Frederick Augustus I of Saxony

Frederick Augustus I of Saxony

Frederick Augustus I (German: Friedrich August I.; b. 23 December 1750 - d. 5 May 1827) was King of Saxony (1805-1827) from the House of Wettin. He was also Elector Frederick Augustus III (Friedrich August III.) of Saxony (1763-1806) and Duke Frederick Augustus I (Polish: Fryderyk August I) of Warsaw (1807-1813).

He was the second but eldest surviving son of Frederick Christian, Elector of Saxony, and Maria Antonia Walpurgis, Princess of Bavaria.

Elector of Saxony and Elect King of Poland

Early Years

Frederick Augustus succeeded his father as Elector when he died, on 17 December 1763. Because he was only thirteen-years-old, by the first five years of his reign (1763-68) his mother, the Dowager Electress Maria Antonia was the regent and his paternal uncle Franz Xavier was the administrator of the Electorate.

Renunciation of the Polish Throne

In 1765 the Prince Franz Xavier expressed the renunciation of the Polish Crown in favour of Stanislaus Poniatowski in name of the young Elector. However, with the discharge of the Polish Constitution of 3 May 1791 by the Sejm, Frederick Augustus was appointed the successor of the King Stanislaus II and was fixed at the same time the hereditary succession of the Electorate House of Saxony for the Polish throne (Article VII of the Polish Constitution). In view of the difficult times in the foreign politics, Frederick Augustus declined the crown, because he feared to be involved, as a King of Poland, in warlike discussions with Austria, Prussia and Russia, which had some areas of the coutry since the First Partition of 1772. Actually, after the deposition of the King Stanislaus II the complete subdivision of Poland took place on 1795. Poland remain divided under the powers of Austria, Prussia and Russia.

The Declaration of Pillnitz and War against France

In 1791 Frederick Augustus arranged a meeting between the Emperor Leopold II and king Frederick Wilhelm II of Prussia on Schloss Pillnitz with the purprose, which among other things, the support of the French monarchy. The Declaration of Pillnitz also contained the view of a military action against the French Revolution and gave to France the occasion to declared the war to Austria in April 1792. Frederick Augustus refuse to signe the Declaration.

In July 1792 when Austria and Prussia formed a closed defensive alliance against France, the Electorate of Saxony didn't join. The Proclamation of War was made in the Reichstag of March 1793; this obliged Frederick Augustus, of course, to participated in the war. When Prussia concluded a separate peace with France in April 1795 suddenly at the expenses of the empire to be able to break uphindered the resistance against the subdivision of Poland, this also cared in the Electorate. After other imperial states had come separate peace alliances with France and moved forward the Frenchmen to the east, Saxony left the coalition in August 1796. With his peace with France, as well as on the Rastatter Congress which should approve the transfer of the imperial area on the left of the Rhine to France since 1797, allowed to demonstrate Frederick August the weak and obsolet constitutional principles of the Empire. Neither in Rastatt or with in the German Mediatisation of 1803 Saxony receive any compensation in the general national haggling whose main beneficiaries were Bavaria, Prussia, Würtemberg and Baden.

Peace Treaty with Napoleon

Frederick Augustus also didn't participate in the Confederation of the Rhine which led to the final dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. Opposite the Prussian idea of a North German Empire within whose Saxony should be raised to the empire he appeared also reserved. As Napoleon, however, in reaction to a Berlin Ultimatum which demanded the retreat of the French troops on the area on the left of the Rhine, since September 1806 advanced to Thuringia, Frederick Augustus united with Prussia. In the Double Battle of Jena and Auerstädt in October 1806 the Prussian-Saxon troops against Napoleon suffered, of course, a devastating defeat. From Prussia whose state guidance and army guidance retreated headlessly to the east, completely only and also without every news calmly, Frederick Augustus with Napoleon -whose troops occupied directly Saxony- had to conclude the peace. On the 11 December 1806 the Treaty was signed in Posen by the authorized persons of both sides: Saxon had to join to the Confederation of the Rhine and leave the Thuringian areas to the new Austrian Empire to be established the Kingdom of Westphalia; however, the area got for it as a compensation around Cottbus promised and was raised near the Rhine union governments of Bavaria and Wurtemberg to the Empire.

