SAXONY, a kingdom of Germany, ranking among theconstituent states of the empire, fifth in area, third in populationand first in density of population, bounded on the S. by Bohemia,on the W. by Bavaria and the Thuringian states and on the W., N.and E. by Prussia. Its frontiers have a circuit of 760 m. and,with the exception of the two small exclaves of Ziegelheim inSaxe-Altenburg and Liebschwitz on the border of the principalityof Reuss, it forms a compact whole of a triangular shape,its base extending from N.E. to S.W., and its apex pointing N.W.Its greatest length is 130 m.; its greatest breadth 93 m., andthe total area is 5787 sq. m. Except in the south, towardsBohemia, where the Erzgebirge forms at once the limit of thekingdom and of the empire, the boundaries are entirely political.

Constitution.—Saxony is a constitutional monarchy and amember of the German empire, with four votes in theBundesrath(federal council) and twenty-three in theReichstag (imperial diet).The constitution rests on a law promulgated on the 4th ofSeptember 1831, and subsequently amended. The crown ishereditary in the Albertine line of the house of Wettin, withreversion to the Ernestine line, of which the duke of Saxe-Weimaris now the head. The king enjoys a civil list of 3,674,927 marksor about £185,000, while the appanages of the crown, includingthe payments to the other members of the royal house, amount to£29,544 more.

History.—The name of Saxony has been borne by two distinctblocks of territory. The first was the district in the north-westof Germany, inhabited originally by the Saxons, which becamea duchy and attained its greatest size and prosperity underHenry the Lion in the 12th century. In 1180 it was broken up,and the name of Saxony disappeared from the greater part of it,remaining only with the districts around Lauenburg and Wittenberg.Five centuries later Lauenburg was incorporated withHanover, and Wittenberg is the nucleus of modern Saxony, thename being thus transferred from the west to the east of Germany.In 1423 Meissen and Thuringia were united with Saxe-Wittenbergunder Frederick of Meissen, and gradually the name of Saxonyspread over all the lands ruled by this prince and his descendants.

The earlier Saxony was the district lying between the Elbeand the Saale on the east, the Eider on the north and the Rhineon the west, with a fluctuating boundary on the south. Duringthe 8th century it was inhabited by theSaxons (q.v.), and aboutthis time was first calledSaxonia, and afterwards Saxony.For many years the Saxons had been troublesome to the Franks,their neighbours to the east and south, and the intermittentcampaigns undertaken against them by Charles Martel andPippin the Short had scarcely impaired their independence.This struggle was renewed by Charlemagne in 772, and a warfareof thirty-two years' duration was marked by the readiness ofthe Saxons to take advantage of the difficulties of Charles inother parts of Europe, and by the missionary character whichthe Frankish king imparted to the war. The subjugation of theSaxons, who were divided into four main branches, was renderedmore difficult by the absence of any common ruler, and of acentral power answerable for the allegiance of the separatetribes. Einhard, the friend and biographer of Charles, sums upthis struggle as follows:—“It is hard to say how often theSaxons, conquered and humbled, submitted to the king, promisedto fulfil his commands, delivered over the required hostageswithout delay, received the officials sent to them, and were oftenrendered so tame and pliable that they gave up the serviceof their heathen gods and agreed to accept Christianity. Butjust as quickly as they showed themselves ready to do this, didthey also always break their promises, so that one could notreally say which of these two courses may truly have beeneasier to them, and from the beginning of the war scarcely ayear passed without bringing such change of mind.”

In 772 the war was decided upon, and Charles marched fromWorms into the land of the Engrians or Angrians. The frontierfortress of Eresburg which stood on the site of the modernMarburg was taken, theIrminsul was destroyed, and the treasuresof gold and silver were seized. TheIrminsul was a woodenpillar erected to represent the world-sustaining ash Yggdrasil,and was the centre of the worship of the whole Saxon people.Having received hostages Charles left the country; but in 774while he was in Italy the Saxons retook Eresburg, and crossingthe frontier attacked the church of St Boniface at Fritzlar andravaged the land of the Franks. The king retaliated by sendingtroops of cavalry to devastate Saxony, and declared at Quierzyhe would exterminate his foes unless they accepted Christianity.In pursuance of this resolve he marched against them early in775, captured the fortress of Sigiburg on the Ruhr, regained andrebuilt Eresburg and left Frankish garrisons in the land. TheEngrians, together with the Eastphalians and the Westphalianswho dwelt on either side of them, made a formal submission andmany of them were baptized; but about the same time someFrankish troops met with a serious reverse at Lübbecke nearMinden. Charles thereupon again took the field, and afterravaging Saxony returned home under the impression that thewar was over. In 776, however, the Saxons were again in armsand retook Eresburg; but they failed to capture Sigiburg, andshowed themselves penitent when the king appeared among them.Eresburg was regarrisoned, a new fortress named Carlsburgwas erected on the banks of the Lippe, and terms of peace werearranged. In 777 Charles held an assembly at Paderborn,henceforth his headquarters during this war, which was attendedby most of the Saxon chiefs. Hostages were given, oaths offealty renewed, while many accepted Christianity, and therudiments of an ecclesiastical system were established. Thepeace did not last long. A certain Widukind, or Wittekind, whohad doubtless taken part in the earlier struggle, returned fromexile in Denmark, and under his leadership the Saxon revoltbroke out afresh in 778. The valley of the Rhine from Coblenzto Deutz was ravaged, and the advance of winter preventedCharles from sending more than a flying column to drive backthe Saxons. But in 779 he renewed the attack, and after animportant Frankish victory at Bocholt the Westphalians againdid homage. The civil and ecclesiastical organization of thecountry was improved, and in 782 the king held an assemblyat the source of the Lippe and took further measures to extendhis influence. The land was divided into counties, which,however, were given to Saxon chiefs to administer, and it wasprobably on this occasion that thecapitulatio de partibus Saxoniaewas issued. This capitulary ordered the celebration of baptismand other Christian rites and ceremonies in addition to thepayment of tithes, and forbade the observance of pagan customson pain of death.

