374 WETTIN
Yet, unlike his spermatozoa, most of the political ventures of Augustus the
Strong failed to reach their target. In the foreign field, his private alliance with
Russia, first discussed during Peter I's visit to the Republic in 1698 and sealed in
1699 at the Preobrazhenskiy Treaty, proved disastrous. In 1704, he was faced in
the Republic by a rival king raised and crowned by his opponents, and in 1706
was chased from Dresden. He recovered his fortunes almost exclusively by
favour of his Russian patron, in whose interests he had squandered his inheri-
tance and on whom thereafter, he was totally dependent. Meanwhile he had
presented the Hohenzollern with the golden opportunity of founding a
'Kingdom in Prussia' and of shifting the balance of power in Germany unmis-
takably in the direction of Berlin. In the internal sphere, he met with constant
trouble. His running fight with the Saxon Diet over some sixteen years ended in
uneasy compromise. Although in 1710, he grandly declared an end to his tradi-
tional condominium with the Estates, he was never able to circumvent them
completely. His introduction of an excise system on the Prussian model in 1705
did not give him independence of means. His army was constantly below
strength, never rising above 30,000 men; his debts reached the equivalent of
some thirty-five years' revenue; his expenditure - on his castle of Zwingler in
Dresden, on his art collection, and on entertainment — was prodigious. Most
importantly, perhaps, his insensitivity to religion deeply shocked a religious age.
His conversion to Catholicism caused great resentment in Lutheran Saxony. His
acceptance of discriminatory legislation against the Catholics of the Electorate
set the tone for similar measures in the Polish Diet directed against the
Protestants of the Republic. In Saxony, as in Poland-Lithuania, the interests of
the ruler consistently diverged from those of his subjects.
The Great Northern War (1700-21), which marked Russia's decisive bid for
power against Sweden, was launched for reasons quite incidental to
Polish-Lithuanian affairs. Augustus's treaty with Russia, negotiated exclusively
in his capacity as Elector of Saxony, did not involve the Republic. His attack on
Swedish Livonia in 1700 was largely motivated by considerations of personal
gain. Yet the Republic was implicated in spite of itself, and became one of the
principal victims.^5 It is true, of course, that the presence of a victorious Saxon
army in Riga would have done much towards restoring royal authority in
Lithuania, which had virtually seceded from Poland by virtue of decades of
magnatial feuding. For this reason, the predominant Sapieha faction in
Lithuania hastened to support the Swedes against the Saxon-Russian combina-
tion. But Augustus never achieved a position where he could have enforced any
consistent policy; and the potential threat of his Saxon guard was systematically
exaggerated by his enemies in the Republic in order to justify their resistance. As
events worked out, Augustus's initial failure before Riga began an interminable
game of cat-and-dog, in which the Elector-King was chased from pillar to post
throughout the length and breadth of his Saxon and Polish dominions for nearly
twenty years. (See Map 21.) In 1700, having saved Riga, Charles XII of Sweden
occupied the Republic's Duchy of Courland. In 1702, he marched right across