Augustus II | king of Poland and elector of Saxony | Britannica.com - 0 views
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king of Poland and elector of Saxony (as Frederick Augustus I). Though he regained Poland’s former provinces of Podolia and the Ukraine, his reign marked the beginning of Poland’s decline as a European power
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Augustus succeeded his elder brother John George IV as elector in 1694. After the death of John III Sobieski of Poland (1696), Augustus became one of 18 candidates for the Polish throne. To further his chances, he converted to Catholicism, thereby alienating his Lutheran Saxon subjects and causing his wife, a Hohenzollern princess, to leave him
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the “Turkish War,” which had begun in 1683 and in which he had participated intermittently since 1695, was concluded; by the Treaty of Carlowitz in 1699, Poland received Podolia, with Kamieniec (Kamenets) and the Ukraine west of the Dnieper River from the Ottoman Empire.
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In July 1702 Augustus’s forces were driven back and defeated by King Charles XII of Sweden at Kliszów, northeast of Kraków. Deposed by one of the Polish factions in July 1704, he fled to Saxony, which the Swedes invaded in 1706
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In 1709, after Russia defeated Sweden at the Battle of Poltava, Augustus declared the treaty void and, supported by Tsar Peter I the Great, again became king of Poland
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He tried unsuccessfully to create a hereditary Polish monarchy transmissible to his one legitimate son, Frederick Augustus II (eventually king of Poland as Augustus III), and to secure other lands for his many illegitimate children. But his hopes of establishing a strong monarchy came to naught
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Poland had lost its status as a major European power, and when he died the War of the Polish Succession broke out