Augustus was born on October 17, 1696 in Dresden. He was the only legitimate son of Augustus II the Strong, Prince-Elector of Saxony and king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth who belonged to the Albertine line of the House of Wettin. His mother was Christiane Eberhardine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth.
He was educated as a Protestant.
He became elector of Saxony on his father’s death (1733).
As a candidate for the Polish crown, he secured the support of the emperor Charles VI by assenting to the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713, designed to preserve the integrity of the Habsburg inheritance, and that of the Russian empress Anna by supporting Russia’s claim to Courland. Chosen king by a small minority of electors on Oct. 5, 1733, he drove his rival, the former Polish king Stanisław I Leszczyński, into exile.
He was crowned in Kraków on Jan. 17, 1734, and was generally recognized as king in Warsaw in June 1736.
Augustus gave Saxon support to Austria against Prussia in the War of the Austrian Succession (1742) and again in the Seven Years’ War (1756).
His last years were marked by the increasing influence of the Czartoryski and Poniatowski families, and by the intervention of Catherine the Great of Russia in Polish affairs.
When the treaty of Hubertsburg was concluded in February 1763, he returned to Saxony, where he died on the 5th of October 1763.
Augustus III was the king of Poland and elector of Saxony (as Frederick Augustus II), whose reign witnessed one of the greatest periods of disorder within Poland. More interested in ease and pleasure than in affairs of state, this notable patron of the arts left the administration of Saxony and Poland to his chief adviser, Heinrich von Brühl, who in turn left Polish administration chiefly to the powerful Czartoryski family.
His rule deepened the anarchization of Poland and increased the country’s dependence on its neighbours.
In 1733, the composer Johann Sebastian Bach dedicated the Mass for the Dresden court (Kyrie and Gloria of what would later become his Mass in B Minor) to Augustus in honor of his succession to the Saxon electorate, with the hope of appointment as Court Composer, a title Bach received three years later. Bach's title of 'Koeniglicher Pohlnischer Hoff Compositeur' ('Royal Polish Court Composer, ' and court composer to the Kurfuerst of Saxony) is engraved on the title page of Bach's famous Goldberg Variations.
Since childhood he was brought up in Lutheranism but he followed his father’s example by joining the Roman Catholic Church in 1712.
In Dresden on 20 August 1719, Augustus married Archduchess Maria Josepha of Austria, the eldest child of Joseph I, the Holy Roman Emperor. They had sixteen children.
(12 May 1670 – 1 February 1733)
(19 December 1671 – 4 September 1727)
(8 December 1699 – 17 November 1757)
( 2 February 1736 – 24 December 1818)
( 24 November 1724 – 27 September 1760)
(12 February 1735 – 19 November 1782)
(13 September 1727 – 1 February 1734)
(4 November 1731 – 13 March 1767)
(29 August 1728 – 17 February 1797)
(10 November 1740 in Warsaw – 8 April 1826 in Dresden)
(11 July 1738, Moritzburg, Electorate of Saxony – 10 February 1822, Vienna)
(born Dresden, 18 November 1720 – died Dresden, 22 January 1721)
(28 September 1739 – 27 July 1812)
(born Pillnitz, 24 October 1721 – died Dresden, 14 March 1728)
(13 July 1733 – 16 June 1796)
(5 September 1722 – 17 December 1763)
(b. Dresden, 25 August 1730 – d. Dresden, 21 June 1806)
