17
WETTIN:
The Saxon Era (1697-1763)
The sixty-six years which separate the reign of John Sobieski from that of
Stanislaw-August Poniatowski are often regarded as the most wretched and the
most humiliating in the whole of Polish history. Poland's miseries during this
period are usually explained by her subjection to the alien interests of foreign
kings. When Thomas Carlyle described Poland as a 'beautifully phosphorescent
rot-heap', it was this period that he had in mind.^1
The Saxon House of Wettin acceded to the Polish throne against all reason-
able expectations. At the Royal election of June 1697, the Austrian candidate,
Jakub Sobieski, son of the late King, was forced to withdraw for want of cash.
The Frenchman, the Prince de Conti, although acclaimed by the Primate and
supported by the majority, was unable to benefit from a technical victory; and
in the end Friedrich-August, Elector of Saxony, a last-minute entry, walked off
with the prize. The result was achieved by bribery, by threats, arid by skilful
timing. When the supporters of the favourites were locked in combat, the Saxon
agent, Count Fleming, had made the timely promise of his master's conversion
to Catholicism, and, having pawned the Wettin's jewels in Vienna, distributed
the proceeds among the electors. In collusion with Nikitin, the Russian resident,
who delivered an appealing peroration in Polish, he succeeded in splitting the
electoral field in two, and persuaded the Bishop of Kujawy to declare the Saxon
elected. It was a double election, reminiscent of 1576 or 1587. In the brief civil
war which followed, the invading Saxons and Russians enjoyed every advantage
over the French party. By September, when Friedrich-August had already been
installed and crowned in Cracow as Augustus II, the Prince de Conti was still at
sea on his way to Danzig.^2
Once the election was decided, however, the personal union of
Poland-Lithuania and Saxony offered favourable prospects for both partners.
Both felt threatened by their common neighbour, Prussia, whose obvious territ-
orial ambitions could now be neatly outflanked. Both felt the need for mutual
assistance in the dangerous world of Northern Europe where the Prussian,
Swedish, and Russian armies were far more formidable than their own. Both
may well have foreseen, as proved to be the case, that both might 'hang separ-
ately', if they did not 'hang together'. In so far as Poland-Lithuania was the
larger of the two, the nobility of the Republic had every reason to suppose that