THE SAXON ERA 383
went as they pleased. He surrendered all active participation in Polish business
to his ministers, especially to Count Heinrich Briihl (1700-63), who established
a position in Warsaw approaching that of a personal dictator. In 1740-2, he
made no move to obstruct the Prussian conquest of Austrian Silesia which drove
a lengthy wedge between his Saxon and Polish dominions. In the subsequent
War of the Austrian Succession (1742-8) and the Seven Years War (1756-63), he
followed a policy conceived exclusively in the name and interest of Saxony,
seeking to use the Republic as a milch-cow for his domestic luxuries and his mil-
itary expenses. He was powerless to prevent the excesses of the Russian forces
which tramped across the Republic towards Prussia and Pomerania, or those of
Frederick the Great who in 1762-3 imposed forced contributions on the north-
ern provinces of Poland as a means of restocking a bankrupt Prussian treasury.
To facilitate their depredations, the Prussians flooded the Republic with forged
and worthless imitations of the Polish coinage. During these decades, most cen-
tral government of the Republic was suspended. The work of the Sejm was
referred to the local dietines. The magnates, notably the Russian-backed
Czartoryski and the French-connected Potocki, ruled supreme in their private
empires, and paralysed all attempts at forging a common purpose. The
Tribunals were terrorized. The tiny royal Army stayed in its barracks, for fear
of action. The economy stagnated. The towns shrank. The bourgeoisie all but
disappeared. The peasantry toiled with no hope of amelioration. Ignorance and
poverty multiplied, whilst Warsaw danced to an endless succession of aristo-
cratic balls, where all that mattered was the size of one's partner's latifundium.
The opera and theatre flourished. The parks, the architecture, and the music
were superb. All the arts found ample patronage. Some commentators thought
that the 'Polish disease' was less harmful than the wars and violence which con-
sumed neighbouring countries; others likened it to Sodom and Gomorrah. In the
words of a popular refrain:
Za krola Sasa
Jedz, pij, i popuszczaj pasa!
(Under the Saxon King, eat, drink, and loosen your belt!)In these circumstances, the Saxons' leading rival for the throne of the
Republic, Stanislaw Leszczynski (1677—1766), can hardly have regretted his
repeated failures. This refined and jovial nobleman, a magnate of Wielkopolska,
and scion of an ancient Protestant family, was the lifelong candidate of the
Franco-Swedish party. He had been crowned King of Poland twice, once in 1704
and again in 1733. On the first occasion his reign lasted for five years until the
Swedish defeat at Poltava; on the second occasion, it was cut short after five
months. Trapped in Danzig by the Russian siege, he fled to Prussia in peasant's
clothes. Exiled in Versailles, he married his daughter to the King of France; and
in 1735 was himself rewarded with the Duchy of Lorraine and Bar in fief. His
court at Luneville was a model of the Enlightenment, the resort of pbilosophes
and of bons viveurs alike. He kept in close contact with Poland, and welcomed