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Saxony was a duchy, then an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire. Two of the Electors converted to Catholicism and became
successive Kings of Poland. With Napoleons' dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the then Elector of Saxony
sided with Napoleon. Napoleon then raised the electorate to a kingdom. When Napoleon was defeated in 1814 almost half of the
kingdom was given to Prussia (what became known as Lower Saxony) as reparations by the Congress of Vienna. The King sided
with Austria during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Prussia then took additional territory and at the request of the Austrian
Emperor left King and kingdom in place.The kingdom, at the turn of the century, after Prussia and Bavaria was the 3rd
most populous in the Empire. Saxony was an anomaly of the Empire, a Protestant kingdom (4.5+ million Protestant, mostly Lutheran;
500,000+ Catholics) and a Catholic King and Royal Family. The end came with the fall of the Empire in 1918. It is a German
state today.
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