Great Forgotten Kings of History

[Stanislaw Poniatowski]

Heres a topic which is simular to the "Forgotten Battles" one. Here you can post a description of your favorite "forgotten Kings" or just a King whom you deem is much less appreciated for what he did overall.

My first pick is somewhat obvious, Stanislaw II August Poniatowski King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. I find him to be a largely forgotten great King in Europe due to the subsequent Partition of his country by Prussia, Austria and Russia. However in the time just after the Constitution was signed, many Poles and others had great hopes about the future ahead.

-----------------------------

Stanislaus Augustus (born Stanisław Antoni Poniatowski; January 17, 1732, Wołczyn, Poland - February 12, 1798, St. Petersburg, Russia) was the last king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1764-1795). He was the son of Stanislaw Poniatowski, Castellan of Kraków, and brother of Michal Jerzy Poniatowski, primate of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland.


Stanislaw II August Poniatowski

Royal titles

(English translation, from the Polish text of the May 3rd, 1791, Constitution) Stanisław August, by the grace of God and the will of the people King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, Ruthenia, Prussia, Mazowsze, Samogitia, Kyiv, Volhynia, Podole, Podlasie, Livonia, Smolensk, Siewierz and Chernihiv.

Biography

Born in 1732, Poniatowski already at twenty, in 1752, as a Sejm deputy attracted attention with his oratory. He ultimately owed his career, however, to his uncles, the powerful Czartoryskis, who in 1755 sent him to Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the suite of the British ambassador, Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams. There, through the influence of Russian Chancellor A. P. Bestuzhev-Ryumin, he gained accreditation to the Russian court as ambassador of Saxony. Through Hanbury-Williams he met twenty-six-year-old Grand Duchess Catherine, who was irresistibly attracted to the handsome and brilliant young nobleman, for whom she forsook all other lovers.

After returning to Warsaw, Poniatowski won election (September 7, 1764) as king of Poland through the influence of Catherine, since become Empress Catherine II of Russia. (She had promised him the crown as early as October 1763.) The coronation took place November 25, 1764. The new King's uncles in the Familia would have preferred another nephew, Prince Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski, on the throne but he had declined to seek the office.

Stanisław August--as he now styled himself--as king of a near-anarchic Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth remained at the mercy of circumstances. Nevertheless, in his difficult situation he strove to do his duty. He inaugurated some useful economic changes. He supported the Familia's reform program until 1766, when he fell out with his uncles. He protested the first partition of Poland (1772); but being powerless to do anything about it, and in the face of implacable opposition from Polish magnates, he was obliged to place his reliance in Russia's German ambassador, Otto Magnus Stackelberg. Acting in concert, he hoped to strengthen his authority and bring about essential reforms. It was only during the Four-Year Sejm of 1788-1792 that he threw in his lot with the reformers, centered in the Patriotic Party, and with them co-authored the May 3rd Constitution of 1791.

His eloquent speech before the Sejm on taking an oath to uphold the newly adopted Constitution--the world's second written national constitution, and Europe's first--moved his audience to tears. But when the Targowica Confederation, with the connivance of Russia's Catherine the Great, was formed to overthrow the Constitution, the King upon her demand and the recommendation of some advisers, including the otherwise usually radical Hugo Kollataj, acceded to the Confederation. This undermined the operations of the Polish Army, which under Tadeusz Kosciuszko and the King's own nephew, Prince Jozef Poniatowski, had been performing prodigies on the battlefield.

King Stanisław August remains a controversial figure. He was accused by some of striving for absolutism, of doing away with the liberties of the szlachta (Polish nobility), of desiring the downfall of the Roman Catholic Church; by others, of weakness and subservience, even of treason, especially after he had joined the Targowica Confederation.

Nevertheless, he did accomplish much in the realm of culture and education. He founded the School of Chivalry (otherwise "Corps of Cadets"), which functioned 1765-1794 and whose alumni included Tadeusz Kościuszko; and the Commission of National Education (1773), the world's first national ministry of education. In 1765 he helped found the Monitor, the leading periodical of the Polish Enlightenment, and the Polish national theater. He hosted his famous "Thursday dinners," the most brilliant social functions in the Polish capital. He supported the establishment of manufactures and the development of mining. He remodeled Warsaw's Royal Castle, and erected the elegant Royal Baths Palace (Pałac łazienkowski) complex in Warsaw's most romantic park. He created a numismatic collection, a picture gallery, and an engravings room.

