Augustus was born in Dresden on 12 May 1670, the younger son of the Elector Johann Georg III and Anne Sophie of Denmark. As the second son, Augustus had no expectation of inheriting the electorate, since his older brother, Johann Georg IV, assumed the post after the death of their father on 12 September 1691.
He was trained for a military career.
He succeeded as elector of Saxony when his older brother, John George IV, died without heirs in 1694. The next 2 years he spent commanding the armies of the Hapsburg Empire against the Turks in Hungary. He proved an inept and unimaginative commander.
When King John III Sobieski of Poland died in June 1696, Frederick August entered the international competition for the Polish throne. With Hapsburg support and judicious bribes he was elected king on June 27, 1697. He entered Poland a month later as Augustus II and promised to uphold that nation's aristocratic constitution. Although the union of Saxony and Poland brought real economic advantages to both states, the absolutist tendencies of Augustus gained him bitter enemies.
Allied after 1699 with Denmark and Russia, Augustus provoked a disastrous war with Sweden, whose young king, Charles XII, captured Vilna, Warsaw, and Cracow in 1701. The Polish kingdom split apart. Some of the nobles supporting Augustus prepared to fight on with Russian help, while others accepted Sweden's leadership and elected Stanislas Leszczynski king in 1704. In September 1706, after occupying Poland and invading Saxony, Charles XII forced Augustus to renounce the Polish crown and recognize Stanislas in the Treaty of Altranstädt. The displaced king went back to soldiering and spent 2 years in Flanders fighting under the English general Marlborough against France.
When Peter I of Russia defeated Charles at Poltava in July, 1709, Swedish domination of the north collapsed. Augustus was then able to return to Poland, while Stanislas fled to Sweden. Led astray by the apparent popularity of his restoration, Augustus tried briefly to rule Poland without the Diet. Even his firmest supporters, however, demanded that he adhere to the constitution. The remainder of his reign was taken up largely by his unsuccessful efforts to subdue aristocratic factions supported by foreign powers. After finally making peace with Sweden in 1719, he tried to create an alliance with Austria and England to balance increasing Russian influence, but the plan was foiled by aristocratic rebellion. He spent his last years attempting to secure the succession of his apathetic son, Frederick August, and enjoying the pleasures of wine and his large, cosmopolitan retinue of mistresses. He died on Feb. 1, 1733, leaving Poland fragmented by aristocratic factions, and a potential victim of the rapacity of its powerful neighbors.
He renounced his Protestant faith, to the displeasure of his Saxon subjects.
In order to be elected King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Augustus converted to Roman Catholicism.
His powerful physique and apparently insatiable sexual appetite earned him the title "the Strong. " He was a voracious womanizer.
A man of pleasure, the king sponsored lavish court balls, Venetian-style balli in maschera, and luxurious court gatherings, games, and garden festivities. His court acquired a reputation for extravagance throughout Europe. He held a famous animal-tossing contest in Dresden at which 647 foxes, 533 hares, 34 badgers and 21 wildcats were tossed and killed. Augustus himself participated, reportedly demonstrating his strength by holding the end of his sling by just one finger, with two of the strongest men in his court on the other end.
Augustus married Kristiane Eberhardine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth in Bayreuth on 20 January 1693. They had a son, Frederick Augustus II (1696–1763), who succeeded his father as Elector of Saxony and King of Poland as Augustus III.
August, a voracious womanizer, never missed his wife, spending his time with a series of mistresses.
(20 June 1647 – 12 September 1691)
(1 September 1647 – 1 July 1717)
(19 December 1671 – 4 September 1727)
(23 November 1707 – 27 September 1769)
(1706–1746)
(19 June 1702 – Pillnitz, 16 March 1764)
(17 October 1696 – 5 October 1763)
(21 August 1704 – 25 February 1774)
(28 October 1696 – 20 November 1750)
