SAXONY, KINGDOM OF. Taken in its most extensive sense, the name of Saxony formerly designated a very large tract in Northern Germany, extending from the Weser to the frontiers of Poland. At the peace of 1495 the emperor Maximilian I. divided Germany into ten circles, of which the extensive tract of country hitherto called Saxony formed three, namely, Westphalia, Lower Saxony, and Upper Saxony. The last of these comprised the electorates of Brandenburg and Saxony, the duchy of Pomerania, and several small principalities.
The kingdom of Saxony was formed out of the electorate of the same name. The duchy of Saxony, to which the electoral dignity and the office of hereditary marshal of the empire were attached, was however no part of the ancient German duchy of that name (which was composed of Lauenborg and a tract on the other side of the Elbe), but a Wend or Vandal province which Albert the Bear, margrave of Salzwedel, of the house of Ascania, had conquered and left to his son Bernhard. This Bernhard received from the emperor Frederick Bar barous. (after Henry the Lion had been declared under the ban of the empire) the dignity of duke of Saxony, to which were attached a part of Engern and Westphalia, extending from the Weser, which separated it from Eastphalia, westward to the Rhine. But Bernhard not being powerful enough to maintain the rights attached to his dignity, and to take possession of the duchy assigned to him in Westphalia, most of the Saxon allodial proprietors became Immediate estates of the empire, by which the duchy was dissolved, and its name transferred to the country inherited by Bernhard from his father, to which from that time the ducal dignity was attached. The house of Ascania becoming extinct on the death of Albert IIL, in 1422, the emperor Sigismund invested Frederick the Warlike, margrave of 3feiseeu, with the electoral title and the duchy of Saxony. He was succeeded in the electoral dominions by his son, Frederick the Mild, who reigned from 1423 to 1464. On his death his dominions were divided between his
two sons, Albert and Ernest, who were the founders of the Albertine and Ernestine lines, the former of which still reigns in the kingdom of Saxony, and the latter is divided into the four branches of Saxe Altenburg, Cohurg-Gothe, Meiningen, and Weimar.
In the war with France, In 1793, Saxony furnished only a small contingent, and took no decided part ; but in 1806 the elector sent all his troops to support the king of Prussia. The ruin of the Prussian power by the battle of Jena enabled Napoleon to gain the Saxons to his cause. Prussian Poland was added to the dominions of Saxony under the title of the grand-duchy of Warsaw, and the title of elector was changed to that of king. Further cessions from Austria in 1309 nearly doubled the territory of Saxony; but the adherence of the king to the cause of Bonaparte proved fatal to him in 1813, when the Russians occupied Poland, and with the Prussians made Saxony the theatre of the great struggle with the French emperor. In that year the battles of Ltitzen and Bautzen were fought, and were succeeded by the attack' on Dresden, the great battles of Leipzig, and the retreat of Bonaparte to the Rhine. The people of Saxony had hoped that their attachment to the cause of Germany, as proved by the desertion of their troop. from the French army in the battle of the 18th of October, would secure the integrity of their territory. The fate of Saxony was to be decided in the Congress of Vienna. and it was at first proposed that the whole kingdom should be united with Prussia, for which a territory in Westphalia, with 300,000 inhabitant.% was offered to the king as an indemnity, which was refused. At length It was decided that the kingdom should be divided, and on the 18th of May 1815 the king signed a treaty of peace with Prussia, by which he gave up more than half his dominions in point of extent, and nearly the half of the population, or a territory of 7380 square miles, with 845,218 inhabitants'.