After the final, Third Partition of Poland, Stanisław August was forced to abdicate (November 25, 1795) and left for St. Petersburg, Russia. There, a virtual prisoner, he subsisted on a pension from Catherine the Great and died deeply in debt. In 1938 his remains were transferred to a church at Wołczyn, his birthplace, and in 1995 to St. John's Cathedral in Warsaw, where on May 3, 1791, he had celebrated the adoption, earlier that day, of the Constitution that he co-authored.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanisl...st_Poniatowski

[Seleukos]

My pick is Seleucos I Nicator.

His greatest feats:
The victory won by Ptolemy and Seleucos at the battle of Gaza in 312 BC opened the way for Seleucos to return to the east. Seleucos then took the neighbouring provinces of Persia, Susiana and Media from the nominees of Antigonus. A raid into Babylonia in 311 BC by Demetrius did not hinder Seleucos's progress. While Antigonus was occupied in the west, Seleucos over the time of nine years brought under his authority the whole eastern part of Alexander's empire as far as the Jaxartes and Indus Rivers. In 305 BC, Seleucos took the title and style of King.

In 301 BCE he joined Lysimachus in Asia Minor, and at Ipsus Antigonus fell before their combined power. A new partition of the empire followed, by which Seleucos added to his kingdom Syria, and perhaps some regions of Asia Minor. The possession of Syria gave him an opening to the Mediterranean, and he immediately founded here the new city of Antioch upon the Orontes as his chief seat of government. His previous capital had been the city of Seleucia, which he had founded upon the Tigris and this continued to be the capital for the eastern satrapies. About 293 BCE he installed his son Antiochus there as viceroy, the vast extent of the empire seeming to require a double government.

The capture of Demetrius in 285 BCE added to Seleucos's prestige. The unpopularity of Lysimachus after the murder of Agathocles gave Seleucos an opportunity for removing his last rival. His intervention in the west was solicited by Ptolemy Keraunos, who, on the accession to the Egyptian throne of his brother Ptolemy II, had at first taken refuge with Lysimachus and then with Seleucos. War between Seleucos and Lysimachus broke out, and at the decisive battle of Corupedium in Lydia, Lysimachus fell in 281 BCE. Seleucos now held the whole of Alexander's conquests excepting Egypt in his hands, and moved to take possession of Macedonia and Thrace.

But when he landed at the shores of Thrace. He was assasinated by Ptolemy Keraunos who, fearing that he has become unstoppable, assasinated him while trying to claim the Thracian throne.

He trully was a great King.

[therussian]

Tigranes also spelled TIGRAN, or DIKRAN (b. c. 140--d. c. 55 BC), king of Armenia from 95 to 55 BC, under whom the country became for a short time the strongest state in the Roman East.
Tigranes was the son or brother of Artavasdes I and a member of the dynasty founded in the early 2nd century by Artaxias. He was given as a hostage to the Parthian king Mithradates II, but later he purchased his freedom by ceding 70 valleys bordering on Media, in northwestern Iran.

Thereafter, Tigranes began to enlarge his kingdom, first annexing the kingdom of Sophene (east of the upper Euphrates River). He also entered into alliance with Mithradates VI Eupator of Pontus, whose daughter Cleopatra he married. The interference of the two kings in Cappadocia (in eastern Asia Minor) was successfully countered by Roman intervention in 92 BC.

Tigranes then began war with the Parthians, whose empire (southeast of the Caspian Sea) was temporarily weakened after the death of Mithradates II (about 87) by internal dissensions and invasions of the Scythians. Tigranes reconquered the valleys he had ceded and laid waste a great part of Media; the kings of Atropatene (Azerbaijan), Gordyene and Adiabene (both on the Upper Tigris River), and Osroene became his vassals. He also annexed northern Mesopotamia, and in the Caucasus the kings of Iberia (now Georgia) and Albania accepted his suzerainty.

In 83 the Syrians, tired of Seleucid dynastic struggles, offered him their crown, and in 78-77 he reoccupied Cappadocia. Tigranes took the title "king of kings" and built a new royal city, Tigranocerta, on the borders of Armenia and Mesopotamia (the actual site is disputed), where he accumulated all his wealth and to which he transplanted the inhabitants of 12 Greek towns of Cappadocia, Cilicia, and Syria.

