and again 1709-1733.

Augustus's great physical strength earned him the nicknames "the Strong," "the Saxon Hercules" and "Iron-Hand." He liked to show that he lived up to his name by breaking horseshoes with his bare hands. His ancestor Cymburgis of Masovia was also noted for her strength.

Augustus the Strong owed allegiance to the Imperial Habsburgs as a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece.

As Elector of Saxony, he is perhaps best remembered as a patron of the arts and architecture. He established the Saxon capital of Dresden as a major cultural centre, attracting artists and musicians from across Europe to his court. Augustus also amassed an impressive art collection and built fantastic baroque palaces at Dresden and Warsaw.

As a politician, he is nowadays not held in high esteem in Poland, getting blamed for embroiling the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Great Northern War. His attempts at internal reforms and at bolstering the royal power are considered to have come to naught, while his policies are said to have allowed the Russian Empire to strengthen its influence over the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Augustus was born in Dresden, the second and youngest son of the Elector Johann Georg III and Anne Sophie of Denmark.

As the second son, Augustus had no expectation to inherit the Electorate since his older brother, Johann Georg IV, assumed the post after the death of their father, on 12 September 1691.

In Bayreuth on 20 January 1693, Augustus married Christiane Eberhardine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth. They had a son, Frederick Augustus II (1696 - 1763), who succeeded his father as Elector of Saxony and King of Poland as Augustus III.

While at the Carnival in Venice, his older brother, the Elector Johann Georg IV, contracted smallpox from his mistress Magdalene Sybille of Neidschutz. On 27 April 1694 Johann Georg died without legitimate issue and Augustus became Elector of Saxony, as Frederick Augustus I.

In order to be eligible for the throne of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Augustus had to convert to Roman Catholicism. Saxon dukes had traditionally been called "champions of the Reformation". The duchy was a stronghold of German Protestantism and therefore, Augustus's conversion was spectacular and not without controversy. The Roman Catholic electors of Saxony lost the prestigious leading role of the Protestant estates in the Imperial Diet to Brandenburg-Prussia. Since the prince-elector guaranteed Saxony's religious status quo, Augustus's conversion alienated some of his Protestant subjects. Finally, as a result of the enormous expenditure of money used to bribe the Polish nobility and clergy at the expense of the Saxon treasury, Augustus's contemporaries derisively referred to the Saxon duke's royal ambitions as his "Polish adventure."

It is noteworthy that the directorate of the Corpus Evangelicorum, which was the official Imperial board of the Protestant estates and the counterpart of the Corpus Catholicorum, remained with Saxony and thus, paradoxically, with the Roman Catholic Augustus as its head. His church policy within the Holy Roman Empire was orthodox Lutheran and ran counter to his new- found religious and absolutist convictions. The Protestant Princes of the Empire and the two remaining Protestant Electors (of Hanover and Prussia) were anxious to keep Saxony well-integrated in their camp. According to the Peace of Augsburg Augustus theoretically had the right to re-introduce Roman Catholicism or at least give religious freedom to his fellow Catholics to the full extent, but this never happened. Saxony remained Lutheran and the few Roman-Catholics residing in Saxony were without any political or civil rights. In 1717 it became clear just how awkward the issue was: For his ambitious family-plans in Poland and Germany it was necessary that Augustus's heirs become Roman Catholic. After five years as a convert, his son—the future Augustus III—publicly avowed his Roman Catholicism. The Saxon estates were outraged and revolted. It was becoming clearer that the conversion to Roman Catholicism was not only a matter of form but of substance as well.

The wife of Augustus I, the Electress Christiane Eberhardine, refused to follow her husband's example and remained a staunch Protestant. She did not attend her husband's coronation in Poland and led a rather quiet life outside of Dresden, gaining for herself some popularity and notoriety for her stubbornness.

Following the death of Polish King John III Sobieski and having successfully converted to Catholicism, Augustus was elected King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1697 with the backing of Imperial Russia and Austria, which financed him through the Jewish banker, Berend Lehmann.

