A Political Failure but a Great Patron of the Arts

Taking over of a country that has practices which seem scarcely compatible with peaceful governance and public order is not generally a brilliant idea: it was easier to control Germany and Japan from 1945 than Iraq from 2003. And so also in the monarchical Europe of the ancien régime. Some countries had a history of overthrowing their monarchs, lapsing into civil war, and pursuing a factionalism that extended to alliances with foreign powers. And yet the system could work. The English did not treat their monarchs well in either the late fifteenth century or the seventeenth, but new dynasties came to power and did well. It could be a difficult process. Each of the Tudors faced rebellion and conspiracies, while the same was true for George I (r. 1714–27), on whom Tim Blanning has already written a book, and George II (r. 1727–60). But, ultimately, they succeeded.

This throws light on the subject of Blanning’s new book, Augustus (1670–1733), who became Elector of Saxony in 1694 and was elected King of Poland in 1697, forced to abdicate in 1706, and then returned, thanks to Russian support, in 1709. Augustus is introduced in this impressive, well-written, and consistently interesting book as a political failure who was nonetheless a cultural patron of great significance. Blanning makes a very good case for both, but it is worth pointing out that most monarchies ended in failure. Prussia, which might appear to have done much better, came to ruin at the hands of Napoleon in 1806–07 and only returned to significance as a result of Russian success against France and intervention in Germany. Spain faced civil war and imperial partition in 1701–15. France endured serious defeats, socioeconomic crisis, aristocratic factionalism, and a contested succession in 1701–29. Sweden crashed out of major-power status in 1709–21. Denmark was occupied by Russian forces in 1716, while Austria was hit by defeats and invasion in 1739–41, and Bavaria was conquered in 1704 and 1742. If Russia in the end came to dominate Poland, Peter the Great did not look such a good bet when forced to surrender by the Turks in 1711, while there was division and chaos among the Russian elite in 1725–30 and 1741.

Moreover, if Augustus did indeed perform badly, John Frederick I had done worse in 1546–47, while Saxony under John George I faced damaging occupation during the Thirty Years’ War, notably in 1630–31, with the last Swedish troops only leaving in 1650.

Given this background, it was understandable that Augustus sought to strengthen Saxony. The acquisition of the Polish throne did not bring the advantages anticipated. The Polish constitution, with its elective monarchy and diet, made it difficult for any monarch to increase his power and compensate for the weakness of the central government, a notable problem under the pressures of war. Rulers were obliged to win the support of some of the greater nobility and of their private armies, administrative systems, and patronage networks, the sources of most power in the state. This was anathema to the authoritarian, even worse than Frederick the Great’s praise in 1754 for Prussia over France: “We do not have here vexatious priests and obstinate Parlements.” To be ahistorical, this is the Xi/Putin school of analysis.

Yet, the Great Northern War (1700–21) proved very damaging for all participants, and each had to respond to rising Russian power. Saxony was far from alone. The experienced English diplomat Charles Whitworth noted in 1721 that if Peter the Great kept Livonia, as Russia was to do until 1918, “he would perpetually hang over Prussia, like a storm ready to break, and thereby oblige them almost blindly to follow the dictates of his will.” Five years later, fearful of Russia, Frederick William I of Prussia abandoned his alliance with Britain and France. Augustus was scarcely alone in his troubles—although his presentation on a ceiling fresco in the Dresden Palace painted in the late 1710s as “Hercules casting discord, envy and hatred to the ground and protecting wisdom, truth, justice and strength” was unintentionally amusing.

