Frederick Augustus I of Saxony
Frederick Augustus I held two crowns from Napoleon and lost most of one of them at the Congress of Vienna for having kept faith too long. He had been Elector of Saxony since 1763, and was offered the Polish throne in 1791 by the constitution of 3 May - a document that made the monarchy hereditary in his house and was, by a short head, the first codified national constitution in Europe. He declined it, on the reasonable ground that Russia would not permit it. Poland was partitioned out of existence four years later. Saxony fought against France at Jena in 1806, lost, changed sides within months, and was rewarded with a royal title. The following year Napoleon carved the Duchy of Warsaw out of the Prussian share of the partitions and gave it to him, so that from 1807 he ruled a resurrected Polish state from Dresden, three hundred miles away, through a council in Warsaw. The duchy was a French instrument and was governed as one: the Code Napoleon replaced Polish law, serfdom was abolished in name while the land stayed with the nobility, and the population's principal export was soldiers - roughly a hundred thousand of them served in the Grande Armee, and Polish units were among the last still fighting in 1814. It was also the only state anywhere that offered Poles a Polish government, which is why the arrangement commanded real loyalty despite being someone else's strategy. He stayed with Napoleon through the retreat from Moscow and to Leipzig in 1813, where his own troops changed sides during the battle and he was taken prisoner. Prussia wanted all of Saxony at the Congress of Vienna and was talked down to three-fifths of it; the duchy became the Kingdom of Poland under the tsar. He returned to a halved kingdom and reigned twelve more years.
- Lived: 1750 CE – 1827 CE
- Nationality: Saxon
- Roles: head_of_state, monarch
