CHARLES AUGUSTUS (KARL AUGUST) grand-duke of Saxe-Weimar, friend and patron of Goethe, was the son of Constantine, duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, and Anna Amalia of Brunswick. Educated under the regency of his mother —his father died in Augustus assumed the reins of government in 1775, in which year he married Princess Louise of Hesse-Darmstadt. In the affairs of Germany and of Europe his character gave him an influence out of all proportion to his position as a sovereign prince. He had early faced the problem presented by the decay of the empire, and began to work for the unity of Germany. The plans of the emperor Joseph II., which threatened to absorb a great part of Germany into the hetero geneous Habsburg monarchy, threw him into the arms of Prussia, and he was the prime mover in the establishment of the league of princes (Furstenbund) in 1785, by which, under the leadership of Frederick the Great, Joseph's intrigues were frustrated. He was, however, under no illusion as to the power of Austria, and he wisely refused the offer of the Hungarian crown, made to him in 1787 by Prussia at the instance of the Magyar malcontents, with the dry remark that he had no desire to be another "Winter King." In 1788 he took service in the Prussian army as major general in active command of a regiment. As such he was present, with Goethe, at the cannonade of Valmy in 1792, and in 1794 at the siege of Mainz and the battles of Pirmasenz (Sept. 14) and Kaiserslautern (Oct. 28-3o). After this, dissatisfied with the attitude of the Powers, he resigned; but rejoined on the accession of his friend King Frederick William III. to the Prussian throne. The disastrous campaign of Jena (18o6) followed; on Oct. 14, the day after the battle, Weimar was sacked ; and Charles Augus tus, to prevent the confiscation of his territories, was forced to join the Confederation of the Rhine. From this time till after the Moscow campaign of 1812 his contingent fought under the French flag in all Napoleon's wars. In 1813, however, he joined the Grand Alliance, and at the beginning of 1814 took the com mand of a corps of 30,00o men operating in the Netherlands.
At the Congress of Vienna Charles Augustus was present in person and protested vainly against the narrow policy of the Powers in confining their debates to the "rights of the princes" to the exclusion of the "rights of the people." His services in the war of liberation were rewarded with an extension of territory and the title of grand-duke. He was the first of the German princes to grant a liberal constitution to his state under Article XIII. of the Act of Confederation (May 5, 1816) ; and his con cession of full liberty to the press made Weimar for a while the focus of journalistic agitation against the existing order. Met ternich dubbed him contemptuously "der grosse Bursche" for his patronage of the "revolutionary" Burschenschaf ten ; and the celebrated "festival" held at the Wartburg by his permission in 1818 brought down upon him the wrath of the Great Powers. Charles Augustus was compelled to yield to the remonstrances of Prussia, Austria and Russia; the liberty of the press was again restricted in the grand-duchy, but, thanks to the good understand ing between the grand-duke and his people, the regime of the Carlsbad Decrees pressed less heavily upon Weimar than upon other German States.
Charles Augustus died on June 14, 1828, and left two sons; Charles Frederick (d. 1853), by whom he was succeeded, and Bernhard, duke of Saxe-Weimar (1792-1862), who distinguished himself as commander of the Dutch troops in the Belgian cam paign of 183o, and from 1847 to 185o held the command of the forces in the Dutch East Indies. Bernhard's son, William Augus tus Edward, known as Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar (1823 1902), entered the British army, served with much distinction in the Crimean War, and became colonel of the 1st Life Guards and a field-marshal; in 1851 he contracted a morganatic marriage with Lady Augusta Gordon-Lennox (d. 1904), daughter of the 5th duke of Richmond and Gordon, who in Germany received the title of countess of Dornburg, but was granted the rank of princess in Great Britain by royal decree in 1866.