King of Saxony and Duke of Warsaw

Elevation to the Saxon-Polish Ruler

Coat of arms of Saxony.

On 20 December 1806 Frederick Augustus was proclamed King of Saxony (gen: König von Sachsen). Also, after the Treaty of Tilsit signed between Prussia, Russia and Napoleon in July 1807, Frederick Augustus was appointed as Duke of Warsaw (pl: Księstwo Warszawskie). This time Frederick August —who had rejected the Polish thoren offered by the Sejm in 1791— accepted inmediately.

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Coat of arms of the Duchy of Warsaw.

In Dresden on 22 July 1807 Napoleon dictated the Constitution of the Duchy of Warsaw who, in the Article V (like the Polish Constitution of 1791) the Duchy of Warsaw was declared heredity in the now Saxon Royal House. Geopolitically the Duchy of Warsaw was the areas of the 2nd and 3rd Prussian partitions (1795), with the exception of Danzig (Gdańsk), which was made into the Free City of Danzig under joint French and Saxon "protection", and the district around Białystok, which was given to Russia. The Prussian territory was made up of territory from the former Prussian provinces of New East Prussia, Southern Prussia, New Silesia, and West Prussia. In addition, the new state was given the area along the Noteć river and the "Land of Chełmno".

Altogether, the Duchy had an initial area of around 104,000 km², with a population of approximately 2,600,000. The bulk of its inhabitants were Poles.

When in 1809 Austria tried to seize of the Duchy, it was hit by Saxon-Polish troops successfully and had to resign to a part of the lands retained by him since 1795, who then were added to the Duchy of Warsaw: Galicia, Zamość and the old capital of the defunct Kingdom of Poland, Kraków (Cracow). In July 1812 Frederick Augustus confirmed a proclamation of the Warsaw Reichstag with the purprose of resucite the Kingdom of Poland, but Napoleon refused.

The War of Liberation

During the War of Liberation in 1813 Saxony was in a more difficult position than all other states involved in war. The country was still firmly in the hands of Napoleon and became at the same moment the central scene of battle; in the autumn of 1813, at the beginning of the Battle of Leipzig, faced to the native population which counted approximately two million heads, just one million of them were soldiers. Openly Napoleon threatened the King, he will consider Saxony as a hostile area and treated appropriately, Frederick Augustus should change the sides. Therefore of Frederick August free lands was strongly limited, he didn't want to risk rashly the well-being of the country. At the same time the recollection was alive to the King still very much of the fact that Prussia had let him in 1806 simply in the stitch.

In this difficult position the King tried to accept connection with the Great Coalition during 1813 carefully without snubbing Napoleon publicly and risking with it the Declaration of War of the Corsican. When the Prussian-Russian troops moved in the spring in Saxony, therefore, the King made way first to the south to avoid a direct meeting, and pursued from Regensburg from the in secret conclusion of an alliance treaty with Austria. The Saxon-Austrian treaty was concluded on 20 April and was brought to notice by the King the Prussian-Russian ally immediately. Frederick Augusts could remain not hidden to Napoleon and he requested the King ultimatively to the return to Saxony, after that he attack the the Prussian-Russian troops in the Battle of Lützen (1813) (2 May). Without view of specific help by Austria which entered only in August into the war, and in view of the defeat of the Prussian Russian coalition which sent out now from their part peace signals in France Frederick August decided to follow to the ultimatum.

Of Frederick Augustus's relief hardly, however, brought to the country. Napoleon, annoys by half a waste of the King and at the same time instructed on the complete mobilization of all available forces against the coalition troops, now took up also the resources of Saxony strictly. In addition, the country suffered from the changing war luck and the passages connected with it and quartering. At the end of August the allies did not succeed in the Battle of Dresden again in hitting Napoleon. Saxony was, in the meantime, a main scene of battle, and Dresden the center of the movements of the French army. Only on the 9 September Austria in Teplitz concluded his defensive alliance with Prussia and Russia; when before the extended coalition of Napoleon troops started the retreat also in Saxony, it still came in September to the first defections from the Saxon army to the allies.

