which he did with a very good grace, adding that he wished the king might find the Poles more faithful subjects than he had. Augustus had an interview with Charles at Günthersdorf, near Alt-Ranstädt, on the 17th of December, 1706. They embraced each other affectionately. Shortly afterwards Charles unexpectedly paid him a visit at Dresden; and it was suggested to the elector to seize upon his royal guest, but he was too nobleminded to commit such an act of treachery.

This was the first bitter fruit of Augustus's ambition to be king. He had lost his crown, his hereditary dominions were plundered, his pride was humbled, and the Poles, although they had now a national king, were compelled to consider Charles as the arbiter of their fate.

The spirit of Augustus was unbroken by his defeat. He took up his residence at Dresden, and tried to forget his misfortune by indulging his passion for pleasure and splendour. Fond of war, however, he sent 8000 men to the imperial army in the Netherlands (1708), and shortly afterwards went there in person, and served as a volunteer in the staff of Prince Eugene of Savoy, the emperor's general field-marshal. After he had quitted Dresden, one of his natural sons, the Count of Saxony, then a boy of twelve years, secretly left that city, and followed his father on foot till he found an opportunity of informing him of his presence, and imploring him to take him with him to the field. Augustus allowed it after some hesitation, saying that the boy would one day be a great general, a prognostic in which he was not deceived. Augustus did not remain long in the Netherlands.

On the 9th of July Charles XII. lost the battle of Pultawa, and fled to Turkey. His power was broken; and as his own obstinacy prevented him from making the best of his position, which was far from being hopeless, his enemies were active in making the best of theirs. Augustus began by declaring the peace of Alt-Ranstädt to be null and void, concluded an alliance with the Czar Peter, and entered Poland at the head of a Saxon army, while Russian troops advanced from the east to his succour. An amnesty was promised to all who had abandoned Augustus, if they would now abandon Stanislas. The Poles saw that Charles was unable to defend the present state of things; and as Stanislas was very averse to a civil war, he submitted to circumstances and quitted Poland. Augustus was once more acknowledged as king (1709). The details of these events belong to the history of Stanislas Leszczynski.

Poland being occupied by Russian and Saxon troops, the diet held in 1712 peremptorily demanded their removal; and as the king hesitated to comply with their just request, the Poles prepared to drive them out by force. The Russians withdrew in 1713;

but the Saxons remained, and their presence caused a state of anarchy which lasted till 1717, when at last the king was compelled to send them back. The discontent of the Poles was greatly increased by his obstinate and anti-Polish policy; but Augustus had the means of reconciling them, at least to his person, by intoxicating them with the pleasures of his court, and by yielding to the intolerant spirit of the clergy, who were under the direction of the Jesuits. An instance of this occurred in the proceedings against the Protestants at Thorn, where the lower classes, exasperated by the intolerance and haughtiness of the Jesuits, caused a riot in 1724; in consequence of which nine citizens, mostly Germans, among whom were several high functionaries and magistrates, were condemned to death and beheaded. This affair has been discussed in many works and pamphlets; and it must be admitted that their death was most cruel and unjust. The affair of Thorn was taken up by the neighbouring Protestant powers, especially by the King of Prussia, as a case which justified their interference with the proceedings of the Polish diet; and perhaps it would have led to a war, but for the death of Peter the Great in 1725, an event which rendered any war with Poland impolitic till the policy of his successor, the Empress Catherine I., was ascertained.

The latter part of the reign of Augustus was quiet. A truce with Sweden was concluded in 1720; but peace was only made in 1729, on the statu quo, Livonia, the principal cause of the war, having been ceded by Sweden to Russia in the peace of Nystad, on the 10th of September, 1721. This state of tranquillity was partly due to the creation of a standing army of 24,000 men, the first ever kept in Poland; for until that time wars were carried on by the nobility, who were called to arms by the king, in virtue of a decree of the diet, and returned to their homes after peace was concluded. There were, however, some foot-regiments of mercenaries; but their number varied according to circumstances, and sometimes there were none. In 1732 Augustus convoked a diet, the first since 1725, for the purpose of effecting the election of his only son Augustus as his successor. During the debates of this diet Augustus suffered much from an old ulcer in his left thigh; and as he neglected the advice of his physician, mortification came on, and he died on the 1st of February, 1733, before the diet had decided upon the succession. He was buried in the royal sepulchre at Kraków; but his heart was sent to Dresden. The queen, surnamed "die. Betsäule von Sachsen" (the pillar of prayer of Saxony), died as early as 1727. The succession of Poland was disputed between the king's son and successor in Saxony, Augustus, and the fugitive king, Stanislas Leszczynski.

