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Spanish Succession, War of the (1701-14). While the Treaty of Ryswick may have ended the League of Augsburg war in 1697, it did nothing to alter the underlying tensions within the European balance of power. The war had demonstrated that France under Louis XIV could only be contained by the strenuous efforts of the remaining European powers. Thus anything that could extend the strength of France even further was resisted by the other powers of Europe, especially Louis's great rivals, William of Orange and the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I. Thus, when Louis claimed the crown of Spain in the name of his grandson, Philip, Duke of Anjou, France was met by a revived Grand Alliance of powers who objected to a Bourbon reigning in Madrid.
Louis's moves to create a Bourbon Spain had begun as far back as 1659, when he agreed to marry King Philip IV of Spain's eldest daughter, Maria Teresa. By the terms of the marriage contract, both Louis and Maria Teresa renounced any claims upon the Spanish crown in return for a considerable dowry. However, Louis used the fact that the Spanish never paid the promised dowry in full as a pretext to declare the agreement void. When Charles II acceded to the throne of Spain, Louis had to put off his goal of unifying the two crowns temporarily. Louis kept up his diplomatic pressure and by 1700 had convinced the Spanish that a French candidate should follow Charles upon his death. Accordingly, when Charles died on 1 November 1700, Louis's grandson, Philip IV's great-grandson, was proclaimed Philip V, King of Spain.
On 7 September 1701, another Grand Alliance against Louis was formally brought into being, consisting of the Habsburg Empire, England, the Netherlands, Brandenburg-Prussia, and most of the other German states. Louis could count on the support of Savoy, Mantua, Cologne, and Bavaria, in addition, of course, to Spain.
Upon the crowning of Philip, Louis marched his troops into the Spanish Netherlands, the prize for which he had fought so long, and provoked the Habsburg empire to declare war. The first moves of what would again be a multi-front war were taken in Italy, as Louis sent an army under the command of Catinat to occupy Rivoli. The French intention was to prevent the Austrian army of Prince Eugène of Savoy from entering Italy. However, the extremely capable Eugène was able to outmanoeuvre Catinat, in part by violating Venetian neutrality, and his arrival in Vicenza on 28 May 1701 forced the French to withdraw westwards. Through the spring and summer, Eugène, although outnumbered, continued to outmanoeuvre Catinat in Lombardy, forcing the French to withdraw to the Oglio and abandon a third of their territory in Italy. Louis replaced Catinat with Villeroi, who in turn was captured by an Austrian raid at Cremona on 1 February 1702 and replaced by Vendôme.
The remainder of the campaign in Italy is an excellent example of the manoeuvring that dominated much of early 18th-century warfare. Tied to lines of supply and unwilling to risk their expensive armies in combat, both Vendôme and Eugène went to great lengths to avoid battle. Instead, the war in Italy consisted mainly of attempts to cut the enemy off from his supplies and to occupy and exploit as much of the enemy's territory as possible. Operations there, however, had an impact on the war as a whole. The Habsburg successes caused the Duke of Savoy to abandon his alliance with France and join the Grand Alliance in 1703. Further, the campaigns in Italy tied down French troops that were needed elsewhere.
Bibliography
— Robert Foley
| US Military Dictionary: War of the Spanish Succession |
A war arising over succession to the Spanish throne after the death in 1701 of the childless Charles II. The principal contestants were the Grand Alliance, consisting of England, the Netherlands, Denmark, Portugal, and Austria, against France and Spain, aided by some minor principalities; the two sides favored different claimants in Spain. The main issues of the war ended in 1713 with the Peace of Utrecht, which also signaled the end of the related Queen Anne's War.
See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.
| French Literature Companion: War of the Spanish Succession |
Spanish Succession, War of the (1701-14). In this general European war, England, Holland, Austria, and their allies sought to curb the power of Louis XIV, who, by placing his grandson on the Spanish throne threatened to upset the ‘balance of power’. Its complicated and inconclusive course is notable for the campaigns of Marlborough, Prince Eugene of Austria, and the French generals Catinat and Villars.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: War of the Spanish Succession |
Causes
The precarious health of the childless King Charles II of Spain left the succession open to the claims of three principal pretenders-Louis XIV, in behalf of his eldest son, a grandson of King Philip IV of Spain through Philip's daughter, Marie Thérèse, to whom Louis XIV had been married; the electoral prince of Bavaria, Joseph Ferdinand, a great-grandson of Philip IV; and Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, who had married a younger daughter of Philip IV, but claimed the succession in behalf of his son by a second marriage, Archduke Charles (later Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI). England and Holland were opposed to the union of French and Spanish dominions, which would have made France the leading world power and diverted Spanish trade from England and Holland to France. On the other hand, England, Holland, and France were all opposed to Archduke Charles, because his accession would reunite the Spanish and Austrian branches of the Hapsburg family.
Louis XIV, exhausted by the War of the Grand Alliance, sought a peaceful solution to the succession controversy and reached an agreement (1698) with King William III of England. This First Partition Treaty designated Joseph Ferdinand as the principal heir; in compensation, the French dauphin was to receive territory including Naples and Sicily, and Milan was to fall to Archduke Charles. Spain opposed the partition of its empire, and Charles II responded by naming Joseph Ferdinand sole heir to the entire Spanish Empire.