Frederick Augustus, suspiciously against Prussia and in view of the experiences of the spring probably also from Austria disappointed, might not join to the extended coalition immediately, particularly as the country was still exposed to the French access. Therefore, in the Battle of Leipzig the Saxonians as well as the Polish troops still went in the side of Napoleon. However, in view of the standing out defeat of the Frenchmen bigger Saxony troop units still went over during the battle to the Coalition, while the Polish troops were rubbed sore largely.

Destiny of the Kingdome during the Congress of Vienna

More still than the difficult geopolitical position, the changing war luck, the missing support of Austria and finally also the hesitant attitude of the Saxon King became Frederick Augustus like the country probably the fact the calamity that the Prussian-Russian allies possessed no honest tendency to win Saxony for the antinapoleonic alliance. Since still before Prussia in France 17 March 1813 expressed the war and called his people to the weapons, it had communicated in Kalisch on the 22 February with Russia on an alliance contract to weights of Saxony and Poland: the Duchy of Warsaw should fall mainly in Russia, be compensated Prussia for the Polish areas in Russia on the contrary with the annexation of Saxony. Grasping of Prussia at the rich, cultural and economically country of Saxony resulted, of course, not from any necessity for overcoming the napoleonic foreign rule, but corresponded only to the old annexation dream which Frederick II develops in hispolitical testament of 1752 and had already tried to realize in the Seven Years' War mercilessly.

After the Battle of Leipzig the Prussian-Russian allies showed then also no interest in an alliance with the Saxon King in other battle against Napoleon, in spite of appropriate offers Frederick Augustus. Rather the King was led immediately in captivity in the twon of Friedrichsfelde near Berlin, and Saxony was put under Russian-Prussian guardianship in the form a "General Government of the High Allied Powers" (Generalgouvernements der Hohen Verbündeten Mächte). Not from the Russian monarch Repnin up to the 8 November 1814 carried out the Government, probably, however, the subsequent, up to the 6 June 1815 lasting Prussian occupying and the steep appearance of the Freiherr von Stein cared in Saxony for sullenness.

On the Congress of Vienna Frederick Augustus who (in a different way than possibly to the representatives of France) which was prohibited participation simultaneously on behalf for the allies of Napoleon should be punished. Behind this reprimand nothing else stood, of course, than the intention of Prussia and Russia to put through their annexation plans arranged in Kalisch. The fact that it didn't come then, nevertheless, to the complete task of Saxony, lay with the fear of Austria and France before excessive growing stronger of Prussia. After the Congress threatened to break in the Saxon question, finally, one agreed on mediation of the tsar on the 7 January 1815 divided Saxony.

Marriage and Issue

In 1769, Frederick Augustus married Amalie, Countess Palatine of Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld, and had a daughter, Princess Maria Augusta of Saxony (1782-1863). His alliance with Napoleon resulted in defeat in 1813. The country was occupied by Russia, and only restored to full sovereignty after territorial changes between Russia, Prussia, and Saxony, resulting in the loss of two-thirds of the country's territory.

Frederick Augustus was succeeded as King of Saxony by his younger brother Anthony.

Ancestors

Frederick Augustus I's ancestors in three generations

Frederick Augustus I of Saxony	Father: Frederick Christian, Elector of Saxony	Paternal Grandfather: Augustus III of Poland	Paternal Great-grandfather: Augustus II the Strong
			Paternal Great-grandmother: Christiane Eberhardine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth
		Paternal Grandmother: Maria Josepha of Austria	Paternal Great-grandfather: Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor
			Paternal Great-grandmother: Wilhelmina Amalia of Brunswick
	Mother: Maria Antonia Walpurgis	Maternal Grandfather: Charles VII, Holy Roman Emperor	Maternal Great-grandfather: Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria
			Maternal Great-grandmother: Theresa Kunegunda Sobieska
		Maternal Grandmother: Maria Amalia of Austria	Maternal Great-grandfather: Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor
			Maternal Great-grandmother: Wilhelmina Amalia of Brunswick