Electorate of Saxony
The Electorate of Saxony, also known as Electoral Saxony , was a territory of the Holy Roman Empire from 1356 to 1806 initially centred on Wittenberg that came to include areas around the cities of Dresden, Leipzig and Chemnitz. It was a major Holy Roman state, being an electorate and the original protecting power of Protestant principalities until that role was later taken by its neighbor, Brandenburg-Prussia.
In the Golden Bull of 1356, Emperor Charles IV designated the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg an electorate, a territory whose ruler was one of the prince-electors who chose the Holy Roman emperor. After the extinction of the male Saxe-Wittenberg line of the House of Ascania in 1422, the duchy and the electorate passed to the House of Wettin. The electoral privilege was tied only to the Electoral Circle, specifically the territory of the former Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg.
In the 1485 Treaty of Leipzig, the Wettin noble house was divided between the sons of Elector Frederick II into the Ernestine and Albertine lines, with the electoral district going to the Ernestines. In 1547, when the Ernestine elector John Frederick I was defeated in the Schmalkaldic War, the electoral district and electorship passed to the Albertine line. They remained electors until the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, after which they gained the Saxon kingship through an alliance with Napoleon. The Electorate of Saxony then became the Kingdom of Saxony.
The Electorate of Saxony had a diversified economy and a high level of prosperity, although it suffered major setbacks during and following both the Thirty Years' War of 1618–1648 and the Third Silesian War of 1756–1763. Its middle-class structures were restricted in their development by the nobility and the administration and tended to lag behind contemporary western nations such as the Dutch Republic. Important humanistic and educational impulses came from Saxony through the Reformation that started in the Electorate in the early 1500s. Especially in the 18th century, Saxon culture and arts flourished.
For about 200 years until the end of the 17th century, the Electorate was the second most important territory in the Holy Roman Empire and a key protector of its Protestant principalities. At the time of its greatest extent in 1807, Saxony had reached a size of 34,994 square kilometers and had a population of 2,010,000.
Establishment of the Electorate
Background
From the end of the 12th to the middle of the 13th century, a narrow circle of imperial electors emerged that succeeded in excluding others from their number. The electoral college consisted initially of two ecclesiastical and two secular princes, one of whom was the duke of Saxony. The circle was extended in the 13th century to seven: the archbishops of Mainz, Trier and Cologne plus the count palatine of the Rhine, the margrave of Brandenburg, the king of Bohemia and the duke of Saxony. Tying electoral rights to individual territories took place in the early 13th century and solidified from then on. In the case of the Electorate of Saxony, the specific territory tied to was the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg.The Old Saxony of the early Middle Ages corresponded roughly to the present German state of Lower Saxony. In 1180 Emperor Frederick Barbarossa of the rival Hohenstaufen dynasty deprived the Saxon duke Henry the Lion of his power, and his duchy was divided, with the western part placed under the Archbishop of Cologne as the Duchy of Westphalia, while the eastern part, which continued to bear the name Saxony, was enfeoffed to the House of Ascania. Bernhard III became the first Saxon duke. He did not succeed in establishing territorial rule over the full area of the old Duchy of Saxony that had been awarded to him, with the result that the new Ascanian Duchy of Saxony was formed only by his title and the imperial fiefs of Lauenburg and Wittenberg.
Bernhard was succeeded by Albert I. After his death in 1260, his sons John I and Albert II divided his land into the Duchies of Saxe-Wittenberg and Saxe-Lauenburg. Initially the brothers ruled together, but after Albert became burgrave of Magdeburg in 1269, a final division of the duchies under the two rulers became final and was formalized in 1296. Saxe-Wittenberg succeeded in claiming the electoral dignity permanently and for itself alone.
Saxe-Wittenberg becomes Electoral Saxony
The Wittenberg Ascanians Albert I, Albert II and Rudolf I ruled as dukes of Saxony for almost 150 years. They secured the continuity of the dynasty with their sons and asserted themselves as heirs to the Saxon electoral privilege. The electors were mainly concerned with external conflicts with other territorial rulers and pushed forward the territorial development of the still sparsely populated area. In 1290 the duchy was extended to include the Burgraviate of Magdeburg and the Countship of Brehna.The electoral privilege was not institutionally regulated until 1356 and the Golden Bull, the fundamental law of the Holy Roman Empire that established the procedure for electing the German king by seven prince-electors. Through it Emperor Charles IV permanently granted the electoral privilege to Rudolf I as Duke of Saxe-Wittenberg and decreed the indivisibility of the territory. The dukes of Saxe-Wittenberg rose to a place among the highest-ranking princes of the Empire. In addition to being one of the seven German electorates, Saxe-Wittenberg had possession of the office of arch-marshal of the Holy Roman Empire.
