The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Electoral Saxony in the Early Eighteenth Century: Crisis and Cooperation
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THE Polish-LITHUANIAN COMMONWEALTH AND ELECTORAL SAXONY IN THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: CRISIS AND COOPERATION Adam Perłakowski The Polish-Saxon union between 1697 and 1763 has been an important topic of historical research for some time now. The nearly seventy years of shared history are, to be sure, reflected in monographs and essays, but many aspects of this relationship remain largely unfamiliar even today. That is hardly surprising, since the Prussocentric historiography of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (one might mention Friedrich Förster, Gustav Droysen and Paul Haake) was highly successful in asserting its con- struct of the historic mission of Friderician Prussia to unite the German states under Prussian leadership. And there was no room here for a Saxony that, embroiled as it was in the foreign interests of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, moved slowly but surely towards utter decline. There was thus little justification for a greater interest in the history of Poland and Saxony under Augustus II (‘the Strong’) and Augustus III. After 1945, official GDR historiography also saw no need to uncover the secrets of the so-called Saxon period of Poland-Lithuania A few East German historians did address the question of mutual economic relations.1 In Poland too, extremely negative and stubborn stereotypes persist to this day about the ‘Saxon period’ as a ‘dark’ era of backwardness, defeat, disputatious aristocrats and—horror of horrors!—plans for the partition of Poland, which Augustus II allegedly presented to Prussian ministers.2 Thanks to the pioneering work of Józef Andrzej Gierowski and later of Jacek Staszewski we now possess a good deal of important new informa- tion about the rule of the two Wettins on the Polish throne, and Gier- owski himself, together with Johannes Kalisch, initiated the first joint conference of Polish and—in those days East—German historians on the Polish-Saxon Union, the proceedings of which were published in 1 J. Reinhold, Polen/Litauen auf den Leipziger Messen des 18. Jahrhunderts (Weimar, 1971); R. Forberger, Die Manufaktur in Sachsen vom Ende des 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1958). 2 Discussed by J. Staszewski in ‛Ostatni “wielki plan” Augusta Mocnego’ Rocznik Gdański, 46 (1986), 45–67. 282 adam perłakowski 1962 under the memorable title Um die polnische Krone.3 Currently, the main centres of ‘Saxon research’ are the universities of Krakow, Toruń | and Warsaw, although they pay scant attention to questions of internal developments in Electoral Saxony, which are usually left to scholars of Saxon regional history. The personal union between electoral Saxony and Poland was no exception in early modern Europe. We need only recall the connections between England and Scotland from 1603 to 1707, between Great Britain and Hanover after 1714, between the lands of the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs or within the Danish ‘conglomerate state’. Among the great dynasties of the Holy Roman Empire, these monarchical unions were also generally associated with the striving for higher status, such as was pur- sued in the second half of the seventeenth century, apart from the Wettins and Guelphs, above all by the Hohenzollerns and—less successfully with their repeated candidatures for the Polish crown—the Wittelsbachs.4 It is by no means inconceivable that the union between Poland and Saxony might have had very far-reaching consequences indeed, in particular a strengthening of the military potential of the Rzeczpospolita, which would have meant an upheaval in the prevailing political balance of power in that part of Europe. The tumultuous events of the electoral diet of 1697 and the subsequent election of the Saxon Elector Frederick Augustus I as king of Poland could already have provided hints of the less than idyllic and tranquil atmosphere of his future regency.5 The Wettin’s only serious rival, François-Louis de Bourbon, prince de Conti, was in no hurry to appear in Poland-Lithuania, despite the support of a large portion of the aristocracy. Frederick Augustus I exploited this circumstance and had himself crowned king of Poland—under the name Augustus II, following Polish nomenclature— in the cathedral on Wawel Hill in Cracow. The country was soon inter- nally pacified as well. The rival factions were mollified at the sejm of 1699, 3 J. Kalisch and J. Gierowski (ed.), Um die polnische Krone: Sachsen und Polen während des Nordischen Kriegs, 1700–21 (Berlin, 1962). 4 Cf., e.g., Heinz Duchhardt (ed.), Der Herrscher in der Doppelpflicht. Europäische Fürsten und ihre beiden Throne (Mainz, 1997); Thomas Fröschl (ed.), Föderationsmodelle und Uni- onsstrukturen. Über Staatenverbindungen in der frühen Neuzeit vom 15. zum 18. Jahrhundert (Vienna, 1994); Joachim Bahlcke, ‛Unionsstrukturen und Föderationsmodelle. Übernatio- nale Gemeinsamkeiten im Osten des ständischen Europa. Anmerkungen zu vergleichen- den Ansätzen über das frühneuzeitliche Ostmitteleuropa’, in Comparativ. Leipziger Beiträge zur Universalgeschichte und vergleichenden Gesellschaftsforschung, 5 (1998), 57–73. 5 J. Staszewski, ‛Elekcja 1697 roku’, Acta Universitatis Nicolai Copernici, Nauki Humanistyczno-Społeczne, Historia, 28 (1993), 73–92..