This attack on the religion and property of the Saxons arousedintense indignation, and provoked the rising of 782 whichmarks the beginning of the second period of the war. Thework of devastation was renewed, the priests were driven out,and on the Süntel mountains near Minden, the Frankish forceswere almost annihilated. Charles collected a large army, and byhis orders 4500 men who had surrendered were beheaded atVerden. This act made the Saxons more furious than ever,but in 783 Charles inflicted two defeats upon them at Detmoldand on the river Hase, and ravaged their territory from theWeser to the Elbe. This work was continued during the followingyear by the king and his eldest son Charles, and the Christmasof 784 was spent by the royal family at Eresburg, whence Charlesdirected various plundering expeditions. The work of conversionwas renewed, and an important event took place in 785 whenWidukind, assured of his personal safety, surrendered and wasbaptized at Attigny together with many of his companions.Saxony at last seemed to be subdued, and Saxon warriors tookservice in the Frankish armies. But in 792 some Frankishtroops were killed at the mouth of the Elbe, and a similar disasterin the following year was the signal for a renewal of the ravageswith great violence, when churches were destroyed, priestskilled, or driven away, and many of the people returned toheathenism. These events compelled Charles to leave theAvar war and return to Saxony in 794; and until 799 each yearhad its Saxon campaign. At the same time in 794, as a freshexperiment in policy, every third man was transported; whilethe king was assisted in his work of conquest by the Abotriteswho inhabited a district east of the Elbe. The resistance Charlesmet with was not serious, and these expeditions took the formof plundering raids. Oaths and hostages were exacted; andmany Saxon youths were educated in the land of the Franksas Christians, and sent back into Saxony to spread Christianityand Frankish influence. The southern part of the country wasnow fairly tranquil, and the later campaigns were directedmainly against the Nordalbingians, the branch of the Saxonsliving north of the Elbe, who suffered a severe reverse nearBornhöved in 798. Further transportations were carried out,and in 797 Charles issued anothercapitulary which mitigatedthe severe provisions of thecapitulary of 782; and about 802the Saxon law was committed to writing. The Nordalbingianswere still restless, and it is recorded that their land was devastatedin 802. Two years later a final campaign was undertaken,when a large number of these people were transported into thecountry of the Franks and their land was given to the Abotrites.

The conversion of the Saxons to Christianity, which duringthis time had been steadily progressing, was continued in thereign of the emperor Louis I., the Pious, who, however, tookvery little interest in this part of his empire. Bishoprics werefounded at Bremen, Münster, Verden, Minden, Paderborn,Osnabrück, Hildesheim and Hamburg, and one founded at Seligenstadtwas removed to Halberstadt. Some of these bishopricswere under the authority of the archiepiscopal see of Cologne,others under that of Mainz, and this arrangement was unalteredwhen in 834 Hamburg was raised to an archbishopric. In 847the bishopric of Bremen was united with Hamburg, but theauthority of this archbishopric extended mainly over the districtsnorth and east of the Elbe. The abbey of Corvey, where restedthe bones of St Vitus, the patron saint of Saxony, soon becamea centre of learning for the country, and the Saxons undertookwith the eagerness of converts the conversion of their heathenneighbours. After a period of tranquillity a reaction set in againstFrankish influences, and in 840 the freemen andliti separatedthemselves from the nobles, formed a league, orstellinga, andobtained a promise from the emperor Lothair I. that he wouldrestore their ancient constitution. This rising, which wasprobably caused by the exaction of tithes and the oppression ofFrankish officials, aimed also at restoring the heathen religion,and was put down in 842 by king Louis the German, who claimedauthority over this part of the Carolingian empire.