Indeed, he managed a recovery in his later years, a period that, as with George I, does not greatly attract Blanning’s interest. The growing ill-health of Augustus, and his addiction to the bottle and the chase of both deer and women, led to frequent reports of his death, as in 1728; that he was to survive until 1733 came as a great surprise. As with all second-rank rulers in terms of power, Augustus had to negotiate from a position of weakness, but he could do so ably, as in 1727 when he sensibly sought to procure a neutrality for the Holy Roman Empire. Having had Saxon interests in the Habsburg succession slighted in the Second Treaty of ?Vienna in 1731, Augustus concluded a subsidiary treaty with France in 1732 and an alignment with Bavaria and prepared anew for the high-stakes contest of diplomacy. His son gained the Polish throne, in alliance with Russia. So he endured political failure in important respects, but a wider scope might suggest the situation was more complex, indeed far more multifaceted given the kaleidoscopic nature of the era’s power politics, with a superb chapter on Augustus’s organizing the wedding of the century for his only legitimate son in 1719, an excellent one on the king as artistic patron, and a continued discussion of Augustus as a performative monarch, an exponent of Baroque show, in clothes and buildings, ceremonies and jewels, which recently attracted a major theft in Dresden. This enables Blanning not only to add a valuable perspective to his sprightly account of a rascally political risk-taker, but also to make more generally important points about the nature, indeed fascination, of monarchy. And what Augustus is most noted for—the numbers of mistresses and illegitimate children—are shown to be major exaggerations. At the same time, Blanning provides full details of the relationships, which were costly and prone to produce children with revealing names, such as Frederick Augustus. Augustus certainly was active. Thus, of Constantia von Hoym, who became his maîtresse-en-titre in May 1705, Blanning observes, “Early in 1706 Constantia unwisely paid a surprise visit to Warsaw, where she found that Augustus was still seeing the Princess of Teschen,” his previous maîtresse-en-titre; “that Fatima,” war booty who became his longest serving mistress, “was pregnant again”; “and that he was also having an affair with Henriette Duval, the daughter of a local wine-dealer,” by whom he had a daughter who was made a countess and given a Warsaw palace.

Constantia was to fall foul of Augustus, be confined to an estate, flee to Berlin, be handed back, and then be incarcerated for forty-nine years until her death, possibly, Blanning suggests, because Augustus had imprudently suggested a morganatic marriage when his queen died. At any rate, her opponents had known how to displace her, presenting at court “the beautiful and voluptuous Countess Dönhoff” who “had a limited intellect” and was young. Interestingly, one prominent minister claimed that Augustus did not derive as much pleasure from sex as he would have had others believe.

New Yorkers can probe the period in the Public Library, which provides in its manuscript holdings valuable British diplomatic material on the reign with the Hardwicke collection, including the extensive papers of Sir Luke Schaub, who represented George II in Dresden and Warsaw in 1730–31. Also valuable is Yale’s Lewis Walpole Library at Farmington, Connecticut, which includes letters from George Woodward, the envoy to Saxony-Poland in 1725–35.

Yet again, Blanning shows his success as a writer of insight and style. I would have preferred more text and fewer endnotes, and the last years deserve more attention, but this is a first-rate biography of an interesting figure.

Our Reviewer: Jeremy Black, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Exeter, is also a Senior Fellow of the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the author of an impressive number of works in history and international affairs, frequently demonstrating unique interactions and trends among events, including The Great War and the Making of the Modern World, Combined Operations: A Global History of Amphibious and Airborne Warfare, and The War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon. He has previously reviewed The Return of Marco Polo's World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-first Century, Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939, War: How Conflict Shaped Us, King of the World, Stalin’s War, Underground Asia, The Eternal City: A History of Rome in Maps, The Atlas of Boston History, Time in Maps, Bitter Peleliu, The Boundless Sea, On a Knife Edge. How Germany Lost the First World War, Meat Grinder: The Battles for the Rzhev Salient, Military History for the Modern Strategist, Tempest: The Royal Navy and the Age of Revolutions, Firepower: How Weapons Shaped Warfare, Sing As We Go: Britain Between the Wars, Maritime Power and the Power of Money in Louis XIV’s France, Empireworld: How British Imperialism Shaped the Globe, Why War?, Seapower in the Post-Modern World, and Mobility and Coercion in an Age of Wars and Revolutions.

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Note: Augustus the Strong is also available in paperback & e-editions.

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