League of Augsburg war
League of Augsburg war (1688-97), also known as the Nine Years War or the War of the Grand Alliance. After having the first eighteen years of his 72-year reign dominated by his political mentor Cardinal Mazarin and by his struggles with the nobles of France, Louis XIV decided to take the reins of state into his own hands when Mazarin died in 1661. His subsequent desires for a powerful France governed by a strong central government under the direction of a monarch who ruled by divine right led him to undertake a series of wars aimed at garnering glory and at expanding the borders of his realm.
The decay of the Spanish monarchy in the late 17th century resulted in squabbles over the various Spanish possessions and influence in Europe and provided Louis with opportunities to reach his goals. As the son-in-law of Philip IV of Spain and king of one of the most powerful nations in Europe, Louis waged a number of wars between 1665 and 1714 to press his claims to a number of territories. The first of these conflicts began in 1667, two years after the death of Philip IV, when Louis claimed the entirety of the Spanish Netherlands as part of his inheritance. This ‘War of Devolution’ lasted until 1668 and resulted in France gaining a number of fortresses in Flanders, but not the Netherlands. Four years later, Louis again took up arms to win the Netherlands. The resulting Dutch war lasted until 1678 and drew in Brandenburg and the Holy Roman Empire allied with Spain against France. A series of treaties between August 1678 and June 1679 ended the conflict and gained France border fortresses and minor territories, but again Louis did not obtain the Netherlands. Over the next few years, Louis continued to expand his realm by unilaterally annexing some western border areas from the Netherlands and from the Holy Roman Empire.
By the mid-1680s, the other powers of Europe feared Louis was attempting to secure French hegemony over the continent and indeed France was in a good position to do this. By 1680, France had a population of 19 million, three times that of Spain or England. As such a large nation, the French economy was largely independent of foreign trade. Further, under the direction of two capable ministers, the Marquis de Louvois and Jean Baptiste Colbert, the French army and navy had become the largest and best organized in Europe and Louis had proved more than willing to use these instruments in pursuit of his goals.
Spurred on by fear of Louis's expansionism, the Holy Roman Emperor, the electors of Bavaria, Palatinate, and Saxony, and the kings of Sweden and Spain created the League of Augsburg in 1686 to resist Louis's policies. Louis met this coalition, soon reinforced by Savoy, Brandenburg, Hanover, and the Netherlands and England united under William of Orange, when he laid claim to the Palatinate and invaded Germany in September 1688. The League of Augsburg war had begun. Given this Grand Alliance arrayed against him, Louis's France was surrounded by enemies and was forced to fight on several fronts, including Spain in the south, Italy in the south-east, Germany in the east, and Flanders in the north-east. Additionally, the war was carried on in the European colonies in the New World.
Although the war was fought primarily on land, naval power played a role. Louis determined to support an Irish rebellion seeking to reinstall the deposed Catholic James II to the English throne. But after his first attempt to reinforce the Irish was halted by the drawn naval battle of Bantry Bay on 1 May 1689, he did not follow through. The French gained temporary command of the seas after their victory at the battle of Beachy Head in July 1690, in which a French fleet of 78 ships under the command of Adm de Tourville decisively defeated a combined Anglo-Dutch force of 56. But by that time James had been defeated at the Boyne, so it availed Louis little. By 1692, the Anglo-Dutch had regained control of the seas and the French were limited to privateering, Jean Bart in particular inflicting such damage on Anglo-Dutch shipping as to provoke the introduction of convoys.
Like the war at sea, the war in the New World colonies was merely a sideshow to the main conflict on the continent of Europe. In North America, where the war was known as ‘King William's war’, French and British forces, each reinforced by Native American allies, raided each other's settlements, but with no decisive results. Additionally French and Spanish forces raided each other's settlements in the Caribbean.
The land war in Europe was marked by a similar indecisiveness. Only a few major battles took place, with the French more often than not emerging victorious, but without achieving a crushing enough victory to be able to dictate peace terms. In many ways, it was a war of logistics, starting with Louis's decision to ravage the Palatinate to deny it as a source of supply to his enemies without having to expose his forces to the cost of retaining it. The armies of this period expanded considerably in size, with Louis being able to keep 440, 000 men under arms in 1693. Field armies of 100, 000 men were not uncommon. These large armies demanded great amounts of supply. For instance, an army of 60, 000 required an average of 198, 414 lb (90, 000 kg) of bread per day, or 94, 806, 400 lb (43, 000, 000 kg) over a six-month period. As there were few areas of Europe sufficiently developed to supply such an army locally, an intricate supply network had to be established. In preparation for a campaign, food and munitions would need to be stocked and concentrated in magazines near the theatre of war. Armies would draw upon these for their logistical needs rather than stripping the area in an effort to live off the land. This dependence upon a fixed logistical structure limited, of course, the strategic mobility of armies. No army dared to advance more than a week's march from its supply magazines for fear of starvation.