The influences of civilization and the settlement of Frankishcolonists in various parts of Saxony facilitated its incorporationwith the Carolingian empire, with which its history is for sometime identified. By the treaty of Verdun in 843 Saxony fell toLouis the German, but he paid little attention to the northernpart of his kingdom which was harassed by the Normans andthe Slavs. About 850, however, he appointed a margrave todefend theLimes Saxoniae, a narrow strip of land on the easternfrontier, and this office was given to one Liudolf who had largeestates in Saxony, and who was probably descended from anEngrian noble named Bruno. Liudolf, who is sometimes called“duke of the East Saxons,” carried on a vigorous warfare againstthe Slavs and extended his influence over other parts of Saxony.He died in 866, and was succeeded by his son Bruno, who waskilled fighting the Normans in 880. Liudolf's second son, Ottothe Illustrious, was recognized as duke of Saxony by KingConrad I., and on the death of Burkhard, margrave of Thuringiain 908, obtained authority over that country also. He madehimself practically independent in Saxony, played an importantpart in the affairs of the Empire, and is said to have refused theGerman throne in 911. He died in 912 and was succeeded byhis son Henry I., the Fowler. Between this prince and Conrad I.,who wished to curb the increasing power of the Saxon duke,a quarrel took place; but Henry not only retained his hold overSaxony and Thuringia, but on Conrad's death in 919 was electedGerman king. He extended the Saxon frontier almost to theOder, improved the Saxon forces by training and equipment,established new marks, and erected forts on the frontiers forwhich he provided regular garrisons. Towns were walled, whereit was decreed markets and assemblies should be held, churches,and monasteries were founded, civilization was extended andlearning encouraged. Henry's son, Otto the Great, was crownedemperor in 962, and his descendants held this dignity until thedeath of the emperor Otto III. in 1002. Otto retained Saxonyin his own hands for a time, though in 938 he had some difficultyin suppressing a revolt led by his half-brother Thankmar. TheSlavs were driven back, the domestic policy of Henry theFowler was continued, the Saxon court became a centre oflearning visited by Italian scholars, and in 968 an archbishopricwas founded at Magdeburg for the lands east of the Elbe. In960 Otto gave to a trusted relative Hermann, afterwards calledBillung, certain duties and privileges on the eastern frontier,and from time to time appointed him as his representative inSaxony. Hermann gradually extended his authority, and whenhe died in 973 was followed by his son Bernard I., who wasundoubtedly duke of Saxony in 986. When Henry II. waschosen German king in 1002 he met the Saxons at Merseburg,and on promising to observe their laws Bernard gave him thesacred lance, thus entrusting Saxony to his care. Bernard wassucceeded by his son Bernard II., who took up a hostile attitudetowards the German kings, Conrad II. and Henry III. Hisson and successor Ordulf, who became duke in 1059, carried ona long and obstinate struggle with Adalbert, archbishop ofBremen, who was compelled to cede one-third of his possessionsto Ordulf’s son Magnus in 1066. The emperor Henry III. soughtto win the allegiance of the Saxons by residing among them, andbuilt a castle at Goslar and the Harzburg; and the emperorHenry IV. also spent much time in Saxony.

In 1070 Otto of Nordheim, duke of Bavaria, who held largeestates in this country, being accused of a plot to murder Henry,was placed under the ban, his possessions were declared forfeitedand his estates plundered. Otto, in alliance with Magnus, wonconsiderable support in Saxony, but after some fighting bothsubmitted and were imprisoned; and Magnus was still inconfinement when on his father's death in 1072 he becametitular duke of Saxony. As he refused to give up his duchy hewas kept in prison, while Henry confiscated the estates ofpowerful nobles, demanded the restoration of ducal lands bythe bishops, and garrisoned newly-erected forts with Swabians,who provisioned themselves from the surrounding country.These proceedings aroused suspicion and discontent, which wereincreased when the emperor assembled an army, ostensibly toattack the Slavs. The Saxon nobles refused to join the hostuntil their grievances were redressed, and in 1073 a leaguewas formed at Wormesleben. When the insurgents under DukeOtto were joined by the Thuringians, Henry was compelled in1074 to release Magnus and to make a number of concessionsas the price of the peace of Gerstungen; which, however, wasshort-lived, as the peasants employed in pursuance of its termsin demolishing the forts, desecrated the churches and violatedthe ducal tombs. Henry, having obtained help from the princesof the Rhineland, attacked and defeated the Saxons at Hohenburgnear Langensalza, rebuilt the forts, and pardoned Otto,whom he appointed administrator of the country. The Saxons,however, were not quite subdued; risings took place fromtime to time, and the opponents of Henry IV. found considerablesupport in Saxony. During the century which followed thedeath of Hermann Billung, there had been constant warfarewith the Slavs, but although the emperors had often taken thefield, the Saxons had been driven back to the Elbe, which wasat this time their eastern boundary. In 1106 Magnus died, andthe German king Henry V. bestowed the duchy upon Lothair,count of Supplinburg, whose wife Richenza inherited the Saxonestates of her grandfather Otto of Nordheim, on the death of herbrother Otto in 1116. Lothair quickly made himself independent,defeated Henry at Welfesholz in 1115, and prosecuted the waragainst the Slavs with vigour. In 1125 he became Germanking, and in 1137 gave Saxony to Henry the Proud, duke ofBavaria, who had married his daughter Gertrude, and whosemother Wulfhild was a daughter of Magnus Billung. Thesucceeding German king Conrad III. refused to allow Henry tohold two duchies, and gave Saxony to Albert the Bear, margraveof Brandenburg, who like his rival was a grandson of MagnusBillung. Albert's attempts to obtain possession failed, andafter Henry's death in 1139 he formally renounced Saxony infavour of Henry's son,Henry the Lion (q.v.). The new dukeimproved its internal condition, increased its political importance,and pushed its eastern frontier towards the Oder. In 1180,however, he was placed under the imperial ban and Saxony wasbroken up. Henry retained Brunswick and Luneburg; Westphalia,as the western portion of the duchy was called, was givento Philip, archbishop of Cologne, and a large part of the landwas divided among nine bishops and a number of counts whothus became immediate vassals of the emperor. The title dukeof Saxony was given to Bernard, the sixth son of Albert theBear, together with the small territories of Lauenburg andWittenberg, which were thus the only portions of the formerduchy which now bore the name of Saxony. Bernard, whosepaternal grandmother, Eilicke, was a daughter of MagnusBillung, took a prominent part in German affairs, but lostLauenburg which was seized by Waldemar II., king of Denmark.Dying in 1212, Bernard was succeeded in Wittenberg by hisyounger son Albert I., who recovered Lauenburg after thedefeat of Waldemar at Bornhoved in 1227. Albert died in 1260,and soon after his death his two sons divided his territories,when the elder son John took Lauenburg which was sometimescalled lower Saxony, and the younger, Albert II., took Wittenbergor upper Saxony. Both retained the ducal title and claimedthe electoral privilege, a claim which the Lauenburg line refusedto abandon when it was awarded to the Wittenberg line by theGolden Bull of 1356.

