treaties of Altranstädt

treaties of Altranstädt, agreements made during the Second, or Great, Northern War (1700–21) by the Swedish king Charles XII with Augustus II, king of Poland and elector of Saxony (Sept. 24, 1706), and with the Holy Roman emperor Joseph I (Sept. 1, 1707).

Shortly after Augustus was crowned king of Poland (Sept. 15, 1697), he formed an alliance with Denmark and Russia against Sweden (autumn 1699) that precipitated the Second Northern War. Charles, however, swiftly defeated the Danish and Russian armies (1700) and then invaded Poland. Insisting that the Poles depose Augustus, he conquered Warsaw and Kraków (1702). In response, some of the gentry in the territory occupied by Sweden formally deposed Augustus and elected as their new king Stanisław Leszczyński, the palatine of Poznań (July 12, 1704). When Swedish troops subsequently invaded Saxony (autumn 1705), Augustus, who had retreated there, was compelled to accept the first Treaty of Altranstädt, by which he gave up his claim to the Polish throne, acknowledged Stanisław as his successor, withdrew Saxony from the war against Sweden, and renounced his alliance with Russia. Only after Peter I the Great of Russia inflicted a major defeat upon the Swedish army at the Battle of Poltava (July 8, 1709) was Augustus able to declare his agreement with Charles to be void, return to Poland, and recover the Polish crown.

After Charles’s defeat of Augustus in Saxony, the Habsburg emperor Joseph I, who was engaged in a war against France (the War of the Spanish Succession, 1701–14), feared that Sweden would form an alliance with France and successfully attack Vienna. To offset this danger, Joseph signed the second Treaty of Altranstädt with Charles, pledging to grant greater religious freedom to Protestants in Silesia in exchange for Charles’s promise not to join France.