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[[File:Colin Stanislas Ier.jpg|thumb|upright|Stanislas I, King of Poland, Duke of Lorraine and Bar, in the autumn of his years]]
Bender, a town in what is now Transnistria (betweeb between Moldova and Ukraine), was where King Charles stayed a for a few years after Poltava and the only place in the Ottoman Empire where Stanisław spent any amount of time. He never was in Contantinople, let alone in an Ottoman prison. Eventually (1714), Charles gave him the Swedish-owned Duchy of Two Bridges (now Zweibrücken, Germany), where the former Polish king, inspired by Ottoman architecture, built himself a little palace he called Tschifflik (from Turkish ''çiftlik'', or "farm"). Unfortunately, Stanisław had to move out after his Swedish protector passed away (1718), so he moved to a modest palace in nearby Wissembourg. It's a town in Alsace, a region which by that point had belonged to France for almost forty years, but was still mostly German-speaking (Alsace would later change hands between Germany and France like a ping pong ball, eventually staying with the latter). Maybe Stanisław would have stayed there for the rest of his life, if not for an unexpected visit by matchmakers from Versailles, who asked him for his daughter's hand in the name of King Louis XV of France. And so Princess Marie Leszczyńska married Louis, seven years her junior, and proved to be an ideal wife; she gave him ten children without getting much in the way of his liaisons with numerous mistresses. Her parents, who wanted to be closer to their daughter, moved in to Chambord, one of the most luxurious ''châteaux'' of the Loire Valley.
Meanwhile, back in Poland, Augustus II continued to reign until he ended his gluttonous life by dying from gangrene after diabetic foot amputation (1733). Stanisław, counting on his son-in-law's support, decided it was a good occasion to try and win back the Polish throne. He travelled incognito back to Warsaw, where he made his sudden appearance on the election field and was chosen – legally, this time – as king of Poland. His earlier coronation was deemed valid, so there was no need to repeat it. However, the history from almost thirty years before repeated itself in reverse – foreign troops, Russian this time around, captured Praga, the eastern suburb of Warsaw, where they arranged a rival election of Augustus II's son, soon afterwards crowned in Cracow as King Augustus III. Stanisław escaped from Warsaw to Danzig (Gdańsk), a city which managed to hold out against a Russian siege for some time. A network of alliances covering Europe transformed the fight for the Polish throne into a major international conflict, which – despite being known as the War of Polish Succession – was fought out mostly in Italy and on the banks of the Rhine. France was quick to capture Lorraine, but (except a small and unsuccessful landing operation in Westerplatte near Danzig) did little to help Stanisław keep his crown. In the end, Danzig fell and Stanisław, disguised as a peasant, escaped (once again) to Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia).