Saxe-Lauenburg was governed by John until his death in1285, when it passed to his three sons John II., Albert III. andEric I. As Albert had no sons the duchy was soon divided intotwo parts, until on the death of duke Eric III., a grandson ofJohn II., in 1401, it was reunited by Eric IV., a grandson ofEric I. When Eric IV. died in 1412 he was succeeded by hisson Eric V., who made strenuous but vain efforts to obtain theelectoral duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg, which fell vacant on thedeath of the elector Albert III. in 1422. Eric died in 1436 andwas followed by his brother Bernard IV., whose claim to exercisethe electoral vote was quashed by the electors in 1438; and whowas succeeded by his son John IV. in 1463. The next duke,John’s son Magnus I., spent much time in struggles with thearchbishop of Bremen and the bishop of Ratzeburg; he alsoassisted the progress of the Reformation in Lauenburg. Magnus,who was formally invested with the duchy by the emperorCharles V. in 1530, was the first duke to abandon the claim tothe electoral privilege. After his death in 1543 his son Francis I.reigned for the succeeding twenty-eight years, and his grandsons,Magnus II. and Francis II., until 1619. Francis, who didsomething to improve the administration of his duchy, wassucceeded in turn by his two sons and his two grandsons; buton the death of Julius Francis, the younger of his grandsons,in 1689 the family became extinct.

Several claimants to Saxe-Lauenburg thereupon appeared,the most prominent of whom were George William, duke ofLüneburg-Celle, and John George III., elector of Saxony. GeorgeWilliam based his claim upon a treaty of mutual successionmade in 1369 between his ancestor Magnus II., duke of Brunswick,and the reigning dukes of Saxe-Lauenburg. John George hada double claim. Duke Magnus I. had promised that in caseof the extinction of his family Lauenburg should pass to thefamily of Wettin, an arrangement which had been confirmedby the emperor Maximilian I. in 1507. Secondly, John Georgehimself had concluded a similar treaty with Julius Francis in1671. In 1689 the elector received the homage of the peopleof Lauenburg. George William, however, took Ratzeburg, andheld it against the troops of a third claimant, Christian V.,king of Denmark; and in 1702 he bought off the claim of JohnGeorge, his successor being invested with the duchy in 1728.Since that date its history has been identified with that ofHanover (q.v.).

In Saxe-Wittenberg Albert II. was succeeded in 1298 byhis son Rudolph I., who in 1314 gave his vote to Frederick,duke of Austria, in the disputed election for the German thronebetween that prince and Louis of Bavaria, afterwards theemperor Louis IV.; and when the latter ignored his claims onthe margraviate of Brandenburg Rudolph shared in the attemptto depose him, and to elect Charles of Luxemburg, afterwardsthe emperorCharles IV., as German king. Rudolph was followedin 1356 by his son Rudolph II., who had fought at the battle ofCrécy; and who in turn was succeeded in 1370 by hishalf-brotherWenceslaus. This prince succeeded after some fightingin temporarily obtaining the duchy of Lüneburg for his house;he took part in the election of Wenceslaus as German king in1376; and was followed in 1388 by his eldest son Rudolph III.Lavish expenditure during the progress of thecouncil of Constancereduced Rudolph to poverty, and on the death in 1422 of hisbrother Albert III., who succeeded him in 1419, this branch ofthe Ascanian family became extinct.

A new era in the history of Saxony dates from 1423, the yearwhen the emperor Sigismund bestowed the vacant electoralduchy of Saxe-Wittenberg upon Frederick, margrave of Meissen.Frederick was a member of the family of Wettin, which sincehis day has played a prominent part in the history of Europe,and he owed his new dignity to the money and other assistancewhich he had given to the emperor during the Hussite war.The new and more honourable title of elector of Saxony nowsuperseded his other titles, and the name Saxony graduallyspread over his other possessions, which included Meissen andThuringia as well as Saxe-Wittenberg, and thus the earlierhistory of the electorate and kingdom of Saxony is the earlyhistory of the mark of Meissen, the name of which now lingersonly in a solitary town on the Elbe.

Frederick's new position as elector, combined with his personalqualities to make him one of the most powerful princes inGermany, and had the principle of primogeniture been establishedin his country, Saxony and not Prussia might have beenthe leading power to-day in the German empire. He died in1428, just before his lands were ravaged by the Hussites in 1429and 1430. The division of his territory between his two sons,the elector Frederick II. and William, occasioned a destructiveinternecine war, a kind of strife which had many precedents inthe earlier history of Meissen and Thuringia. It was in 1455during this war that the knight Kunz von Kaufungen carriedinto execution his daring plan of stealing the two sons of theelector Frederick, Ernest and Albert, but he was only momentarilysuccessful, the princes soon escaping from his hands.These two sons succeeded to their father's possessions in 1464,and for twenty years ruled together peaceably. The landprospered rapidly during this respite from the horrors of war.Encouraged by an improved coinage, trade made great advances,and other benefits also accrued from the discovery of silver onthe Schneeberg. Several of the important ecclesiasticalprincipalities of North Germany were about this time held by membersof the Saxon ruling house, and the external influence of theelectorate corresponded to its internal prosperity. But matterswere not allowed to continue thus. The childless death of theiruncle William in 1482 brought Thuringia to the two princes,and Albert insisted on a division of their common possessions.The important partition of Leipzig accordingly took place in1485, and resulted in the foundation of the two main lines of theSaxon house. The lands were never again united. Ernest,the elder brother, obtained Saxe-Wittenberg with the electoraldignity, Thuringia and the Saxon Vogtland; while Albertreceived Meissen, Osterland being divided between them.Something was still held in common, and the division wasprobably made intricate to render war difficult and dangerous.