The unexpected death (1699) of Joseph Ferdinand rendered the Anglo-French treaty inoperative and led to the Second Partition Treaty (1700), agreed upon by France, England, and the Netherlands; under its terms, France was to receive Naples, Sicily, and Milan, while the rest of the Spanish dominions were to go to Archduke Charles. The treaty was acceptable to Louis XIV but was rejected by Leopold, who insisted upon gaining the entire inheritance for his son. While the diplomats were still seeking a peaceful solution, Spanish grandees, desiring to preserve territorial unity, persuaded the dying Charles II to name as his sole heir the grandson of Louis XIV-Philip, duke of Anjou, who became Philip V of Spain. Louis XIV, deciding to abide by Charles's will, broke the partition treaty.
England and Holland, although willing to recognize Philip as king of Spain, were antagonized by France's growing commercial competition. The French commercial threat, the reservation of Philip's right of succession to the French crown (Dec., 1700), and the French occupation of border fortresses between the Dutch and the Spanish Netherlands (Feb., 1701) led to an anti-French alliance among England, Leopold, and the Dutch.
The Course of the War
Hostilities between the French and the imperial forces began in Italy, where the imperial general, Prince Eugene of Savoy, defeated Nicolas Catinat and the duke of Villeroi. The general war began in 1702, with England, Holland, and most of the German states opposing France, Spain, Bavaria, Portugal, and Savoy. The duke of Marlborough, though ill-supported by the Dutch, captured a number of places in the Low Countries (1702-3), while Eugene held his own against Villeroi and his successor, Louis Joseph, duc de Vendôme. The duke of Villars, however, defeated Louis of Baden at Friedlingen (1702).
The successes of the French in Alsace enabled them to menace Vienna (1703), but the opportunity was lost by dissension among their chiefs. In 1704, Marlborough succeeded in moving his troops from the Netherlands into Bavaria, where he joined Eugene and won the great victory of Blenheim over the French under the count of Tallard (see Blenheim, battle of), and the French lost Bavaria. Meanwhile, Portugal and Savoy had changed sides (1703), and in 1704 the English captured Gibraltar.
In 1705, Marlborough in the Netherlands and Eugene in Italy had modest successes, although Vendôme defeated Eugene at Cassano. The year 1706 was marked by Eugene's victory at Turin, which resulted in French evacuation of N Italy, and by Marlborough's triumph at Ramillies (see Ramillies, battle of), which compelled the French to retreat in the Low Countries. In the same year, Louis XIV proposed peace to the Dutch, but English interference forced the continuance of the war.
In 1707, Marlborough made little progress in the north and Eugene's expedition into Provence resulted in the loss of 10,000 men; but in the following year Marlborough and Eugene won another great victory at Oudenarde, took Lille, and drove the French within their borders. Peace negotiations failed, and the allies won (1709) another success, though a costly one, at Malplaquet (see Malplaquet, battle of).
Meanwhile the indecisive allied campaigns in Spain (1708-10) did little to weaken Philip V. The death (1711) of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I, who had succeeded Leopold, and the accession of Charles VI led to the withdrawal of the English, who were as much opposed to the union of Spain and Austria as to that of Spain and France.
Negotiations for Peace
Preliminary negotiations between England and France were pressed forward and a peace conference was opened (1712), followed shortly afterward by an Anglo-French armistice. In 1713, France, England, and Holland signed the Peace of Utrecht. Charles VI continued the war, although Eugene had been defeated (1712) at Denain and had been forced to retreat in the Spanish Netherlands. Seriously weakened by the defection of his allies, the emperor finally consented in 1714 to the treaties of Rastatt and of Baden, which complemented the general settlement (see Utrecht, Peace of). With this settlement, the principle of a balance of power took precedence over dynastic or national rights in the negotiation of European affairs.
Bibliography
See F. Taylor, The Wars of Marlborough, 1702-1709 (1921); J. B. Wolf, The Emergence of the Great Powers, 1685-1715 (1951).
| History 1450-1789: War of the Spanish Succession |
The succession to the extensive Spanish empire had been a live issue since the 1660s, when rumors spread that Philip IV's (ruled 1605–1665) only surviving son, crowned Charles II in 1665, was unlikely to survive childhood.
Partition Treaty or Integral Inheritance?
