Anthony of Saxony
Anthony came to the throne at seventy-one, after his brother Frederick Augustus I had reigned for fifty-nine years, and was expected to change nothing. For three years he did not. Then the July Revolution in Paris reached Saxony in September 1830 as riots in Leipzig and Dresden, and the old king found himself ruling a state whose towns wanted a constitution and whose ministers had no answer. His response was the one that saved the dynasty: he made his nephew Frederick Augustus co-regent within the month, dismissed the old cabinet, and let Bernhard von Lindenau draft the reforms. The constitution of 4 September 1831 turned Saxony into a constitutional monarchy with a two-chamber Landtag, ministerial responsibility and a civil list, and it was granted by the crown rather than extracted from it, which mattered to the crown. Municipal self-government followed in 1832, the remaining feudal dues were made redeemable, and on 1 January 1834 Saxony joined the Zollverein, the customs union Prussia led, the decision that tied its factories to a German market rather than an Austrian one. In 1835 he chartered the company that built the Leipzig to Dresden railway. Like every Albertine king since Augustus the Strong he was a Catholic ruling a Lutheran country, and he was careful about it. His subjects called him Anton der Gutige, Anthony the Kind, and the name was affectionate rather than ironic. He married twice, both times into the houses of Savoy and Habsburg, and none of his children survived infancy, so the succession ran to the nephew he had already made his partner. He died at Pillnitz in June 1836. The constitution he granted lasted, with amendments, until 1918. He had reigned nine years and spent the first three as a placeholder and the last six as the king under whom Saxony became a modern state.
- Lived: 1755 CE – 1836 CE
- Nationality: Saxon
- Roles: head_of_state, monarch