The elector Ernest was succeeded in 1486 by his son, Frederickthe Wise, one of the most illustrious princes in German history.Under him Saxony was perhaps the most influential state inthe Empire, and became the cradle of the Reformation. Hedied in 1525 while the Peasants' War was desolating his land,and was succeeded by his brother John, who was an enthusiasticsupporter of the reformed faith and who shared with Philip,landgrave of Hesse, the leadership of the league of Schmalkalden.John's son and successor, John Frederick the Magnanimous,who became elector in 1532, might with equal propriety havebeen surnamed the Unfortunate. He took part in the war ofthe league of Schmalkalden, but in 1547 he was captured atMiihlberg by the emperor Charles V. and was forced to sign thecapitulation of Wittenberg. This deed transferred the electoraltitle and a large part of the electoral lands from the Ernestineto the Albertine branch of the house, whose astute representative,Maurice, had taken the imperial side during the war. Onlya few scattered territories were reserved for John Frederick’ssons, although these were increased by the treaty of Naumburgin 1554, and on them were founded the Ernestine duchies ofSaxe-Gotha, Saxe-Weimar, Saxe-Coburg, Saxe-Meiningen andSaxe-Altenburg. For the second time in the history of theSaxon electorate the younger line secured the higher dignity,for the Wittenberg line was junior to the Lauenburg line. TheAlbertine line is now the royal line of Saxony.

Maurice, who became elector of Saxony in consequence of thecapitulation of Wittenberg, was a grandson of Albert, thefounder of his line. His predecessors in ruling Albertine Saxonyhad been his father, Henry, who only reigned for two years,and his uncle George. The latter, a zealous Roman Catholic,had vainly tried to stem the tide of the Reformation in hisdominions; Henry, on the other hand, was an equally devotedProtestant. Maurice, who succeeded his father in 1541, was alsoa Protestant, but he did not allow his religious faith to blind himto his political interests. His ruling motive was ambition toincrease both his own power and the importance of his country.He refused to join the other Protestant princes in the leagueof Schmalkalden, but made a secret treaty with Charles V.Then suddenly invading the Ernestine lands while the electorJohn Frederick was campaigning against the imperialists onthe Danube, he forced that prince to return hastily to Saxony,and thus weakened the forces opposed to the emperor. Althoughcompelled to retreat, his fidelity to Charles V. was rewarded,as we have already seen, by the capitulation of Wittenberg.All the lands torn from John Frederick were not, however,assigned to Maurice; he was forced to acknowledge the superiorityof Bohemia over the Vogtland and the Silesian duchy ofSagan. Moreover, Roman Catholic prelates were reinstatedin the bishoprics of Meissen, Merseburg and Naumburg-Zeitz.Recognizing now as a Protestant prince that the best alliancefor securing his new possessions was not with the emperor, butwith the other Protestant princes, Maurice began to withdrawfrom the former and to conciliate the latter. In 1552, suddenlymarching against Charles at Innsbruck, he drove him to flightand then extorted from him the religious peace of Passau.Thus at the close of his life he came to be regarded as thechampion of German national and religious freedom.

Amid the distractions of outward affairs, Maurice had notneglected the internal interests of Saxony. To its educationaladvantages, already conspicuous, he added the threeFürstenschulenat Pforta, Grimma and Meissen, and for administrativepurposes, especially for the collection of taxes, he divided thecountry into the four circles of the Electorate, Thuringia, Meissenand Leipzig. During his reign coal-mining began in Saxony.In another direction over two hundred religious houses weresuppressed, the funds being partly applied to educationalpurposes. The country had four universities, those of Leipzig,Wittenberg, Jena and Erfurt; books began to increase rapidly,and, by virtue of Luther's translation of the Bible, the Saxondialect became the ruling dialect of Germany.

Augustus I., brother and successor of Maurice, was one of thebest domestic rulers that Saxony ever had. He increased thearea of the country by the “circles” of Neustadt and theVogtland, and by parts of Henneberg and the silver-yieldingMansfeld, and he devoted his long reign to the developmentof its resources. He visited all parts of the country himself,and personally encouraged agriculture; he introduced a moreeconomical mode of mining and smelting silver; he favouredthe importation of finer breeds of sheep and cattle; and hebrought foreign weavers from abroad to teach the Saxons.Under him lace-making began on the Erzgebirge, and cloth-makingflourished at Zwickau. With all his virtues, however,Augustus was an intolerant Lutheran, and used very severemeans to exterminate the Calvinists; in his electorate he issaid to have expelled 111 Calvinist preachers in a singlemonth. Under his son Christian I., who succeeded in 1586, thechief power was wielded by the chancellorNikolas Crell (q.v.),who strongly favoured Calvinism; but, when Christian II.came to the throne in 1591, Crell was sacrificed to the Lutherannobles. The duke of Saxe-Weimar was made regent, andcontinued the persecution of crypto-Calvinism. Christian II.was succeeded in 1611 by his brother John George I., underwhom the country was devastated by the Thirty Years' War.John George was an amiable but weak prince, totally unfittedto direct the fortunes of a nation in time of danger. He refusedthe proffered crown of Bohemia, and, when the BohemianProtestants elected a Calvinist prince, he assisted the emperoragainst them with men and money. The edict of restitution,however, in 1629, opened his eyes to the emperor's projects,and he joined Gustavus Adolphus. Saxony now became thetheatre of war. The first battle on Saxon soil was fought in1631 at Breitenfeld, where the bravery of the Swedes made upfor the flight of the Saxons. Wallenstein entered Saxony in1632, and his lieutenants plundered, burned and murderedthrough the length and breadth of the land. After the death ofGustavus Adolphus at the battle of Lützen, not far from Leipzig,in 1632, the elector, who was at heart an imperialist, detachedhimself from the Swedish alliance, and in 1635 concluded thepeace of Prague with the emperor. By this peace he wasconfirmed in the possession of Upper and Lower Lusatia, a districtof 180 sq. m. and half a million inhabitants, which had alreadybeen pledged to him as a reward for his services against theBohemians.

