STANISLAW I

born Oct. 20, 1677, Lww, Pol. [now Lviv, Ukraine] died Feb. 23, 1766, Lunville, Fr. original name StanisLaw Leszczynski king of Poland (170409, 1733) during a period of great problems and turmoil; he was a victim of foreign attempts to dominate Poland. Leszczynski was the only son of a Polish noble. His education was completed by travels in western Europe. In 1702 King Charles XII of Sweden invaded Poland as part of a continuing series of conflicts between the powers of northern Europe. Charles forced the Polish nobility to depose Poland's king, Augustus II (Frederick Augustus I of Saxony), and then placed Stanislaw on the throne (1704). Poland, weak and fragmented, had become a marching ground for foreign armies who ravaged the country at will. In 1709 Charles was defeated by the Russians at the Battle of Poltava and withdrew to Sweden, leaving Stanislaw without any real support. Augustus II regained the Polish throne, and Stanislaw left the country to settle in the French province of Alsace. In 1725 Stanislaw's daughter Marie married Louis XV of France. When Augustus died in 1733, Stanislaw sought to regain the Polish throne with the help of French support for his candidacy. After traveling to Warsaw in disguise, he was elected king of Poland by an overwhelming majority of the Diet. But before he could be crowned, Russia and Austria, fearing Stanislaw would unite Poland in the Swedish-French alliance, invaded the country to annul his election. Stanislaw was once more deposed, and, under Russian pressure, a small minority in the Diet elected the Saxon elector Frederick Augustus II to the Polish throne as Augustus III. Stanislaw retreated to the city of Gdansk (Danzig) to wait for French assistance, which did not come. Fleeing before the city fell to its Russian besiegers, he then journeyed to Knigsberg in Prussia, where he directed guerrilla warfare against the new king and his Russian supporters. The Peace of Vienna in 1738 recognized Augustus III as king of Poland but allowed Stanislaw to keep his royal titles while granting him the provinces of Lorraine and Bar for life. In Lorraine, Stanislaw proved to be a good administrator and promoted economic development. His court at Lunville became famous as a cultural centre, and he founded an academy of science at Nancy and a military college. In 1749 he published a book entitled Free Voice to Make Freedom Safe, an outline of his proposed changes in the Polish constitution. Editions of his letters to his daughter Marie (1901), to the kings of Prussia, and to Jacques Hulin, his minister at Versailles (1920), have been published.