Frederick Augustus I (; ; ; 23 December 1750 – 5 May 1827) was a member of the House of Wettin who reigned as the last Elector of Saxony from 1763 to 1806 (as Frederick Augustus III) and as the first King of Saxony from 1806 to 1827. He was also Duke of Warsaw from 1807 to 1815, and a legitimate candidate to the Polish throne.
Throughout his political career Frederick Augustus tried to rehabilitate and recreate the Polish state that was torn apart and ceased to exist after the final partition of Poland in 1795. However he did not succeed, for which he blamed himself for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, his efforts at reestablishing an independent Polish nation did endear him to the Polish people.
The Augustusplatz in Leipzig is named after him.
Elector of Saxony and King Designate of Poland
Family Background
Frederick Augustus was the second (but eldest surviving) son of Frederick Christian, Elector of Saxony and Maria Antonia Walpurgis, Princess of Bavaria. Because he was underage at the time of his father's death of smallpox in 1763, his mother served as Regent until 1768. His uncle, Prince Francis Xavier, functioned as his representative. Through his father's side, he was descended from two kings of Poland, and through his mother's side Siemowit, the first confirmed duke of Poland.
Renunciation of the Polish throne
Frederick Augustus' two predecessors had been kings of Poland, but due to his young age he was not considered eligible for the 1764 Polish–Lithuanian royal election. However, when a Polish Constitution was ratified by the Polish Sejm Frederick Augustus was named successor to King Stanisław II August. At the same time, the head of the Saxon Royal House was established as heir to the Polish throne (Article VII of the Polish Constitution). Frederick Augustus declined to accept the crown upon Stanisław's death in 1798, because he feared becoming entangled in disputes with Austria, Prussia and Russia, who had begun to partition Poland in 1772. In fact, a full partition of Poland among those neighboring powers had already taken place by 1795.
Foreign policy up to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire
In August 1791, Frederick Augustus arranged a meeting with Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II and King Frederick William II of Prussia at Pillnitz Castle. The move was intended partly to offer support for the French monarchy in the face of revolutionary agitation in France. The Declaration of Pillnitz warned of the possibility of military action against the French revolutionary government, a provocation that provided the latter with grounds to declare war on Austria in April 1792. Frederick Augustus himself did not sign the Declaration.
Saxony wanted nothing to do with the defensive alliance against France formed between Austria and Prussia. Nonetheless, a declaration of a Reichskrieg by the Reichstag of the Holy Roman Empire issued in March 1793, obliged Frederick Augustus to take part. There was great concern in Saxony in April 1795 when Prussia suddenly concluded a separate peace with France in order to facilitate the Third Partition of Poland. Saxony dropped out of the coalition against France in August 1796 after France had advanced east into the German lands and additional conditions for the Holy Roman Empire to conclude a separate peace were agreed.
Both the peace agreement with France and Saxony's participation in the Congress of Rastatt in 1797 served to demonstrate Frederick Augustus' loyalty to the conventional constitutional principles of the Holy Roman Empire. The Congress of Rastatt was supposed to authorize the surrender to France of the territories on the left bank of the Rhine in return for compensation for the rulers relinquishing territory. However, at Rastatt and again in 1803 at the issuance of the Final Report of the Empire Delegation, the law of the Holy Roman Empire that laid out the new order of the Empire, Saxony refused to agree to territorial adjustments, since these were designed to benefit Bavaria, Prussia, Württemberg, and Baden.