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.

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.

[citation needed] 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.

The electoral privilege was not institutionally regulated until 1356 and the Golden Bull, the fundamental law of the Empire settling the method of electing the German king by seven prince-electors.

[9] 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.

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.

The period of the joint reign of Ernest and Albert saw extensive silver discoveries in the Ore Mountains that stimulated a sustained economic boom.

Leipzig became an important economic center of the Holy Roman Empire after the emperor granted it the right to hold fairs three times a year.

The family network of the Wettins expanded to include members who were ecclesiastical dignitaries in Magdeburg, Halberstadt and Mainz, with additional claims to duchies on the lower Rhine.

[15] It was not originally intended to be permanent, but in the end it significantly weakened the powerful position of the Electorate of Saxony in the Holy Roman Empire and led to open confrontation.

When Martin Luther posted his 95 theses in Wittenberg in 1517, the electoral district and Ernestine possessions of Saxony became the focus of European attention since it was there that the first phase of the Protestant Reformation was anchored.

For their part, the Ernestines became involved in the Reformation throughout the Empire, forming with the Schmalkaldic League of Lutheran princes a counterweight to the imperial Catholic side and openly calling for it to be challenged.

[20] In the Battle of Mühlberg in the Schmalkaldic War, the Albertine duke Maurice of Saxony, an ally of Emperor Charles V, defeated the Ernestine elector John Frederick I (r. 1532–1547).

In the Capitulation of Wittenberg, Maurice (r. 1547–1553) was enfeoffed with the electoral privilege in 1547 and with the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg in 1548, but contrary to the emperor's promises, he did not receive all of the Ernestine territories.

[21] The Ernestine line lost half of its possessions and retained only Weimar, Jena, Saalfeld, Weida, Gotha, Eisenach and Coburg.

Augustus, who had replaced Maurice as elector after he was killed in battle in 1553, saw himself as the leader of the Lutheran imperial states in whose interest the status quo achieved between Protestants and Catholics was to be preserved.

Emperor Ferdinand I entrusted Augustus with the execution of the imperial sentences, and his successful military actions against both Grumbach and John Frederick in 1567 consolidated Electoral Saxony's position in the Empire.

After the death of the emperor in March 1619, the Bohemian estates deposed the newly crowned Ferdinand II and elected Frederick V of the Palatinate as their king.

John George then agreed with Ferdinand II that Saxony should reconquer the two Bohemian tributary lands of Upper and Lower Lusatia for the emperor.

Many smaller towns and villages fell victim to massive looting, especially after General Wallenstein gave free hand to his field marshal Heinrich Holk.

From August to December 1632 the Croatian light cavalry raided numerous villages, plundering them, maltreating and killing the inhabitants and leaving a swath of destruction in its wake.

After the conclusion on 23 October 1648 of the Peace of Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years' War, Swedish troops were slow in leaving Electoral Saxony.

[26] After the complete devastation of Magdeburg, its importance as a metropolis in the east of the Holy Roman Empire passed to Leipzig and Dresden, as well as to the rising Brandenburg city of Berlin.

The political calculation behind a dynastically based personal union with the elective kingdom of Poland-Lithuania was rooted in the aspirations for independence among German territorial princes.

Saxony's rulers, like the other powerful imperial princes of the time, wanted to escape the central grip of the Holy Roman emperor and enhance their own dynastic rank in the European state system.

King Augustus' increased importance in foreign affairs led to secret negotiations with Denmark and Russia that were directed against Sweden and that ultimately resulted in the Great Northern War of 1700–1721.

Augustus' power politics failed due to early defeats; the Saxon invasion of Swedish Livonia in 1700 turned into a military fiasco.

[32] Augustus regained possession of the Polish crown after the Swedes withdrew from Poland in 1709, but he was unable to assert his claim to Swedish Livonia and fell to the rank of a junior partner of Russia.

Thomas von Fritsch and the restoration commission of which he was president placed the systematic reduction of the national debt at the center of a Saxon reconstruction program that was called the Rétablissement.

Electoral Saxony was granted some Prussian territories, joined the Confederation of the Rhine, and was obliged to provide troop contingents for the French wars.