The assumption that the new reign would be short motivated the first partition treaty between the head of the Austrian branch of the Habsburgs, Leopold I (ruled 1658–1705), and Louis XIV (ruled 1643–1715) of France in January 1668. This treaty remained a dead letter since Charles II, though not siring an heir, survived the next three decades and only finally weakened during the 1690s. During this time the issue of the Spanish succession had not become less contentious. After the War of the League of Augsburg (1688–1697), Louis believed that France could not afford another major conflict. But this new realism about military resources was counterbalanced by considerations of dynastic honor and future French security; Louis could not accept that the entire Spanish inheritance might pass to the Austrian Habsburgs. This, however, was precisely what Leopold I now wanted, and, thanks to his conquests in Ottoman-controlled Hungary and his successful leadership of a substantial coalition of German princes in the recent war, he was unprepared to discuss partition. Louis nonetheless found an apparent ally in his previous archenemy, William III (ruled 1689–1702), king of England and de facto ruler of the Dutch Republic. William was equally anxious to avoid another costly war and had no wish to establish the same branch of the Habsburg family across western and central Europe. Bilateral negotiations in the summer and autumn 1698 proposed the exclusion of both Habsburg and Bourbon dynasties from the full succession, nominating instead Joseph Ferdinand, young son of the Bavarian Elector, as heir to most of Charles II's inheritance. As compensation it was proposed that Louis's son would receive the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, and Milan would go to Leopold's second son, Archduke Charles. The sudden death of Joseph Ferdinand in 1699 annulled the plan, and Louis XIV's diplomats now proposed that France, Britain, and the Dutch Republic should sponsor a simple partition: France would receive all of Spanish Italy but would allow the rest of the empire to pass to Leopold I's son, Archduke Charles. Despite the apparent generosity of the offer, the Austrians realized that without the linchpin of Milan, the two Habsburg dominions could never function together, and the security of much of the Spanish inheritance would be jeopardized. Nevertheless Louis and William signed this new partition treaty in March 1700, hoping that Leopold would follow. Leopold had still refused to sign on 1 November when Charles II finally died. Against expectations—though rumors had been flying around the Spanish court for the previous month—Charles II's final will did not name Archduke Charles as his universal heir of choice. Giving priority to maintaining the territorial integrity of the empire, Charles II's councillors had persuaded him to make over the entire inheritance to Philip of Anjou (1683–1746), Louis's second grandson.
Historians have long debated Louis's decision to accept the will in the name of his grandson, but it is difficult to see that he could have done otherwise. Leopold had refused to ratify the partition treaty; if Louis rejected the Spanish offer, Charles II's testament then offered the entire inheritance to Archduke Charles. Louis could call on the military support of the English and the Dutch to make good his claims under the partition treaty, but there was little chance that either would act to uphold French dynastic rights. France would be left to fight the combined Habsburg powers to try to prize Italy from their grip. In contrast, by accepting Charles's will Louis would ensure that Spain and her territories would be his allies in any confrontation with the Austrian Habsburgs.
Louis's real error lay in the inability to see that consolidating the position of his grandson without provoking European war required qualities of restraint and empathy in dealing with other states. Leopold soon declared war, but so long as the Maritime Powers were reluctant to intervene, any conflict might be contained by France. Yet a succession of preemptive moves and provocations turned an ambiguous situation into one in which France was again faced by a hostile alliance of major powers. By moving French troops into the Spanish Netherlands and occupying the "barrier fortresses" garrisoned by Dutch troops since 1697, Louis undermined the key Dutch gain from the treaty of Ryswick (1697). Granting French merchants exclusive trading advantages in the Spanish New World antagonized both the Dutch and the English, while Louis's refusal to explicitly repudiate Philip's position in the French order of succession caused widespread consternation. By the time Louis formally recognized James II's son as James III of England and Scotland, the process of alienation had already led to renewal of the military alliance between the Austrian emperor, the English, and the Dutch (September 1701), and there was no turning back.
The Course of the War
Louis was initially optimistic that France's situation was better than it had been in the previous conflict: France would fight beside Spain and the Spanish empire, whose subjects had acclaimed Louis's grandson as Philip V and accepted French support to preserve the integrity of the kingdoms; Portugal, Savoy, and Bavaria were initially also allies of Louis XIV. But defeating the coalition would depend on rapid French military success, and despite some striking achievements in the first two years of war, this proved elusive. In 1703 the opportunity to launch a Franco-Bavarian campaign against the Austrian lands was lost. Meanwhile, English naval success at Vigo Bay (1702) was instrumental in persuading Portugal to abandon the French alliance, while Victor Amadeus II of Savoy (1666–1732) saw the north Italian operations of the imperial general, Prince Eugène (1663–1736) of Savoy, as an opportunity to slip out of his own commitment to France. The critical reversal came in August 1704 when allied armies under the Duke of Marlborough and Eugène annihilated the Franco-Bavarian forces at Blenheim and removed any prospect of knocking the Austrians out of the war. The subsequent four years of conflict saw a few successful French initiatives and some capacity to recover ground lost after the hammer-blows of subsequent allied victories at Ramillies (1706), Turin (1706), and Oudenarde (1708), but the balance had tipped toward the assertive, battle-seeking strategies of Marlborough and Eugène. The situation in Spain appeared even worse as allied forces acting in the name of Archduke Charles, now proclaimed Charles III of Spain, had by 1706 occupied Madrid, Barcelona, and other major cities.
The situation stabilized to some extent when French forces imposed huge casualties on the allies as the price of their victory at Malplaquet (1709); military affairs had been improving in Spain since 1707, above all because the population remained fiercely loyal to Philip V. But apparent revival was offset by domestic crisis in France, where a miserable harvest followed by the bitter winter of 1708–1709 led to catastrophic mortality, mass starvation, and tax failure. As in the 1690s, France lacked the resources to continue the war; faced with collapse at home not counterbalanced by overwhelming success in the field, Louis's diplomats began to negotiate for a settlement on allied terms.
