Pola

Augustus II., 1697-1733, and the Peace of Karlowitz.—On the death of John III. no fewer than 18 candidates for the vacant Polish throne presented themselves. The successful competitor was Frederick Augustus, elector of Saxony, who cheerfully re nounced Lutheranism for the coveted crown, and won the day because he happened to arrive last of all, with fresh funds, when the agents of his rivals had spent all their money. He was crowned, as Augustus II., in 1697, and his first act was to expel from the country his French rival, the prince of Conti, whose defeat was also partly due to the growing Russian influence which, from the accession of Peter the Great (1700), becomes a perma nent factor in Polish domestic politics.

Good luck attended the opening years of the new reign. In 1699 the long Turkish war, which had been going on since 1683, was concluded by the peace of Karlowitz, whereby Podolia, the Ukraine and the fortress of Kamieniec Podolski were retroceded to the republic by the Ottoman Porte. But the permanent weak ening of Turkey brought Poland little good, for the power of Russia soon became a greater menace to her than ever Turkey had been.

War with Charles XII. of Sweden.

Shortly after the Peace of Karlowitz, Augustus was persuaded by the plausible Livonian exile, John Reinhold Patkul, to form a nefarious league with Frederick of Denmark and Peter of Russia, for the purpose of despoiling the youthful king of Sweden, Charles XII. (see SWEDEN : History). This he did as elector of Saxony, but it was the unfortunate Polish republic which paid for the hazardous speculation of its newly elected king. Throughout the Great Northern War, which wasted northern and central Europe for 20 years (17oo-2o), all the belligerents treated Poland as if she had no political existehce. Swedes, Saxons and Russians not only lived upon the country, but plundered it systematically. The diet was the humble servant of the conqueror of the moment, and the leading magnates chose their own sides without the slightest regard for the interests of their country, the Lithuanians for the most part supporting Charles XII., while the Poles divided their allegiance between Augustus and Stanislaus Leszczyriski, whom Charles maintained upon the throne from 1704 to 1709. At the end of the war Poland was ruined materially as well as politically. Augustus attempted to indemnify himself for his failure to obtain Livonia, his covenanted share of the Swedish plunder, by offering Frederick William of Prussia Courland, Polish Prussia and even part of Great Poland, provided that he were allowed a free hand in the disposal of the rest of the country.

When Prussia declined this tempting offer for fear of Russia, Augustus went a step farther and actually suggested that "the four eagles" (viz., the black ones of Austria, Prussia and Russia, and the white eagle of Poland) should divide the banquet between them. He died, however, before he could give effect to this shameless design.

Augustus III., 1733-63.

On the death of Augustus II., Stanislaus Leszczyriski, who had, in the meantime, become the father-in-law of Louis XV., attempted to regain his throne with the aid of a small French army corps. Some of the best men in Poland, including the Czartoryski family, were also in his favour, and he was elected king for the second time. But there were many malcontents, principally among the Lithuanians, who so licited the intervention of Russia in favour of the elector of Saxony, son of the late king. A Russian army appeared before Warsaw and compelled a phantom diet (it consisted of but 15 senators and soo of the szlachta) to proclaim Augustus III. Stanislaus and his partisans were besieged by the Russians in Danzig, and with its surrender their cause was lost. He retired once more to his little court in Lorraine, with the title of king, leaving Augustus III. in possession of the kingdom.

Augustus III. left everything to his omnipotent minister, Count Heinrich Briihl, and Briihl entrusted the government of Poland to the noble family of the Czartoryskis, who had intimate rela tions of long standing with the court of Dresden. "The Family," as their opponents sarcastically called them, were to dominate Polish politics for the next half-century, and they were honourably determined to save the republic by a radical constitutional recon struction which was to include the abolition of the liberum veto and the formation of a standing army.

Unfortunately, the other great families of Poland were ob stinately opposed to any reform or, as they called it, any "viola tion" of the existing constitution. The Potockis, in particular, whose possessions in South Poland and the Ukraine covered thousands of square miles, hated the Czartoryskis, and success fully obstructed all their efforts. During the reigns of the two Saxon kings, every diet was dissolved by the hirelings of some great lord or, still worse, of some foreign potentate.