In 72 the Romans forced Mithradates of Pontus to flee to Armenia, and, in 69, Roman armies under Lucullus invaded Armenia. Tigranes was defeated at Tigranocerta on Oct. 6, 69, and again near the former capital of Artaxata in September 68. The recall of Lucullus gave some respite to Mithradates and Tigranes, but in the meantime a son of Tigranes, also called Tigranes, rebelled against him. Although the younger Tigranes was given an army by the Parthian king Phraates III, he was defeated by his father and was forced to flee to the Roman general Pompey. When Pompey advanced into Armenia, Tigranes surrendered (66 BC). Pompey received him graciously and gave him back his kingdom (in exchange for Syria and other southern conquests). Tigranes ruled about 10 years longer over Armenia, as a Roman client-king, though he lost all his conquests except Sophene and Gordyene. He was succeeded by his son Artavasdes II

www.armenians.com/famous/Tigran

[Mehmed II]

I pick Selim I.

Selim I (1465 – September 22, 1520; also known as "the Grim", nicknamed Yavuz, 'the Brave' in Turkish) was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1512 to 1520.

He dethroned his father Beyazid II in 1512. Beyazid's death followed immediately afterwards.

He signalled his accession by putting his brothers and nephews to death. This was after the custom of his grandfather Fatih Mehmed II. There had been civil war between his father Beyazid and his uncle Cem, and between Selim himself and his brother Ahmed. Selim was determined not to have the same problems with his other brothers.

He attacked and destroyed the Mamluk Sultanate at the Battles of Marj Dabiq and al-Raydaniyya, which led to the annexation of Syria, Palestine and Egypt. He also extended Ottoman power to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. When Egypt and her Arabian provinces were taken from the Mamluks, he announced himself to be the [Khadim ul Haremeyn] [The Servant of The Two Holy Shrines] instead of [Hakim ul Haremeyn] The Ruler of The Two Holy Shrines. The Shrines refer to the Great Mosque in Mecca and the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina. These are the holiest places in Islam. Like his grandfather Fatih, he also claimed to be the Caliph (in Arabic meaning "successor" of Muhammad); the "guardian of Islam", considered to be the chief civil and religious ruler of all Islam, both Shi'ite and Sunni. Selim determined on war with Persia, whose ruler Shah Ismail I claimed to be caliph as well. The campaign which followed was a triumph for Selim, whose firmness and courage overcame the pusillanimity and insubordination of the Janissaries, the household troops of the Ottoman dynasty.

After Selim became master of the holy cities of Islam and captured Egypt along with the person of Al-Mutawakkil III, the last Caliph of the Abbasid dynasty who resided there, Selim induced him to formally surrender the title of caliph as well as its outward emblems, the sword and the mantle of the prophet. After Selim's return from his Egyptian campaign, he was preparing an expedition against Rhodes when he was overtaken by sickness and died in the ninth year of his reign. He was about fifty-five years of age. He died from sirpence, a skin infection, which he developed during his eight year rule on horseback. He also was a poet and wrote with the nickname [mahla] Selimi In one of his poems, he wrote: the whole world does not form a sovereignty vast enough for one monarch.

[Illyrian]

I'd say Skanderbeg , c.1404-1468, Albanian national hero. His original name was Gjergj Kastrioti or Kastriotes, but the Ottomans called him Iskender Bey, and this was corrupted into Scanderbeg. The son of a prince of N Albania, he was educated in the Muslim faith as a hostage at the court of Sultan Murad II . He became the sultan's most valuable general conquering europe and asia in his Honor. The sultan showered favors on him and gave him the title bey and an army command. In 1443, when the Ottomans indicated they would attack Albania, Scanderbeg escaped to his homeland, abjured Islam, and formed a league of princes among the Albanian chieftains. He proclaimed himself prince of Albania. To resist the Ottomans under Sultan Muhammad II , Scanderbeg received aid at various times from Venice, Naples, Hungary, and the pope. He had success in these wars partly because of the rugged Albanian terrain and partly because he employed a mobile defense force using guerrilla methods. He withstood repeated attacks and forced the sultan to conclude a 10-year truce in 1461. Scanderbeg broke the truce in 1463 when Pope Pius II called for a new crusade. The pope's death (1464) forced abandonment of the crusade; Scanderbeg, left without allies, had to retreat to his fortress of Kroia. After his death the league dissolved, resistance collapsed, and Albania fell to the Ottomans. Scanderbeg's life is the source of many Albanian tales.

[Aru]

Well, we croatians didn't have many kings of our nationality, and by saying that any of them was important on a greater scale then Balkans would be too much, but by entering into personal union with Hungary in 1102 AD we accepted their kings (and later Hapsburgs) as ours so, here's one about Hungarian king Matthias Corvin (Matija Korvin). Taken from wikipedia. (www.wikipedia.com)

Matthias Corvinus (February 23, 1443 (?) - April 6, 1490) was one of the greatest Kings of Hungary, ruling between 1458 and 1490. He was also crowned the King of Bohemia in 1469 and ruled as the antiking in Moravia, Silesia and Lusatia.