Peace Negotiations and French Recovery
Allied demands in the spring of 1710 were as harsh as France's worst expectations: Philip V would be ejected from the Spanish throne; France would relinquish most of her territorial gains since 1648. Yet Louis was desperate to extricate France from a war that threatened invasion and disintegration at home. Only the imputation that France should act alone in removing his grandson from Spanish territory finally led Louis to break off negotiations. The allies continued to take fortresses and breached the French frontiers in 1710, and once again managed briefly to expel Philip from Madrid. But beneath this success the allied coalition was cracking; the English, and to some extent the Dutch, recognized that they could now get everything they demanded in terms of security and economic advantage while the French military humiliation rendered France less prepared to sanction a Habsburg-dominated Europe. The fall of the Whig government in Britain signaled the end of Marlborough's political and military ascendancy. Soon after, the sudden death of Joseph I (ruled 1705–1711), ruler of the Habsburg lands and Holy Roman emperor since the death of his father Leopold in 1705, left Archduke Charles in 1711 as successor to his eldest brother in central Europe and allied claimant to the Spanish inheritance. During 1711 the English effectively withdrew from the war effort and drew up a bilateral peace with France. This winding-down of the war was abruptly halted by the sudden deaths of three of Louis XIV's direct heirs in the winter of 1711–1712, leaving the French succession to the two-year-old duke of Anjou and, after Anjou, to Philip V. But the dangerous issue of the separation of the Bourbon crowns was finally resolved through a further and explicit renunciation of the French throne by Philip. English forces once again withdrew from the conflict, and in July 1712 a French victory at Denain permitted the recapture of crucial frontier fortresses, blocking further allied incursions into France. The main settlement between France and the Maritime Powers was made at Utrecht in the first months of 1713. France escaped lightly, the peace being bought by Spanish concessions in Europe and the Americas. Britain in particular gained substantial colonial and commercial benefits from Spain's transatlantic empire. Archduke Charles, now Emperor Charles VI, held out to the end of 1713, but French successes in the empire persuaded him to settle at Rastatt in November, gaining Milan, Naples, and the Spanish Netherlands in return for accepting Philip V and the Bourbon succession to Spain. The settlements were finally ratified in 1714.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Callières, François de. The Art of Diplomacy. Reprint. Edited by H. M. A. Keens-Soper and Karl W. Schweizer. New York, 1983.
Frey, Linda, and Marshal Frey, eds. The Treaties of the War of the Spanish Succession. Westport, Conn., 1995.
Symcox, Geoffrey, ed. War, Diplomacy and Imperialism, 1618–1763. New York, 1974. See pp. 62–74 for a translation of the final will of Carlos II.
Secondary Sources
Bély, Lucien. Espions et ambassadeurs au temps de Louis XIV. Paris, 1990.
Chandler, David G. Marlborough as Military Commander. London, 1973.
Ingrao, Charles W. In Quest and Crisis: Emperor Joseph I and the Habsburg Monarchy. West Lafayette, Ind., 1979.
Jones, J. R. Marlborough. Cambridge U.K., 1993.
Kamen, Henry. The War of Succession in Spain, 1700–1715. Bloomington, Ind., 1969.
Lossky, Andrew. Louis XIV and the French Monarchy. New Brunswick, N.J., 1994.
Lynn, John A. The Wars of Louis XIV. London, 1999.
Mc Kay, Derek. Prince Eugene of Savoy. London, 1977.
Roosen, William J. "The Origins of the War of the Spanish Succession." In The Origins of War in Early Modern Europe, edited by Jeremy Black, pp. 151–171. Edinburgh, 1987.
Rule, John C. "Colbert de Torcy, an Emergent Bureaucracy and the Formulation of French Foreign Policy, 1698–1715." In Louis XIV and Europe, edited by Ragnhild M. Hatton, pp. 261–288. London, 1976.
Storrs, Christopher. War, Diplomacy and the Rise of Savoy, 1690–1720, Cambridge, U.K., 1999.
Thompson, Mark A. "Louis XIV and the Origins of the War of the Spanish Succession." In William III and Louis XIV: Essays 1680–1720 by and for Mark A. Thompson, edited by Ragnhild M. Hatton and John S. Bromley, pp. 140–161. Liverpool and Toronto, 1968.
Wolf, John B. Louis XIV. New York, 1968.
—DAVID PARROTT
| Wikipedia: War of the Spanish Succession |
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At the Battle of Vigo Bay, the English and Dutch destroyed a Spanish treasure fleet, capturing silver from the Spanish colonies claimed to have been of about a million pounds sterling. |
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The War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) was fought among several European powers, principally the Holy Roman Empire, Great Britain, the Dutch Republic, Portugal, and the Duchy of Savoy, against the Kingdoms of France and Spain and the Electorate of Bavaria, over a possible unification of the Kingdoms of Spain and France under a single Bourbon monarch. Such a unification would have drastically changed the European balance of power. The war was fought mostly in Europe but included Queen Anne's War in North America, and it was marked by the military leadership of notable generals including the duc de Villars, the Jacobite Duke of Berwick, the Duke of Marlborough, and Prince Eugene of Savoy. It resulted in the recognition of the Bourbon Philip V as King of Spain while requiring him both to renounce any claim to the French throne and to cede much of the Spanish Crown's possessions to the Holy Roman Empire, the Dutch Republic, Savoy, and Great Britain, effectively partitioning the Spanish Empire in Europe.