In terms of size, Saxe-Wittenberg remained a rather insignificant territory in the Empire with an area of only about 4,500 to 5,000 square kilometers. There were no large urban centers, but its location along the middle Elbe gave the duchy strategic importance.
Re-Enfeoffment of the Electorate
In November 1422 Albert III, Elector and Duke of Saxe-Wittenberg, died without descendants who were entitled to inherit. The German king, on the basis of the provisions of the Golden Bull, confiscated the duchy as a vacant imperial fiefdom. Both the Lauenburg Ascanians under Duke Erich V and the Meissen Wettins in the person of Frederick I laid claim to Saxe-Wittenberg and the associated electoral privilege.Frederick I's claim was based on his support of the Catholic forces in the religious Hussite Wars of 1419–1434. In 1423 Sigismund, King of Germany and Bohemia, awarded the political inheritance of Albert III as an imperial fiefdom to the Wettin margraves of Meissen and granted them the Electorate of Saxony along with its electoral privilege. The Margravate of Meissen was absorbed into the Electorate of Saxony, and Saxe-Wittenberg was incorporated into the Wettin dominion as an electoral district. It was able to maintain a quasi-dominant position in the Wettin state until 1548.
The Wettins, who had been margraves of the March of Lusatia since 1089 and of Meissen since 1125, gained a strategically important area to the north of their territories with Saxe-Wittenberg. It gave them a transportation connection to important northern German cities such as Magdeburg and a stronger integration into the middle Elbe country which was densely populated and important economically. Access to the Elbe made it possible for them to participate in trade with the Hanseatic League, which included several cities along the river. The former colonized land between the Saale and Elbe was connected to the long-settled land in the west through its political upgrade, which occurred at almost the same time that the Hohenzollerns were granted the Electorate of Brandenburg. The Wettins rose to become the leading power in central Germany. Politically, they proved to be committed administrators of the Empire and built up a compact territory, especially through purchases in the 15th century. From the area around Wittenberg the name "Saxony" gradually spread to encompass all the Wettin territories on the upper Elbe.
Beginning of Wettin rule
Formation of the territorial complex in the late Middle Ages
Since the ruler's place of residence and his visibility to the people gained in importance in the early phase of the Renaissance, the Wettins created a new seat in the Dresden valley of the Elbe towards the end of the 15th century. Dresden became the permanent residence of the elector, his councilors and administrative officials.The elector's increased expenses for equipping and maintaining an army and for his own court could no longer be met as before. The solution was to levy new types of taxes, which required the consent of the estates of the realm. The meeting of the estates that Elector Frederick II organized in 1438 is considered to be the first state parliament in Saxony. The estates were given the right to meet without being summoned by the ruler when there were reforms in taxation. As a result, state parliaments were held more and more frequently, and the Wettin "state of the estates" that lasted until the 19th century was formed.
As was common in other German houses, the Wettins regularly divided their possessions among sons and brothers, which often led to intra-family tensions. After the death in 1440 of Frederick IV, Landgrave of Thuringia, the Landgraviate of Thuringia reverted to the Electorate. Disagreements between the landgrave's nephews Elector Frederick II and William III led to the Division of Altenburg of 1445, in which William III received the Thuringian and Franconian parts and Frederick the eastern part of the Electorate.
Disputes over the division led to the Saxon Fratricidal War. After five years of fighting, the situation remained unchanged, although large areas of the country had been devastated. The war was ended with the Peace of Pforta on 27 January 1451. The treaty confirmed the Altenburg partition, temporarily dividing the Wettin domain into an eastern and a western part. The western part of Saxony, which had been ruled by a collateral line of the Wettins since 1382, reverted to the main Wettin line after the death in 1482 of its last representative, Duke William III of Saxony. The unity of the country was then restored.
Of great importance for the development of the country was the agreement reached in 1459 between Elector Frederick II and George of Poděbrady, King of Bohemia, in the Treaty of Eger. It brought about a hereditary settlement and a clear demarcation of the borders between the Kingdom of Bohemia and Saxony.