Frederick Augustus II of Saxony
Frederick Augustus II had governed Saxony for six years as his uncle's co-regent before he became king in 1836, and the constitution of 1831 was as much his work as Anthony's. His reign was the one in which Saxony industrialised. The Leipzig to Dresden line opened in 1839, the first long-distance railway in the German lands, and Chemnitz and the Erzgebirge towns filled with textile mills and machine shops until Saxony was the most densely populated state in the Confederation. In March 1848 he did what most German princes did and appointed a liberal ministry, and in April 1849 he did what most of them did next and refused to recognise the Frankfurt constitution, dismissing the ministry and dissolving the Landtag. Dresden rose on 3 May. The king fled to the fortress of Konigstein, a provisional government was proclaimed, and for six days the barricades were held by, among others, Richard Wagner, the architect Gottfried Semper and the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, who directed the defence. Prussian troops, called in by the king, took the city on 9 May with Saxon units alongside them. Around two hundred were killed, thousands were tried, and Bakunin was condemned to death and handed to Austria and then to Russia. Saxony then spent the 1850s under Beust in the reaction that followed everywhere. The king himself was a botanist of real competence, and the Alps were his recreation. He died in them on 9 August 1854, near Imst in Tyrol, when his carriage overturned and a horse kicked him in the head. He had no children, and the crown passed to his brother John. The May uprising is what his reign is remembered for, and he was absent from it.
- Lived: 1797 CE – 1854 CE
- Nationality: Saxon
- Roles: head_of_state, monarch