In 1700, the last Spanish Habsburg King, Charles II of Spain, died without issue, bequeathing his possessions to Philip, duc d'Anjou, grandson of his half-sister and King Louis XIV of France. Philip thereby became Philip V of Spain, and since he was also the younger son of the Dauphin of France, Philip was therefore indirectly in the line of succession of the French throne. The specter of the multi-continental empire of Spain passing under the effective control of Louis XIV provoked a massive coalition of powers to oppose the Duc d'Anjou's succession.
The war began slowly, as Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, fought to protect the Austrian Habsburg claim to the Spanish inheritance. As Louis XIV began to expand his territories more aggressively, however, other European nations (chiefly England, Portugal, and the Dutch Republic) entered on the Holy Roman Empire's side to check French expansion.[5] Other states joined the coalition opposing France and Spain in an attempt to acquire new territories, or to protect existing dominions. Spain itself was divided over the issue of succession, and fell into a civil war.
The war was centered in Spain and West-Central Europe (especially the Low Countries), with other important fighting in Germany and Italy. Prince Eugene and the Duke of Marlborough distinguished themselves as military commanders in the Low Countries. The war was fought not only in Europe, but also in colonial North America, where the conflict became known to the English colonists as Queen Anne's War, and by corsairs and privateers along the Spanish Main. Over the course of the fighting, some 400,000 people were killed.[6]
The war was concluded by the treaties of Utrecht (1713) and Rastatt (1714). As a result, Philip V remained King of Spain but was removed from the French line of succession, thereby averting a union of the two kingdoms. The Austrians gained most of the Spanish territories in Italy and the Netherlands. As a consequence, France's hegemony over continental Europe was ended, and the idea of a balance of power became a part of the international order.[7] However, Philip quickly revived Spanish ambition; taking advantage of the power vacuum caused by Louis XIV's death in 1715, Philip announced he would claim the French crown if the infant Louis XV died, and attempted to reclaim Spanish territory in Italy, precipitating the War of the Quadruple Alliance in 1717.
Contents |
As Charles II of Spain had been mentally and physically infirm from a very young age, it was clear he could not produce an heir. Thus, the issue of the inheritance of the Spanish kingdoms — which included not only Spain, but also dominions in Italy, the Low Countries, and the Americas — became contentious. Two dynasties claimed the Spanish throne: the French Bourbons and the Austrian Habsburgs; both royal families were closely related to Charles and to his father, Philip IV.
The most direct and legitimate successor to Charles II would have been Charles' nephew through his elder half-sister, Maria Theresa of Spain: Louis, le Grand Dauphin. The Dauphin, son of Louis XIV of France, was thus a grandson of Philip IV in the maternal line and was also a first cousin of Charles in the paternal line, as Louis XIV himself was a nephew of Philip IV, through Louis' mother, Spanish princess Anne of Austria. However, the Dauphin, as heir apparent to the French throne, was a problematic choice: he would have unified the French and the Spanish crowns and controlled a vast empire that would have threatened the European balance of power. Furthermore, both Anne and Maria Theresa had renounced their rights to the Spanish succession upon their marriages, although in the latter case the renunciation was widely seen as invalid, since it had been predicated upon Spain's payment of the Infanta's dowry, which was never paid.
An alternative candidate was the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I, of the Austrian Habsburg dynasty. Like Louis XIV, Leopold was a first cousin of the King of Spain and a nephew of Philip IV in the maternal line, his mother having been a younger sister of Philip IV (Maria Anna of Spain); moreover, Philip IV had stipulated the succession should pass to the Austrian Habsburg line in his will. However, Leopold also posed formidable problems as a candidate, for his succession would have reunited the elements of the powerful Spanish-Austrian Habsburg empire of the sixteenth century. It was in part to pre-empt French objections to this outcome that in 1668, only three years after Charles II had ascended, the then-childless Leopold had agreed to partition Spanish territories between the Bourbons and the Habsburgs, even though Philip IV's will would have entitled him to the entire inheritance. This position changed in 1689 when Leopold secured William III of England's support to claim the undivided Spanish empire in return for Leopold's aid against France in the War of the Grand Alliance (1688-1697).
Meanwhile, a new candidate for the Spanish throne had been born in 1692. The Electoral Prince Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria was Leopold I's grandson in the female line, and therefore belonged to the Wittelsbach dynasty rather than the Habsburgs. His mother, Maria Antonia, had been Leopold's daughter by his first marriage, to Philip IV of Spain's younger daughter Margaret Theresa. As Joseph Ferdinand was neither a Bourbon nor a Habsburg, the likelihood of Spain merging with either France or Austria remained low. The Bavarian prince would have been the lawful heir to the Spanish throne under Philip IV's will, and remained a far less threatening candidate than those directly in the Bourbon or Habsburg lines, despite the willingness of both Leopold I and Louis XIV to defer their claims onto a junior branch of their Houses: Leopold to his younger son, the Archduke Charles, and Louis to the Dauphin's younger son, Philip, the Duke of Anjou. Accordingly, Joseph Ferdinand became the preferred choice of England and the Netherlands to prevent the domination of Europe by either the Bourbons or Habsburgs.