Saxony had now to suffer from the Swedes a repetition ofthe devastations of Wallenstein. No other country in Germanywas so scourged by this terrible war. Immense tracts wererendered desolate, and whole villages vanished from the map;in eight years the population sank from three to one and a halfmillions. When the war was ended by the peace of Westphaliain 1648, Saxony found that its influence had begun to declinein Germany. Its alliance with the Catholic party deprived itof its place at the head of the Protestant German states, whichwas now taken by Brandenburg. John George's will made thedecline of the electorate even more inevitable by detaching fromit the three duchies of Saxe-Weissenfels, Saxe-Merseburg andSaxe-Zeitz as appanages for his younger sons. By 1746, however,these lines were all extinct, and their possessions had returnedto the main line. Saxe-Neustadt was a short-lived branch fromSaxe-Zeitz, extinct in 1714. The next three electors, who eachbore the name of John George, had uneventful reigns. The firstmade some efforts to heal the wounds of his country; the secondwasted the lives of his people in foreign wars against the Turks;and the third was the last Protestant elector of Saxony. JohnGeorge IV. was succeeded in 1694 by his brother FrederickAugustus I., or Augustus the Strong. This prince was electedking of Poland as Augustus II. in 1697, but any weight whichthe royal title might have given him in the Empire was more thancounterbalanced by the fact that he became a Roman Catholicin order to qualify for the new dignity. The connexion withPoland was disastrous for Saxony. In order to defray theexpenses of his wars with Charles XII. Augustus pawned andsold large districts of Saxon territory, while he drained theelectorate of both men and money. For a year before the peaceof Altranstadt in 1706, when Augustus gave up the crown ofPoland, Saxony was occupied by a Swedish army, which hadto be supported at an immense expense.

The wars and extravagance of the elector-king, who regainedthe Polish crown in 1709, are said to have cost Saxony a hundredmillion thalers. From this reign dates the privy council (GeheimesKabinet), which lasted till 1830. The caste privileges of theestates (Stände) were increased by Augustus, a fact which tendedto alienate them more from the people, and so to decrease theirpower. Johann Friedrich Böttger made his famous discoveryin 1710, and the manufacture of porcelain was begun at Meissen,and in this reign the Moravian Brethren made their settlementat Herrnhut. Frederick Augustus II., who succeeded his fatherin the electorate in 1733, and was afterwards elected to thethrone of Poland as Augustus III., was an indolent prince, whollyunder the influence ofCount Heinrich von Brühl (q.v.). Underhis ill-omened auspices Saxony sided with Prussia in the FirstSilesian War, and with Austria in the other two. It gainednothing in the first, lost much in the second, and in the third,the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), suffered renewed miseries.The country was deserted by its king and his minister, whoretired to Poland. By the end of the war it had lost 90,000 menand a hundred million thalers; its coinage was debased and itstrade ruined; and the whole country was in a state of franticdisorder. The elector died seven months after his return fromPoland; Brühl died twenty-three days later. The connexionwith Poland was now at an end. The elector's son and successor,Frederick Christian, survived his father only two months,dying also in 1763, leaving a son, Frederick Augustus III., a boyof thirteen. Prince Xaver, the elector's uncle, was appointedguardian, and he set himself to the work of healing the woundsof the country. The foundation of the famous school of miningat Freiberg, and the improvement of the Saxon breed of sheep bythe importation of merino sheep from Spain, were due to his care.

Frederick assumed the government in 1768, and in his longand eventful reign, which saw the electorate elevated to thedignity of a kingdom, though deprived of more than half itsarea, he won the surname of the Just. As he was the first kingof Saxony, he is usually styled Frederick Augustus I. The firstten years of his active reign passed in peace and quiet;agriculture, manufactures and industries were fostered, economicalreforms instituted, and the heavy public debt of forty millionthalers was steadily reduced. In 1770 torture was abolished.When the Bavarian succession fell open in 1777, FrederickAugustus joined Prussia in protesting against the absorption ofBavaria by Austria, and Saxon troops took part in the bloodless“potato-war.” The elector commuted his claims in right ofhis mother, the Bavarian princess Maria Antonia, for six millionflorins, which he spent chiefly in redeeming Saxon territorythat had been pawned to other German states. When Saxonyjoined theFürstenbund in 1785, it had an area of 15,185 sq. m.and a population of nearly 2,000,000, but its various partshad not yet been combined into a homogeneous whole, forthe two Lusatias, Querfurt, Henneberg and the ecclesiasticalfoundations of Naumburg and Merseburg had each a separatediet and government, independent of the diet of the electorateproper. In 1791 Frederick declined the crown of Poland,although it was now offered as hereditary even in the femaleline. He remembered how unfortunate for Saxony the formerPolish connexion had been, and he mistrusted the attitudeof Russia towards the proffered kingdom. Next year saw thebeginning of the great struggle between France and Germany.Frederick's first policy was one of selfish abstention, and from1793 until 1796, when he concluded a definite treaty of neutralitywith France, he limited his contribution to the war to the barecontingent due from him as a prince of the Empire. When warbroke out in 1806 against Napoleon, 22,000 Saxon troops sharedthe defeat of the Prussians at Jena, but the elector immediatelyafterwards snatched at Napoleon's offer of neutrality, andabandoned his former ally. At the peace of Posen (11thDecember 1806) Frederick assumed the title of king of Saxony,and entered the Confederation of the Rhine as an independentsovereign, promising a contingent of 20,000 men to Napoleon.

