Background
Ever since the death of Sigismund II Augustus in 1572, Polish kings were elected by Polish nobility. The process gave the nobility a great deal of power over the king, but the sejms (meetings of delegates) to elect kings and conduct other business were in later years paralyzed by the institution of the Liberum Veto, which gave any individual in the sejm the power to negate its decisions. As a result, Poland's powerful neighbors were able to exert significant influence on the decision-making process, and by the early 18th century the system was in decline.
Former Polish King Stanisław Leszczyński hoped to be elected king once again upon the death of his old adversary, Augustus II of Saxony, who had failed in his attempts to make the Polish crown hereditary within his family. Thirty years earlier, Stanisław had been installed as king of Poland by King Charles XII of Sweden during his period of dominance in the early part of the Great Northern War, and was ousted following the Battle of Poltava by the victorious Russians. Stanisław was supported in his bid to regain the throne by his son-in-law, King Louis XV of France, who hoped to renew France's traditional alliance with Poland as a way to balance Russian and Austrian power in northern and eastern Europe.
In 1732 Empress Anna of Russia, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI and King Frederick William I of Prussia, irritated with Augustus but unwilling to allow Stanisław to become king, secretly signed Löwenwolde's Treaty, in which they agreed to jointly back the candidacy of Infante Manuel of Portugal for the Polish throne.
France's prime minister, Cardinal Fleury, saw the Polish struggle as a chance to strike at Austrian power in the west without seeming to be the aggressor. While he cared little for who should become King of Poland, the cause of protecting the King's father-in-law was a sympathetic one, and he hoped to use the war as a means of humbling the Austrians, and perhaps securing the long-desired Duchy of Lorraine from its duke, Francis Stephen, who was expected to marry Emperor Charles's daughter Maria Theresa, which would bring Austrian power dangerously close to the French border. Fleury's diplomatic moves would bring additional powers into the war that had no interest in Polish affairs, most notably Spain and the Charles Emmanuel, the King of Sardinia who was also the Duke of Savoy.
Read more about this topic: War Of The Polish Succession
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