He held three thrones and lost two of them trying to resurrect a country that had been erased from the map. Frederick Augustus spent decades attempting to rebuild Poland after its 1795 partition - a failure that haunted him until death, but earned him lasting Polish devotion.
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Born into the House of Wettin in 1750, Frederick Augustus inherited the Electorate of Saxony in 1763 as its last elector before Napoleon's reshuffling of Europe elevated him to King of Saxony in 1806. A year later he became Duke of Warsaw, the rump state Napoleon carved from former Polish lands, and in 1812 was briefly proclaimed - though never recognized - King of Poland by Polish confederates who saw in him their best hope for restoration. He spent his political life trying to rehabilitate the Polish state that had been partitioned out of existence in 1795, a mission that ended in failure when the Duchy of Warsaw dissolved after Napoleon's defeat in 1815. He blamed himself for the rest of his years, but the Poles never forgot the German king who had tried. He died in 1827; Leipzig named a square after him.
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