Matthias was born in Cluj (Kolozsvár in Hungarian) in Transylvania in 1443, the second son of John Hunyadi, a successful warlord who rose through the ranks of the nobility to become regent of Hungary. The later epithet Corvinus was coined by Matthias' biographer Antonio Bonfini, who claimed that the Hunyadi family (whose Coat of Arms depicts a raven (corvus in Latin) descended from the ancient Roman gens of the Corvini.

After the death of Matthias's father, there was a two-year struggle between Hungary's various barons and its Habsburg king (Ladislaus V, named Postumus, also king of Bohemia) with treachery from all sides, in which Matthias's older brother Ladislaus (László) Hunyadi was one party attempting to gain control. In 1457, Ladislaus was captured with a trick and beheaded, while the king died (possibly of poisoning) in November that year. But then the lower aristocrats and the people of Pest came out in support of electing Matthias as king, while most barons, thinking the young bookworm would be a weak ruler, also agreed to support his election. Thus and on January 20, 1458, Matthias was elected king by the diet. At this time Matthias was a hostage of the new king of Bohemia, George of Podebrady, who released him under the condition of marrying his daughter. The opposing party initially fought some battles against Matthias, but these came to close in 1463, when the other contender, Habsburg ruler Frederick III of Austria officially accepted Matthias as rightful king.

Matthias was 15 when he was crowned King of Hungary and he soon learned the finesses of power from his mentor, the Italian Bonfini, regent of Hungary until his adulthood. Matthias was educated in Italian and his fascination with the achievements of the Renaissance led to the promotion of Mediterranean cultural influences in Hungary. Buda, Esztergom, Székesfehérvár and Visegrád were amongst the towns in Hungary that benefited from the establishment of public health and education and a new legal system under Matthias' rule. He has proven a most generous patron and artists from Italy (e.g., Galeotto Marzio) and Western Europe flocked to his courts. His library, the Bibliotheca Corviniana, was Europe's greatest collection of historical chronicles and philosophic and scientific works in the 15th century, and second only in size to the Vatican library. He spoke Hungarian, Croatian, Latin, and later also German, Czech, Slovak, and other Slavic languages.

Matthias gained independence of and power over the barons by dividing them, and by raising a large royal army (fekete sereg = Black Army) of mercenaries, whose main force was the remains of the Hussites. At this time Hungary reached one of its greatest ever territorial extent (Southeast-Germany to Dalmatia in the west, Poland to today's Bulgaria in the East).

He was victorious against the Ottoman Turks, both in beating back attacks and starting smaller campaigns of retaliation: 1463-64 in Bosnia, 1475 in Southern Hungary, 1479-83 in Transsylvania, Wallachia, Serbia and Bosnia; and in 1481 he even sendt a contingent to help in the re-taking of Italian port city Otranto. But, following up his fathers' vision, he set out to build an empire that could not just hold up but beat the Ottoman Empire - for which he deemed necessary the conquering of large parts of the Holy Roman Empire, to have a safe background. Until his death in 1490, Matthias Corvinus gained control of Moravia, Silesia, Lusatia (these in 1468/1469/1479-1490), and half of Austria (1477/1483-1491) - he even ruled out of Vienna after 1485.

Vlad Tepes, the Vlach ruler who later became mythologised as Count Dracula, was at times a vassal of Matthias beating scores of Turkish armies, but in between (after Matthias fell out with him and invaded Wallachia in 1462) his prisoner in Buda. (But Bram Stoker messed up geography, he had no castle in Transsylvania: he only was born there, when his father was invited by Hungarian king and later Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund in 1431 to be governor, but five years later his father became the new king of Wallachia.)

Matthias's empire collapsed after his death, since he had no children except for an illegitimate son, John Corvin, whom the noblemen of the country didn't accept as their king. The then king of Bohemia, the weak king Ladislaus II of the Polish/Lithuanian Jagiellon line followed him – Ladislaus nominally ruled the areas Matthias conquered except Austria, but real power was in the hand of the nobles. In 1514, two years before Ladislaus's death, there was even a major peasant rebellion (named after its leader, Dózsa), crushed with barbaric methods by the nobles. As central rule degenerated, the stage was set for a defeat at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. In 1521, Nándorfehérvár (Belgrade) fell, and in 1526, the Hungarian army was destroyed in the Battle at Mohács).