As the War of the Grand Alliance came to a close in 1697, the issue of the Spanish succession was becoming critical. England and France, exhausted by the conflict, signed the Treaty of The Hague (1698), also known as the First Partition Treaty, in which they agreed to recognize Joseph Ferdinand as heir to the Spanish throne but divided the Spanish territories in Italy and the Low Countries between the French and Austrian dynasties. However, they did not consult the Spanish. When the Partition Treaty became known in 1698, the Spanish vehemently objected to the planned dismemberment of their empire; although Charles II agreed to name the Bavarian Prince his heir, he assigned to him the whole Spanish Empire rather than merely the parts England and France had chosen.
The issue was further confused following the death of Joseph Ferdinand of smallpox in 1699 at the age of six, reopening the issue of the Spanish succession. England and France soon ratified the Second Partition Treaty, assigning the Spanish throne to the Archduke Charles. The Italian territories would go to France, while the Archduke would receive the remainder of the Spanish empire. The Austrians, who were not party to the treaty, were displeased, for in the first case they openly vied for the whole of Spain and its possessions, and in the second it was the Italian territories that interested them most, being richer, closer to Austria, and more governable. In Spain, distaste for the treaty was even greater; the courtiers were unified in opposing partition, but were divided on whether the throne should go to a Habsburg or a Bourbon. Pro-French statesmen, however, were in the majority, and in October 1700, Charles II agreed to bequeath all of his territory to the Dauphin's second son, the duc d'Anjou. Charles took steps to prevent the potential union of France and Spain; should Anjou have by chance inherited the French throne, Spain would have gone to his younger brother, the duc de Berri, and thereafter Archduke Charles was to have been next in the line of succession.
When the French court first learned of the will, despite the paper victory for the Bourbons, Louis XIV's advisors argued that it was safer to accept the terms of the Second Partition Treaty than to risk war by claiming the whole Spanish inheritance. However, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the French foreign minister, successfully argued that whether France accepted all or a part of the Spanish Empire, it would still have to fight Austria, which did not accept the nature of the partition described by the Treaty of London. Furthermore, the terms of Charles' will stipulated that Anjou was to be offered the choice of the whole Spanish Empire or nothing; if he refused, the entire inheritance was to go to Anjou's younger brother Charles, duke of Berry or to Archduke Charles of Austria if the Duke of Berry refused. Knowing that the Maritime Powers (England and the United Provinces) would not side with France in a fight to impose the partition treaty on the unwilling Austrians and Spanish, Louis determined to accept his grandson's inheritance.
Charles II died on 1 November 1700, and on 24 November, Louis XIV proclaimed Anjou as Philip V, King of Spain. The new King was declared ruler of the entire Spanish empire, contrary to the provisions of the Second Partition Treaty. Despite the violation of the agreement with England, William III lacked the support of the ruling elites in England or the United Provinces to declare war against France, and reluctantly recognized Philip as king in April 1701.
Louis, however, took too aggressive a path in his attempt to secure French hegemony in Europe. He cut off England and the Netherlands from Spanish trade, thereby seriously threatening the commercial interests of those two countries. This enabled William III to secure the support of his subjects and to negotiate the Treaty of Den Haag (1701) with the United Provinces and Austria. The agreement, reached on 7 September 1701, recognized Philip V as King of Spain, but allotted Austria that which it desired most: the Spanish territories in Italy. As a condition, Austria also accepted the Spanish Netherlands, thus protecting that crucial region from French control. England and the United Provinces, meanwhile, were to retain their commercial rights in Spain.
A few days after the signing of the treaty, William III's predecessor as King of England, James II, who had been deposed by William in 1688, died in France. England and the United Provinces had already begun raising armies, and now, although Louis had treated William as King of England since the Treaty of Ryswick, he now recognized James II's son, the Catholic James Francis Edward Stuart (the "Old Pretender"), as the rightful monarch. Louis's action alienated the English public even further and gave William grounds for war.
Armed conflict began slowly, as Austrian forces under Prince Eugene of Savoy invaded the Duchy of Milan, one of the Spanish territories in Italy, prompting French intervention. England, the United Provinces, and most of the German states (notably Prussia and Hanover), sided with Austria. The Wittelsbach Electors of Bavaria and Cologne supported France and Spain. Portugal, while initially allied with the French, switched sides very early on with the Methuen Treaty. In Spain, the cortes of Aragon, Valencia, and Catalonia (regions of the Crown of Aragon) declared themselves in favor of the Austrian Archduke. Although William III died in 1702, his successor in England, Anne of Great Britain, continued the vigorous prosecution of the war, under the guidance of her ministers Godolphin and Marlborough.
In 1702, Eugene fought in Italy, where the French were led by the duc de Villeroi, whom Eugene defeated and captured at the Battle of Cremona on 1 February. Villeroi was now replaced by the duc de Vendôme, who, despite the drawn Battle of Luzzara in August and a considerable numerical superiority, proved unable to drive Eugene from Italy.
