Chapter Five

Saxon Court Councilor Glafey Pleading for Rules of Conduct in war

Seventeen years before the Elector of Hannover acquired the British crown through inheritance, another elector obtained the status of king by means of an election. The latter was Friedrich August I, Elector of Saxony (alias Augustus the Strong), who was elected to the position of King of Poland in 1697 by local nobles.1 In 1732, his son Friedrich August II (alias Augustus the Corpulent) inherited Saxony and was elected King of Poland and retained the kingdom until his death in 1763. During the reign of these two Electors-Kings of Saxony-Poland, two famous international lawyers served them as court councilor. The first was Adam Friedrich Glafey (1692–1753) who was at court from 1726 to 1753, and the second was Emer de Vattel (1714–1767) who was at court from 1759 to 1767. In this chapter, we will study the doctrine of Glafey in the context of Saxon-Polish foreign policy. Glafey was the one whom Ompteda praised, saying that he had “very right concepts of the voluntary or customary law of nations” and that he defended it well “against those who denied its existence.”2

1. The Duchy-Kingdom of Saxony and the Life of Glafey

As is symbolized by the legendary Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Articles at the residential castle of the Duke-Elector of Saxony at Wittenberg in 1517, Protestantism was firmly rooted in Saxony. However, Augustus

1 The Kingdom of Poland was officially Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Union of Lublin in 1569 united the two political entities, which were already governed by the same ruler (the personal union) since the fourteenth century. Throughout this book we call it the Kingdom of Poland for simplicity’s sake. 2 “Uebrigens hatte auch Glafey sehr richtige Begriffe vom willkürlichen oder Gewohnheitsvölkerrechte, und es ist merkwürdig, was er davon 305–336. seines Rechts der Vernunft (3te Edition von 1746.) schreibet, und wie er daselbst dasselbe gegen diejenigen, welche dessen Existenz leugnen, wohl vertheidiget.” (Ompteda, Lit- eratur, 1785, p. 298 [The publication date of the 3rd edition is wrong.]) 104 chapter five the Strong, who had obtained the electorate in 1694 as a result of the sudden death of his brother Johann Georg IV, converted to Roman Catholicism in June of 1697. This allowed him to ascend to the Pol- ish throne with the support of primarily Catholic Polish nobles. The politically motivated conversion did, of course, result in some strong reactions by the largely Protestant people of Saxony. Their resentment was so strong that when Augustus the Strong converted his son to Catholicism in 1712, he kept it a secret from the public for five years. The wife of Augustus the Strong, Christiane Eberhardine, refused to attend the coronation of her husband and remained a Protestant until her death in 1727. Augustus the Strong was not very powerful in Poland. His power was based upon the support he received from of the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I and the Russian Tsar Peter I. The obedience the Polish nobility paid Augustus was both reluctant and superficial. The new Polish king therefore tried to augment his authority over his Pol- ish nobles by obtaining territory belonging to the Swedish possessions on the Baltic coast. He also started military campaigns against Sweden with allies, Russia and Denmark. However, the Saxon-Polish army was badly defeated by the Swedes and Augustus the Strong renounced his throne in 1706 (in the Treaty of Altranstadt). Soon afterwards,P eter I defeated the Swedish army and put Augustus the Strong back on the Polish throne in 1709. Augus- tus the Strong continued to wish to become an absolute monarch in Poland, but he could not escape the Russian Tsar’s strong influence there. Russian influence was particularly prevalent after the ‘Silent Sejm’, the session of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Parliament held on 2 February 1717. During this session, the marshal of the Sejm (“Parliament” in Polish) put forward Russia’s proposal for terms of settlement in the conflict between Augustus the Strong and the Polish nobles (the Tarnogród Confederation). Both Augustus and the nobles could not help accepting the terms ‘silently’, without pronouncing any opposition. It was during this period of Augustus the Strong’s relative weakness that Adam Glafey began to get involved in Saxon politics. Augustus the Strong died in 1733. Stanisław Leszczyński, who was the King of Poland between 1706 and 1709, laid claim to the throne again. He was supported in this by his nephew-in-law King Louis XV of France. In the meantime, Tsarina Anna and Holy Roman Emperor Karl VI supported Augustus the Strong’s son Friedrich August II (1696– 1763). This resulted in the War of the Polish Succession (1733–38).