The consequences of the reign of Augustus for Poland have been shown. From the time of his accession Poland was involved in those court-intrigues which then prevailed in Europe; and having once come into contact with the Western powers, which drew their strength from industry, increasing trade, and solid civil and military institutions, Poland, having none of these, could not advance at an equal pace, but continued without progress, and finally sank into utter insignificance. A nation on horseback, half civilized and half barbarous, victorious in campaigns, but divided by factions and unable to maintain a war, was mined by intrigues, and overthrown by a few battles, in spite of their patriotism and martial spirit.

The reign of Augustus was not so disastrous for Saxony, although its bad consequences were numerous, and finally led to the humiliation of the royal house of Saxony and to the division of that country in 1815. Saxony is indebted to him for the amelioration of the civil and criminal procedure, a law on legal fees, and a decree against arbitrary and rapacious proceedings of advocates; another concerning the public examinations of advocates and notaries, a law against duelling, a law of bankruptcy, and many regulations concerning mines, high roads, police, and other important subjects. A collection of the greater part of these laws was published by Lünig, a magistrate of Leipzig, in 1728. But at Dresden, as well as at Warsaw, the morality of the people was weakened by the example of extravagance, luxury, and libertinism set by Augustus and his courtiers. The splendour of the court of Dresden was only surpassed by that of Versailles, but if considered with reference to the small extent of Saxony, from which alone Augustus drew his resources, Poland being a country where he spent ten times more than he received, that splendour was unparalleled in Europe. A standing army of 30,000 men, thrice too numerous for a population of about one million, became the more onerous to the country, as it served both for war and pleasure, and was commanded by a body of fieldmarshals, generals, and other officers of rank, who would have been sufficient for an army of 100,000 men. In June, 1730, Augustus formed a camp near Mühlberg, which lasted thirty days: forty-seven kings and princes were entertained there as his guests, and festivities of the most extraordinary description were daily given for their amusement. One day a cake was baked in the royal kitchen, which was twenty-eight feet long, twelve feet broad, and three feet high; and after it had been paraded through the camp, a cook, in the dress of a carpenter, approached and cut it open with a silver axe. But these festivities were trifling in comparison with those on the marriage of the electoral prince Augustus with the archduchess Maria Jo

sephina of Austria, daughter of the Emperor Joseph I., on the 20th of August, 1719. The princess proceeded down the Elbe in the Bucentaurus, a large ship, built of the most costly materials and adorned in the richest style, which was surrounded by a fleet of one hundred beautiful gondolas, and fifteen large flat ships rigged as frigates, and carrying each from six to twelve cannons. The crews of all these ships were dressed in yellow satin with white silk stockings. At Pirna the princess was received by the king, whose dress was covered with jewels estimated at more than two millions of thalers, and he was surrounded by a court of nineteen hundred noblemen and gentlemen, six regiments of infantry, three of cavalry, and a body of eleven hundred yeomen headed by the postmaster-general, Baron von Mordax, who carried a massive golden post-horn covered with jewels. The king and his court went on board, and accompanied the bride to the environs of Dresden, where they landed. They then proceeded to Dresden in one hundred and seven carriages and six, followed by the whole Saxon army, forty-four generals, and a crowd of noblemen and gentlemen on horseback. The Te Deum in the cathedral was accompanied by a salute of four hundred guns, and the religious ceremony being finished, festivals were given for a whole month, among which the great mythological feast, in which Augustus and his illustrious guests appeared as gods, while those of minor birth and rank were dressed and acted as demigods, fauns, satyrs, and nymphs, was not the most extraordinary. The expense of these royal follies was estimated at four millions of thalers. While Augustus was thus amusing himself, famine was raging among the weavers and miners in the Erzgebirge. Augustus planned and directed all his great feasts, and such were his ideas of royal dignity that the person next to him and the royal family, according to his rule of precedence, was the great chamberlain, the second the eldest field-marshal. Place No. 60 was filled by the lieutenants of the lifeguards, and No. 61 by the chief preacher of the court, who was the first in rank among the Protestant clergy in Saxony. The beautiful buildings at Dresden were nearly all erected by order of Augustus, who was likewise the founder of the rich galleries and museums, which were augmented by his son and successor. He bought the fine collections of pictures and statues of Prince Chigi, cardinals Albani and Belloni, and others: he offered 800,000 thalers for the famous Pitt diamond, afterwards called the Regent, because it was purchased by the Duke of Orléans, Regent of France: it is now the finest among the crown jewels of France. His collection of Chinese, Japanese, and Saxon porcelain, the catalogue of which filled five volumes in folio, was estimated at more

