War of Polish Succession

The War of the Polish Succession (1733-1738) was a European war and a Polish civil war, with considerable interference from other countries, to determine the succession to Augustus II, King of Poland.

Former Polish king Stanislas I, installed thirty years before by Charles XII of Sweden and ousted during the Great Northern War, sought to return to power and had behind him the ethnic Polish nobility, France, Spain, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. Augustus III, Elector of Saxony and son of Augustus II, was supported by the Lithuanian nobility of Poland, and by Russia and Austria.

The war was a typical 18th century war with a limited object, in which no one but the cabinets and the professional armies were concerned. Aside from the war in Poland itself, it was fought on two theatres, the Rhine and Italy. The war opened in 1733 with an invasion of Poland by Russia, which quickly took Warsaw and forced the election of Augustus as king by the portion of the Sejm that could be assembled. The Rhine campaigns were entirely unimportant, and are remembered only for the last appearance in the field of Prince Eugene and Marshal Berwick - the latter was killed at the siege of Philippsburg - and the baptism of fire of the young crown prince of Prussia, afterwards Frederick the Great. In Italy, however, there were three hard-fought though indecisive battles, Parma (June 29, 1734), Luzzara (September 19, 1734) and Bitonto (May 25, 1735), the first and last won by the Austrians, the second by the French and their allies. In Poland itself, Stanislaus was soon expelled by a Russian army and was afterwards besieged in Danzig by the Russians and Saxons (Feb-June 1733).

From then on, the war within Poland degenerated into one between Poles and Lithuanians over who was to be monarch, while outside the country the French occupied Lorraine, Austria fought France and Sardinia in northern Italy, while also, along with Saxony and a few other German states holding on grimly against the French in the Rhineland. In May 1734 Austria's defeat by the Spanish at the Battle of Bitonto opened the kingdom of Naples to Spanish conquest.

A preliminary peace was concluded in October 1735 and ratified in the Treaty of Vienna (November 1738). Augustus was confirmed as king of Poland, Stanislas being compensated with the Duchy of Lorraine for the duration of his lifetime, while the former duke of Lorraine was made heir to the dukedom of Tuscany. The Infant Charles of Spain was confirmed as king of Naples and Sicily, with the Austrians being compensated by the acquisition of Charles's Duchy of Parma, and by the other powers' recognition of the Pragmatic Sanction that would allow Emperor Charles's daughter Maria Theresa to succeed him. France was the most successful of the extra-Polish combatants in the long run - Lorraine, lost to France after the War of the Grand Alliance, was now to returned to the French crown upon Stanislas' death, which occurred in 1766.

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