No change followed in the internal affairs of the new kingdom,except that Roman Catholics were admitted to equal privilegeswith Protestants. Its foreign policy was dictated by the willof Napoleon, of whose irresistibility the king was too easilyconvinced. In 1807 his submission was rewarded with theduchy of Warsaw (to which Cracow and part of Galicia wereadded in 1809) and the district of Cottbus, though he had tosurrender some of his former territory to the new kingdom ofWestphalia. The king of Saxony's faith in Napoleon was shakenby the disasters of the Russian campaign, in which 21,000Saxon troops had shared; when, however, the allies invadedSaxony in the spring of 1813, he refused to declare againstNapoleon and fled to Prague, though he withdrew his contingentfrom the French army. Whatever misgivings he may havehad were, however, removed by Napoleon's victory at Lützen(May 2, 1813), and the Saxon king and the Saxon army wereonce more at the disposal of the French. After the battle ofBautzen, Napoleon's headquarters were successively at Dresdenand Leipzig. During the battle of Leipzig in October 1813, thepopular Saxon feeling was displayed by the desertion of theSaxon troops to the side of the allies. Frederick was takenprisoner in Leipzig, and the government of his kingdom wasassumed for a year by the Russians. Saxony was now regardedas a conquered country. Nothing but Austria's vehementdesire to keep a powerful neighbour at a distance from herboundaries preserved it from being completely annexed by thePrussians, who had succeeded the Russians in the government.At the congress of Vienna the claim of Prussia to annex the wholekingdom was supported by Russia, and opposed by Austria,France and Great Britain, the question all but leading to acomplete break-up of the alliance (seeVienna, Congress of).As it was, the congress assigned the northern portion, consistingof 7800 sq. m., with 864,404 inhabitants, to Prussia, leaving5790 sq. m., with a population of 1,182,744, to Frederick, whowas permitted to retain his royal title. On the 8th of June1815 King Frederick joined the new German Confederation.

From the partition in 1815 to the war of 1866 the history ofSaxony is mainly a narrative of the slow growth of constitutionalismand popular liberty within its limits. Its influence on thegeneral history of Europe ceased when the old Empire wasdissolved. In the new German Empire it is too completelyovershadowed by Prussia to have any objective importanceby itself. Frederick lived twelve years after the division ofhis kingdom. The commercial and industrial interests of thecountry continued to be fostered, but only a few of the mostunavoidable political reforms were granted. Religious equalitywas extended to the Reformed Church in 1818, and the separatediet of Upper Lusatia was abolished. Frederick Augustuswas succeeded in 1827 by his brother Antony, to the greatdisappointment of the people, who had expected a more liberalera under Prince Frederick Augustus, the king's nephew. Antonyannounced his intention of following the lines laid down by hispredecessor. He accorded at first only a few trifling reforms,which were far from removing the popular discontent, whilehe retained the unpopular minister, Count Detlew von Einsiedel(1773–1861), and continued the encouragement of the RomanCatholics. The old feudal arrangement of the diet, with itsinconvenient divisions, was retained, and the privy councilcontinued to be the depository of power. An active oppositionbegan to make itself evident in the diet and in the press, andin 1830, under the influence of the July revolution in Paris,riots broke out in Leipzig and Dresden. Einsiedel was nowdismissed, Prince Frederick Augustus, son of Maximilian, whoresigned the succession, became co-regent, and a constitutionwas promised. After consultation with the diet the king promulgated,on the 4th of September 1831, a new constitution whichis the basis of the present government. An offer from Metternichof Austrian arms to repress the discontent by force had beenrefused. The feudal estates were replaced by two chambers,largely elective, and the privy council by a responsible ministryof six departments. Bernhard von Lindenau was the head of thefirst responsible cabinet, and the first constitutional assemblysat from the 27th of January 1833 till the 30th of October1834.