It is sometimes incorrectly stated that Augustus defeated the other leading candidates, Jakub Ludwik Sobieski, son of the previous king, and the French candidate, François Louis, Prince of Conti. Augustus actually received fewer votes than Conti (despite a massive bribery campaign), but he rushed to Poland and had himself crowned before the French candidate could set foot in the Commonwealth. Some Poles questioned the legality of Augustus's elevation.

He continued the war of the Holy League against Turkey: After a Moldavian campaign his Polish army defeated the Tatar expedition eventually in the Battle of Podhajce in 1698. It compelled the Ottoman Empire to sign the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699. Podolia and Kamieniec Podolski returned to Poland. An ambitious ruler, Augustus hoped to make the Polish throne hereditary within his family, and to use his resources as Elector of Saxony to impose some order on the chaotic Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was, however, soon distracted from his internal-reform projects by the possibility of external conquest. He formed an alliance with Denmark's Frederick IV and Russia's Peter I to strip Sweden's young King Charles XII of his possessions. Poland's reward from this Great Northern War was to have been the Swedish territory of Livonia. Charles proved an able military commander, however, quickly forcing the Danes out of the war and then driving back the Russians at Narva, thereby allowing him to focus on the struggle with Augustus. Charles' decision ultimately proved as disastrous to Sweden as to Poland.

Charles defeated Augustus at Riga on 17 June 1701, forcing the Polish-Saxon army to withdraw from Livonia, and followed this up with an invasion of Poland. He captured Warsaw on 14 May 1702, defeated the Polish-Saxon army again at the Kliszów, and took Kraków. He defeated another of Augustus's armies under command of Generalfeldmarschall Adam Heinrich von Steinau at the Pułtusk in spring 1703, and besieged and captured Toruń.

By this time, Augustus was certainly ready for peace, but Charles felt that he would be more secure if he could establish someone more pliable on the Polish throne. In 1704 the Swedes installed Stanisław Leszczyński on Polish throne, it compelled Augustus II to introduce Poland to war alongside with Russia (alliance was concluded in Narva summer 1704). On 1 September 1706, Charles invaded Saxony, forcing Augustus to yield up the Polish throne to Leszczyński by the Treaty of Altranstadt.

Meanwhile Russia's Tsar Peter the Great had reformed his army, and dealt a crippling defeat to the Swedes at the Battle of Poltava. This spelled the end of the Swedish Empire and the rise of the Russian Empire.

The weakened Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth soon came to be regarded almost a protectorate of Russia. In 1709 Augustus II returned to the Polish throne under Russian auspices. Once again he attempted to establish an absolute monarchy in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but was faced with opposition from the nobility. Peter the Great seized on this opportunity to pose as mediator, threatened the Commonwealth militarily, and in 1717 forced Augustus and the nobility to sign an accommodation, favorable to Russian interests, at the Silent Sejm (Sejm Niemy).

For the remainder of his reign, in an uneasy relationship, Augustus was more or less dependent on Russia (and to a lesser extent, on Austria) to maintain his throne. After the Silent Sejm, he gave up his ambitions and finally settled on attempts to strengthen the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Faced with both internal and foreign opposition, however, he achieved little.

Augustus died at Warsaw in 1733. Although he had failed to make the Polish throne hereditary in his house, his eldest son, Frederick Augustus II of Saxony, did succeed him to the Polish throne as Augustus III of Poland — although he had to be installed there by a Russian army in the War of the Polish Succession.

Augustus II was called "the Strong" for his bear-like physical strength and for his numerous offspring (only one of them was the legitimate child and heir). The most famous of the king’s bastards was Maurice de Saxe who was a brilliant strategist and reached the highest military ranks in Ancien Régime France. In the War of the Polish Succession he remained loyal to his employer Louis XV of France, who was married to the daughter of Augustus’s rival Stanisław Leszczyński and hence an opponent of Augustus III. In recognition of his service, Maurice de Saxe was eventually made one of only six maréchaux généraux in French history.

Guinea, 2012, Augustus II the Strong, Moritzburg

Poland, 1944, Augustus II the Strong

Poland, 2000, Augustus II the Strong

Poland, 2002, Augustus II the Strong