High taxes to sustain his lavish lifestyle and the Black Army (and also that the latter went on marauding across the Kingdom after being disbanded upon Matthias's death) could imply that he wasn't very popular with his contemporaries. But the fact that he was elected king in a small anti-Habsburg popular revolution, that he kept the barons in check, persistent rumours about him sounding public opinion by mingling among commoners incognito, and of course the misfortune that befell Hungary later ensured that Matthias' reign is considered one of the most glorious chapters of Hungarian history. Songs and tales converted him into Matthias the Just (Mátyás az igazságos in Hungarian), a ruler of justice and great wisdom, the most popular hero of Hungarian folklore.

[Dromikaites]

Trivia about Mathias Crovin:

There is a statue of him in the city of Cluj, in Transylvania (Romania) representing the king on a horse and his generals on foot, presenting him the flags of the defeated enemies. The problem is that among those flags there is also that of Moldova (a Romanian state during the Middle Ages). There was only one war between Hungary and Moldova during the king's rule, in 1467. The Hungarian army was led by the king himself and suffered a crushing defeat at Baia. Crushing is the right word, as the king himself barely escaped, seriously wounded. After Transylvania was liberated at the end of WWI, the Romanians preserved the statue but added a small plate saying "King Matthias, victorious in all the wars except against his own people". The reason for the "own people" part is Matthias' father Jan Huniady/Hunjady Janos/Ioan de Hunedoara was Romanian while his mother was Hungarian.

When Hungary occupied again Cluj during WWII, the plate was of course removed, Hungarian official opinion being king Matthias had nothing to do with the "inferior" Romanians. During the communist times the Romanians left the statue without restoring the plate, but put it back after the anti-communist revolution of 1989. The restauration of the plate inflamed the nationalist of the Hungarian minority living in Cluj, who protested against it. To make the matter worse, the mayor of Cluj was a Romanian nationalist who decided to take the things to the next level by authorizing archeological diggings right next to the statue. The message he wanted to pass was: "keep quiet or we might extend the diggings and move the statue somewhere else". Of course the effect was exactly the opposite than intended.

Eventually the things calmed down, the plate stayed and the diggings were stopped. What people from both sides seemed to forget was that the 1467 war between Moldova and Hungary was just an unfortunate episode in the common history of those two states. In 1475, eight years after closely escaping at Baia, king Matthias sent 3800 troops to support his former enemy, Stephen the Great, king of Moldova, against the Turks (read my post about the battle of Podul Inalt on "Decisive battles people don't talk about" thread http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...t=26984&page=1 for more details)

[Romanos]

For me the most forgoten king is the first one to create a Empire

King Sargon "The Great"

Sargon (2334 BC - 2279 BC short chronology) was the first person in recorded history to create an empire, or multi-ethnic state. His empire encompassed the region of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and part of what is present-day Turkey. His capital was Akkad.


Head of SargonSargon of Akkad was probably the same person as the first Sargon of Assyria (also known as Sharrukin or Sharru-kin meaning "The true king" in Akkadian). Sargon's empire would presumably have included Assyria. He is listed in the Assyrian king list as the son of Ikunum and the founder of a dynasty.

The Sumerian "Sargon legend" gives Sargon's father as La'ibum. It describes how Sargon became the cupbearer of Ur-Zababa, the king of Kish in Sumer. Sargon has a dream in which he is favoured by the goddess Inanna, who drowns Ur-Zababa in a river of blood. He tells Ur-Zababa about the dream; Ur-Zababa tries to have Sargon eliminated, but Inanna prevents it. Ur-Zababa sends Sargon to king Lugal-zage-si of Uruk with a message on a clay tablet about murdering Sargon. (The legend appears to be lost at this point; presumably it describes how Sargon becomes king).

From the Sumerian king list: "In Agade, Sargon, whose father was a gardener, the cupbearer of Ur-Zababa, became king, the king of Agade, who built Agade; he ruled for 56 years." Confusingly, Ur-Zababa and Lugal-zage-si are both listed as kings, but several generations apart - perhaps Ur-Zababa is supposed to have lived on in the palace of Kish long after losing the kingship of Sumer. Sargon is the successor to Lugal-zage-si and is the founder of a new dynasty; his sons are Rimush and Manishtushu.

His daughter was Enheduanna, the author of several Akkadian hymns.

There is another legend of Sargon, perhaps Assyrian