While Saxony's political liberty was thus enlarged, itscommerce and credit were stimulated by its adhesion to the PrussianZollverein and by the construction of railways. Antony haddied in 1836, and Frederick Augustus II. became sole king.Growing interest in politics produced dissatisfaction with thecompromise of 1831, and the Liberal opposition grew in numbersand influence. The burning questions were the publicity oflegal proceedings and the freedom of the press; and on thesethe government sustained its first crushing defeat in the lowerchamber in 1842. In 1843 Lindenau was forced by the actionof the aristocratic party to resign, and was replaced by JuliusTraugotte von Könneritz (1792–1866), a statesman of reactionaryviews. This increased the opposition of the Liberal middleclasses to the government. Religious considerations arisingout of the attitude of the government towards the “GermanCatholics,” and a new constitution for the Protestant Church,began to mingle with purely political questions, and PrinceJohn, as the supposed head of the Jesuit party, was insultedat a review of the communal guards at Leipzig in 1845. Themilitary rashly interfered, and several innocent spectatorswere shot. The bitterness which this occurrence provoked wasintensified by a political reaction which was initiated about thesame time under Könneritz. Warned by the sympathy excitedin Saxony by the revolutionary events at Paris in 1848, the kingdismissed his reactionary ministry, and a Liberal cabinet tookits place in March 1848. The disputed points were now concededto the country. The privileges of the nobles were curtailed;the administration of justice was put on a better footing;the press was unshackled; publicity in legal proceedings wasgranted; trial by jury was introduced for some special cases;and the German Catholics were recognized. The feudal characterof the first chamber was abolished, and its members made mainlyelective from among the highest tax-payers, while an almostuniversal suffrage was introduced for the second chamber.The first demand of the overwhelmingly democratic diet returnedunder this reform bill was that the king should accept theGerman constitution elaborated by the Frankfort parliament.Frederick, alleging the danger of acting without the concurrenceof Prussia, refused, and dissolved the diet. A public demonstrationat Dresden in favour of the Frankfort constitution wasprohibited as illegal on the 2nd of May 1849. This at once awokethe popular fury. The mob seized the town and barricadedthe streets; Dresden was almost destitute of troops; and theking fled to the Königstein. The rebels then proceeded toappoint a provisional government, consisting of Tzschirner,Heubner and Todt, though the true leader of the insurrectionwas the Russian Bakunin. Meanwhile Prussian troops hadarrived to aid the government, and after two days' fierce streetfighting the rising was quelled. The bond with Prussia nowbecame closer, and Frederick entered with Prussia and Hanoverinto the temporary “alliance of the three kings.” He was notsincere, however, in desiring to exclude Austria, and in 1850accepted the invitation of that power to send deputies to therestored federal diet at Frankfort. The first chamberimmediately protested against this step, and refused to consider thequestion of a pressing loan. The king retorted by dissolvingthe diet and summoning the old estates abolished in 1848.When a quorum, with some difficulty, was obtained, anotherperiod of retrograde legislation set in. The king himself wascarried away with the reactionary current, and the peopleremained for the time indifferent. Beust became minister forboth home and foreign affairs in 1852, and under his guidancethe policy of Saxony became more and more hostile to Prussiaand friendly to Austria.

The sudden death of the king, by a fall from his carriage inTirol in 1854, left the throne to his brother John, a learned andaccomplished prince, whose name is known in German literatureas a translator and annotator of Dante. His brother's ministerskept their portfolios, but their views gradually became somewhatliberalized with the spirit of the times. Beust, however, stillretained his federalistic and philo-Austrian views. When warwas declared between Prussia and Austria in 1866, Saxonydeclined the former's offer of neutrality, and, when a Prussianforce crossed the border, the Saxon army under the king andthe crown prince joined the Austrians in Bohemia. The entirekingdom, with the solitary exception of the Königstein, wasoccupied by the Prussians. On the conclusion of peace Saxonylost no territory, but had to pay a war indemnity of ten millionthalers, and was compelled to enter the North GermanConfederation.

During the peace negotiations Beust had resigned and enteredthe Austrian service, and on the 15th of November the kingin his speech from the throne announced his intention of beingfaithful to the new Confederation as he had been to the old.On the 7th of February 1867 a military convention was signedwith Prussia which, while leaving to Saxony a certain controlin matters of administration, placed the army under the kingof Prussia; from the 1st of July it formed the XII. army corpsof the North German Confederation under the command ofCrown-Prince Albert. The postal and telegraph systems werealso placed under the control of Prussia, and the representationof the Saxon crown at foreign courts was merged in that of theConfederation. A new electoral law of the same year reformedthe Saxon diet by abolishing the old distinction between thevarious “estates” and lowering the qualification for thefranchise; the result was a Liberal majority in the Lower Houseand a period of civil and ecclesiastical reform. John wassucceeded in 1873 by his elder son Albert (1832–1902) whohad added to his military reputation during the war of 1870.Under this prince the course of politics in Saxony presentedlittle of general interest, except perhaps the spread of thedoctrines of Social Democracy, which was especially remarkablein Saxony. The number of Social Democratic delegates in adiet of 80 members rose from 5 in 1885 to 14 in 1895. So alarmingdid the growth appear, that the other parties combined, and onthe 28th of March 1896 a new electoral law was passed, introducingindirect election and a franchise based on a triple divisionof classes determined by the amount paid in direct taxation.This resulted in 1901 in the complete elimination of the Socialistsfrom the diet. On the 7th of June 1902 King Albert died, andwas succeeded by his brother as King George. The mostconspicuous event of his reign was the flight in December 1902of the crown-princess Louise with a M. Giron, who had beenFrench tutor to her children, which resulted in a grave scandaland a divorce. More important, however, was the extraordinarysituation created by the electoral law of 1896. This law had ineffect secured the misrepresentation of the mass of the peoplein the diet, the representation of the country population at theexpense of that of the towns, of the interests of agriculture asopposed to those of industry. A widespread agitation was theoutcome, and the temper of the people, of what became knownas the “Red Kingdom,” was displayed in the elections of 1903to the German imperial parliament, when, under the systemof universal suffrage, of 23 members returned 22 were SocialDemocrats. This led to proposals for a slight modification inthe franchise for the Saxon diet (1904), which were not accepted.In the elections of 1906, however, only 8 of the Social Democratssucceeded in retaining their seats. In 1907 the governmentannounced their intention of modifying the electoral systemin Saxony by the adding of representation for certain professionsto that of the three classes of the electorate. This was, however,far from satisfying the parties of the extreme Left, and thestrength of Social Democracy in Saxony was even more strikinglydisplayed in 1909 when, in spite of plural voting, under acomplicated franchise, 25 Socialist members were returned to theSaxon diet.

King George died on the 15th of October 1904 and wassucceeded by his son as King Frederick Augustus III.

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