In the meantime, Marlborough led combined English, Dutch, and German forces in the Low Countries, where he captured several important fortresses, most notably Liège. On the Rhine, an Imperial army under Louis of Baden captured Landau in September, but the threat to Alsace was relieved by the entrance of the Elector of Bavaria into the war on the French side. Prince Louis was forced to withdraw across the Rhine, where he was defeated by a French army under Claude-Louis-Hector de Villars at Friedlingen. The English admiral Sir George Rooke also won an important naval battle, the Battle of Vigo Bay, which resulted in the complete destruction of the Spanish treasure fleet and in the capture of tons of silver.
Next year, although Marlborough captured Bonn and drove the Elector of Cologne into exile, he failed in his efforts to capture Antwerp, and the French were successful in Germany. A combined Franco-Bavarian army under Villars and Max Emanuel of Bavaria defeated Imperial armies under Louis of Baden and Hermann Styrum, but the Elector's timidity prevented a march on Vienna, which led to Villars's resignation. French victories in south Germany continued after Villars' resignation, however, with a new army under Camille de Tallard victorious in the Palatinate. French leaders entertained grand designs, intending to use a combined French and Bavarian army to capture the Austrian capital the next year. By the end of the year 1703, however, France had suffered setbacks for Portugal and Savoy had defected to the other side. Meanwhile, the English, who had previously held the view that Philip could remain on the throne of Spain, now decided that their commercial interests would be more secure under the Archduke Charles.
In 1704, the French plan was to use Villeroi's army in the Netherlands to contain Marlborough, while Tallard and the Franco-Bavarian army under Max Emanuel and Ferdinand de Marsin, Villars's replacement, would march on Vienna.
Marlborough — ignoring the wishes of the Dutch, who preferred to keep their troops in the Low Countries — led the English and Dutch forces southward to Germany; Eugene, meanwhile, moved northward from Italy with the Austrian army. The objective of these manœuvres was to prevent the Franco-Bavarian army from advancing on Vienna. Having met, the forces under Marlborough and Eugene faced the French under Tallard at the Battle of Blenheim. The battle was a resounding success for Marlborough and Eugene, and had the effect of knocking Bavaria out of the war. In that year, England achieved another important success as it captured Gibraltar in Spain, with the help of Dutch forces under the command of Prince George of Hesse-Darmstadt, on behalf of the Archduke Charles.
Following the Battle of Blenheim, Marlborough and Eugene separated again, with the former going to the Low Countries, and the latter to Italy. In 1705, little progress was made by either France or the Allies in any theatre. While Marlborough's attempted invasion of France down the Moselle came to nought, and although he managed to wrong-foot Villeroi and break through the Lines of Brabant, he was unable to bring the French commander to battle. Villars and Louis of Baden manoeuvred indecisively on the Rhine, and the story was much the same for Vendôme and Eugene in Italy. The stalemate was broken in 1706, as Marlborough drove the French out of most of the Spanish Netherlands, decisively defeating troops under Villeroi in the Battle of Ramillies in May and following up with the conquest of Antwerp and Dunkirk. Prince Eugene also met with success; in September, following the departure of Vendôme to shore up the shattered army in the Netherlands, he and the Duke of Savoy inflicted a heavy loss on the French under Orleans and Marsin at the Battle of Turin, driving them out of Italy by the end of the year.
Now that France had been expelled from Germany, the Low Countries and Italy, Spain became the centre of activity in the next few years. In 1706, the Portuguese general Marquês das Minas led an invasion of Spain from Portugal, managing to capture Madrid. By the end of the year, however, Madrid was recovered by an army led by King Philip V and the Duke of Berwick (the illegitimate son of James II of England, serving in the French army). The Earl of Galway led another attempt on Madrid in 1707, but Berwick roundly defeated him at the Battle of Almansa on 25 April. Thereafter, the war in Spain settled into indecisive skirmishing from which it would not subsequently emerge.
In 1707, the War briefly intersected with the Great Northern War, which was being fought simultaneously in Northern Europe. A Swedish army under Charles XII arrived in Saxony, where he had just finished chastising the Elector Augustus II and forced him to renounce his claims to the Polish throne. Both the French and the Allies sent envoys to Charles's camp, and the French hoped to encourage him to turn his troops against the Emperor Joseph I, who Charles felt had slighted him by his support for Augustus. However, Charles, who liked to see himself as a champion of Protestant Europe, greatly disliked Louis XIV for his treatment of the Huguenots, and was generally uninterested in the western war. He turned his attention instead to Russia, ending the possibility of Swedish intervention.
Later in 1707, Prince Eugene led an allied invasion of southern France from Italy, but was stalled by the French army. Marlborough, in the meantime, remained in the Low Countries, where he was caught up in capturing an endless succession of fortresses. In 1708, Marlborough's army clashed with the French, who were beset by leadership problems: their commanders, the Duke of Burgundy (Louis XIV's grandson) and the duc de Vendôme were frequently at variance, the former often making unwise military decisions. Burgundy's insistence that the French army not attack led Marlborough once again to unite his army with Eugene's, allowing the allied army to crush the French at the Battle of Oudenarde, and then proceeded to capture Lille. In Italy, Austria sacked cities such as Forlì (1708).