This logistical structure had a major impact on strategy. Tied as it was to its magazines, an army was extremely vulnerable to having its lines of communication cut. Thus, a commander did all he could to protect his supply lines and to cut the lines of his enemy. This situation resulted in a characteristic manoeuvring of armies for position, forcing an enemy army to withdraw rather than seeking a decision of the battlefield. The war of logistics also resulted in the large number of siege operations. In addition to being sited to protect borders, fortress towns tended to be situated on key road or river junctions and their possession was often vital to the smooth supply of an army. Following the teachings of Vauban, siege warfare during this period both expanded greatly and became more formalized. Fortresses were redesigned to take advantage of the defensive potential of modern firearms and techniques for besieging and reducing fortresses were refined. As they played such an important role, the capture of a particularly important fortress might decide an entire campaign.
Nonetheless, battles were fought. The land war opened with a minor Alliance victory at Walcourt (25 August 1689) in Flanders. An Alliance army of 35, 000, including 8, 000 English troops under John Churchill, then Earl of Marlborough, inflicted 2, 000 casualties on the French army under d'Humières while only suffering 300 themselves. The defeat resulted in d'Humières being replaced by Luxembourg, who would emerge as one of the most successful commanders of the war.
The next major engagement took place in July 1690, when Luxembourg's 45, 000 troops defeated Waldeck's Alliance army of 37, 000 at the battle of Fleurus in the Low Countries. The French force suffered 2, 500 casualties to the Alliance's 6, 000 dead and 8, 000 prisoners, but Luxembourg was unable to exploit his victory by driving into the Netherlands, as Louis ordered him to co-ordinate his army with other forces manoeuvring against Alliance armies on the Meuse and Moselle rivers.
The French continued their winning streak the next year, emerging victorious on all fronts. Despite Louis's constraints, Luxembourg managed to win another series of engagements in the Low Countries. On 8 April 1691, he took the fortress of Mons and followed this up by seizing Halle in June. Perhaps his greatest success was the routing of Waldeck's army in September. Through the use of a bold night march, Luxembourg was able to catch Waldeck's army unprepared at Leuze as it retired for winter quarters and inflict heavy casualties. At the battle of Staffarda on 18 August, a French force commanded by Catinat defeated the army of Victor Amadeus II of Savoy, allowing the French forces to capture most of Savoy. In September, French armies under Duc Anne-Jules de Noailles seized Riploi and Urgel on the Spanish front.
The French were again largely victorious in 1692. The campaign season opened with the capture of the fortress of Namur in June, an operation supervised by Vauban but under Louis's direct command. Luxembourg was also successful against the Alliance army, now commanded by William of Orange. At daybreak on 3 August, William's 63, 000 men attacked Luxembourg's fortified camp at Steenkerke. After initial successes, the French, numbering around 57, 000, were able to drive off the Allies in a savage close-quarter battle. William ordered the British Guards to cover the withdrawal of his army, and in the rearguard action, they lost Gens Mackay and Lanier. The Alliance lost 8, 000 and the French 6, 800.
The year 1693 saw the last large-scale battles of the war. The war's biggest battle occurred on 29 July 1693 at Neerwinden. There, Luxembourg attacked William's entrenched army of 50, 000 with a force numbering 80, 000. After eight hours of hard fighting and three assaults, the French were able to drive the Alliance troops from the field. The French suffered 9, 000 casualties, while the Alliance lost 19, 000 killed or wounded. Given the damage suffered by his own army, Luxembourg was unable to exploit this victory.
While the French had a number of minor successes in Italy and Spain later in the year, Neerwinden convinced Louis, who was already sceptical about the merits of large-scale battles, to avoid great engagements in the future. After Neerwinden, the war became almost totally one of manoeuvre and siege, with neither side willing to risk high losses in battle. It became a war of relatively minor attrition, with each side hoping the other's will and financial ability to resist would give out first.
Despite some success in 1695, it was the Alliance that first began to crack. Savoy was the first to drop out of the war. In June 1696, the Duke of Savoy signed the Treaty of Turin with Louis. The French returned all their Italian conquests and transported their 30, 000-man Italian army to the Low Countries to face William. Bottled up in the Netherlands, he too decided to seek peace in early 1697. William was joined in the summer by the Holy Roman Emperor and between 20 September and 30 October the powers negotiated a peace settlement. The Treaty of Ryswick ended this indecisive conflict by restoring the captured territories, including colonies, to their original owners. While the Alliance had not defeated Louis, it had stopped him from achieving his expansionist objectives. The peace was merely a prelude in which both sides gathered strength for renewed conflict in the War of the Spanish Succession.
Bibliography
- Black, Jeremy, European Warfare, 1660-1815 (London, 1994).
- Delbrück, Hans, The History of the Art of War, vol.
iv . The Dawn of Modern Warfare (London, 1985), trans. from German orig. (1920). - Parker, Geoffrey, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1600 (Cambridge, 1988)
— Robert Foley
