Throughout his political career Frederick Augustus tried to rehabilitate and recreate the Polish state that was torn apart and ceased to exist after the final partition of Poland in 1795.

Frederick Augustus' three predecessors as Elector of Saxony had been kings of Poland, but due to his young age he was not considered eligible during the 1764 Polish–Lithuanian royal election.

Frederick Augustus declined to accept the crown upon Stanisław's death in 1798 because he feared becoming entangled in disputes with Austria, Prussia and Russia, which had begun to partition Poland in 1772.

Nonetheless, a declaration of a Reichskrieg by the Reichstag of the Holy Roman Empire issued in March 1793, obliged Frederick Augustus to take part.

There was great concern in Saxony in April 1795 when Prussia suddenly concluded a separate peace with France in order to facilitate the Third Partition of Poland.

Both the peace agreement with France and Saxony's participation in the Congress of Rastatt in 1797 served to demonstrate Frederick Augustus' loyalty to the conventional constitutional principles of the Holy Roman Empire.

Frederick Augustus also did not participate in the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine, which led to the final dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire.

However, after September 1806, in response to the Berlin Ultimatum, which demanded the withdrawal of French troops from the left bank of the Rhine, Napoleon advanced as far as Thuringia.

Frederick Augustus, left without any information concerning Prussian intentions, and with Napoleon's troops about to occupy Saxony, was forced to conclude peace.

According to its terms, Saxony was forced to join the Confederation of the Rhine and to surrender parts of Thuringia to the recently organized Kingdom of Westphalia.

In this difficult situation the King attempted to enter cautiously into an alliance with the Sixth Coalition in 1813 without risking a public break with Napoleon and a declaration of war.

As the Prussian and Russian troops entered Saxony in the spring, the King first moved to the south in order to avoid a direct encounter and pursued an alliance with Austria secretly from Regensburg.

Napoleon, from whom Frederick Augustus was not able to keep the diplomatic maneuvers concealed, summoned the King urgently to Saxony after he had defeated the Prusso-Russian troops at Lützen on 2 May.

With no prospect of concrete assistance from Austria, and in view of the defeat of the Prussian – Russian coalition, which now sent peace signals to France, he felt he had no choice.

In September, as Napoleon's troops in Saxony formed up to retreat before the expanded Coalition, there came the first defections to the Allies within the Royal Saxon Army.

Frederick Augustus was mistrustful of Prussia in view of the experiences of the spring and arguably disappointed as well by Austria's decision not to join the Coalition immediately, especially while the country was exposed as before to French domination.

Rather, the King was made captive and taken to Friedrichsfelde near Berlin and placed under Russian-Prussian custody in the name of a "General Government of High Allied Powers."

In contrast to the representatives of France, Frederick Augustus was denied participation at the Congress of Vienna as punishment for his supposed role as the quasi-deputy of his former ally Napoleon.

Because the Saxon question threatened to break up the Congress, the allies finally agreed to divide Saxony (7 January 1815) with the mediation of the Tsar.

Places and areas that had been connected to the Saxon landscape for hundreds of years became completely foreign, absorbed in part into artificially created administrative regions.

Examples include Wittenberg, the old capital of the Saxon Electoral State during the Holy Roman Empire, and seat of the National University made famous by Martin Luther and Melanchthon (which was already done away with in 1817 by means of a merger with the Prussian University of Halle), and Torgau, birthplace and place of residence of the Elector Frederick the Wise, which was incorporated into one of the new hybrids created by Prussia under the name Province of Saxony.

Numerous expressions of loyalty also reached the king from the ceded territories, where the populace regarded the new rulers coolly; shortly thereafter the notion of being "mandatory-Prussian" began to circulate.

[2] The king's conservative character, which in foreign policy up to 1806 had manifested itself in unconditional loyalty to Saxon interests, hardened even more after the experience of Napoleonic hegemony.