The disasters of Oudenarde and Lille led France to the brink of ruin. Louis XIV was forced to negotiate; he sent his foreign minister, the Marquis de Torcy, to meet the allied commanders at The Hague. Louis agreed to surrender Spain and all its territories to the Allies, requesting only that he be allowed to keep Naples (in Italy). He was, moreover, prepared to furnish money to help expel Philip V from Spain. The Allies, however, imposed more humiliating conditions; they demanded that Louis use the French army to dethrone his own grandson. Rejecting the offer, Louis chose to continue fighting until the bitter end. He appealed to the people of France, bringing thousands of new recruits into his army.
In 1709, the Allies attempted three invasions of France, but two were so minor as to be merely diversionary. A more serious attempt was launched when Marlborough and Eugene advanced toward Paris. They clashed with the French under the duc de Villars at the Battle of Malplaquet, the bloodiest battle of the war. Although the Allies defeated the French, they lost over twenty thousand men, compared with only ten thousand for their opponents. The Allies captured Mons but were unable to follow up their victory. The battle marked a turning point in the war; despite winning, the Allies were unable to proceed with the invasion, having suffered such tremendous casualties.
In 1710, the allies launched a final campaign in Spain, but failed to make any progress. An army under James Stanhope reached Madrid together with the Archduke Charles, but it was forced to capitulate at Brihuega when a relief army came from France. The alliance, in the meantime, began to weaken. In Great Britain[8] Marlborough's powerful political influence was lost: the source of much of his influence, the friendship between his wife and Queen Anne, came to an end, with Queen Anne dismissing the Duchess of Marlborough from her offices and banishing her from the court. Moreover, the Whig ministry that had lent its support to the war fell, and the new Tory government that replaced it sought peace.
In 1711, the Archduke Charles became Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI following the sudden death of Joseph, his elder brother. At that point, a decisive victory for Austria, uniting the Holy Roman Empire with the Spanish crown, would have upset the balance of power just as much as a victory for France.
Marlborough achieved a strategic victory over Villars, breaking the French Lines of Ne Plus Ultra and capturing Bouchain, but was recalled to Great Britain at the end of the year, and was replaced by the Duke of Ormonde. The British, led by Secretary of State Henry St John, began to correspond secretly with the Marquis de Torcy, excluding the Dutch and Austrians from their negotiations. The Duke of Ormonde refused to commit British troops to battle, so the French under Villars were able to recover much lost ground in 1712, such as at the Battle of Denain. Villars then continued his offensive with success. At the same time, the French troops were winning in Spain, and took Barcelona.
Great Britain and the Netherlands ceased fighting France when the Treaty of Utrecht was concluded in 1713. Barcelona, which had supported the Archduke's claim to the throne of Spain and the allies in 1705, finally surrendered to the Bourbon army on 11 September 1714 following a long siege, ending the presence of the allies in Spain. This is remembered in that region as the National Day of Catalonia.
Hostilities between France and Austria continued until 1714, when the Treaties of Rastatt and Baden were ratified, marking the end of the War of the Spanish Succession. Spain was slower in ratifying treaties of peace; it did not formally end its conflict with Austria until 1720, after it had been defeated by all the powers in the War of the Quadruple Alliance.
Under the Peace of Utrecht, Philip was recognized as King Philip V of Spain, but renounced his place in the French line of succession, thereby precluding the union of the French and Spanish crowns (although there was some sense in France that this renunciation was illegal). He retained the Spanish overseas empire, but ceded the Spanish Netherlands, Naples, Milan, and Sardinia to Austria; Sicily and parts of the Milanese to Savoy; and Gibraltar and Minorca to Great Britain. Moreover, he granted the British the exclusive right to non-Spanish slave trading in Spanish America for thirty years, the so-called asiento.
With regard to the political organization of their kingdoms, Philip issued the Nueva Planta decrees, following the centralizing approach of the Bourbons in France, ending the political autonomy of the kingdoms which had made up the Crown of Aragon; territories in Spain that had supported the Archduke Charles and up to then had kept their institutions in a framework of loose dynastic union, separate from the rest of the Spanish realm. On the other hand, the Kingdom of Navarre and the Basque Provinces, having supported the king against the Habsburg pretender, did not lose their autonomy and retained their traditional differentiated institutions and laws (fueros).
No important changes were made to French territory in Europe. Grandiose imperial desires to turn back the French expansion to the Rhine which had occurred since the middle decades of the seventeenth century were not realized, nor was the French border pushed back in the Low Countries. France agreed to stop supporting the Stuart pretenders to the British throne, instead recognizing Anne as the legitimate queen. France gave up various North American colonial possessions, recognizing British sovereignty over Rupert's Land and Newfoundland, and ceding Acadia and its half of Saint Kitts. The Dutch were permitted to retain various forts in the Spanish Netherlands, and were permitted to annex a part of Spanish Guelders.
With the Peace of Utrecht, the wars to prevent French hegemony that had dominated the latter part of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century were over for the time being. France and Spain, both under Bourbon monarchs, remained allies during the following years.
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