than one million of thalers; it contained | the greater part of a collection of vases with the arms of Poland and Saxony painted on them, which were made for him in China by native artists, and for which he paid 60,000 thalers. Porcelain was first made in Europe during his reign by Böttiger, an alchymist, who, while looking for gold, accidentally found a substance by means of which Saxony has made many tons of gold. Augustus had a firm belief in alchymy, astrology, and magic, and spent great sums on the professors of these follies. A swindler, who styled himself Baron Hector von Klettenburg, was employed by Augustus in making "the true tincture of gold and everlasting life," and he received a pension of one thousand thalers per month. The king furnished the precious metal of which that tincture was to be made; the baron of course used a great deal, although he produced nothing but some bitter drops, which gave the colic to all who tasted them. At last the king got angry, the tincturer was imprisoned; and as he tried to escape, he was charged with having cheated royalty, and Hector paid for his folly with his head (1720). In 1731 Augustus sent some naturalists, among whom was the well-known Hebenstreit, to the north coast of Africa, where they were to buy wild beasts for the royal menagerie. They got a good cargo, money being no object to them; and in order to please their master, who was fond of turning, and had attained great perfection in that art, they also brought some hundred trunks of large orange and lemon trees. When the trees arrived at Dresden, Hebenstreit observed that there was still some freshness in them, and he proposed to put them in tubs, which was done, and except a few they all budded. This is the origin of the celebrated orangery at Dresden, which is much finer than that at Versailles, and is probably the finest in the world. All those trees are still in their vigour.

Augustus crowned his extravagancies by a course of gallantry to which no parallel has ever been seen. Without referring to authorities, as "La Saxe galante," a book, however, which is far from being altogether devoid of credit, and gives good accounts of many events for which there are no documents in the archives, but by keeping strictly to an historian like Böttiger, or a grave statesman like Von Dohm (Denkwürdigkeiten meiner Zeit), we still meet with things which would be rejected as fables, had they not been witnessed by cool observers, and if they could not be proved by authentic documents. The number of the mistresses of Augustus has never been ascertained: it is said that no

woman ever resisted him when he had once made up his mind to seduce her. They were of all nations, partly state mistresses, like those at the court of Versailles, partly of a more transient description, and chosen to

please for a month, a week, or an hour. Among the state mistresses, the most celebrated was the beautiful Aurora von Königsmark, the mother of the Marshal of Saxony, and the only human being who ever frightened Charles XII. The principal mistresses next to her were the Countess von Kosel, and the ladies Lubomirska, Kessel, Esterle, Fatime, Dubarc, Duval, Dönhoff, Osterhausen, and Dieskau. They cost him enormous sums: the Countess von Kosel alone cost him upwards of twenty millions of thalers, a sum admitted to be correct by Böttiger, who had access to the archives at Dresden. It is said that he had three hundred and fifty-two illegitimate children, but this is undoubtedly an exaggeration. The most celebrated of his natural sons were the Marshal of Saxony, the Chevalier de Saxe, the Count von Kosel, and the Count Rutowski, a general well known in the history of the wars of King Frederick II. of Prussia. His principal favourite was Field-marshal Count Flemming, who left a fortune of sixteen millions of thalers, half of which his widow was obliged to refund to the treasury. The whole amount spent by Augustus in luxury and extravagant undertakings has been estimated at one hundred millions of thalers. The people of Saxony were consequently oppressed by heavy taxes, but the nation at large was not impoverished. The money of Augustus was chiefly spent in the country, and, owing to the sojourn at Dresden of numbers of rich foreigners, especially Poles, who spent a large part of their princely fortunes there, money was in constant circulation, and the effect on the manufactures and the trade of Saxony, especially with Poland, was beneficial. In 1705 there were 32,400 woollencloth weavers, and the number of looms, including those for woollen cloth, was upwards of 64,000. Augustus patronised the fine arts and poetry more than learning and scientific literature; during his reign, however, Zürner, a clergyman and a good geographer, who was commissioned to inspect the high roads in Saxony, made the first good map of that country. (Böttiger, Geschichte des Kurstaates und Königreiches Sachsen (in the collection of Heeren and Ukert), vol. ii. p. 185, &c.; Fassmann and Horn, Friedrich August des Grossen Leben und Heldenthaten (this book contains many facts, but the authors do not show much judgment: it was written in a hurry), 1734; De la Bizardière, Histoire de la Scission arrivée en Pologne le 27 Juin, 1697; Parthenay (Desroches de), Histoire de la Pologne sous Auguste II.; Rulhière, Histoire de l'Anarchie de Pologne, vol. i. p. 65, &c.; Zaluski, Epistolæ Historicæ familiares, vol. ii.; a valuable important work.)

W. P.

AUGUSTUS II. (III.), FREDERICK, King of POLAND and Elector of SAXONY, the only son and successor of the King and Elector