The Wars of Louis XIV - A Personal View

Introduction

            Louis XIV carved out the shape of modern France with the sword. France’s border with Belgium is still marked by the great city of Lille, the border with Spain is fixed at the Pyrenees, and the border with Germany still runs to the Rhine. The Sun King’s conquests were of greater historical impact than those of Napoleon, of much greater longevity as well. In that way, whether consciously or not, Louis XIV created l'Hexagone, and the Sun King’s reign undoubtedly saw the birth of modern France, which proved to be the birth of other nations as well. The existential crisis of the Rampjaar in 1672 ended the Dutch Golden Age and influenced the future course of the Netherlands towards isolation and neutrality. King James II of England formed the British Army in emulation of the power of his royal French cousin, which army would go on to humble France in many future wars. The French intervention in the Irish war in 1690 proved to be a seed of conflict that would continue almost to our own day between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Likewise, the seed of Franco-German conflicts in 1870, 1914, and 1940 can be traced in large part to Louis XIV’s policy of reunions in Alsace and Lorraine. The persecution of the Huguenots in the 1680s and their subsequent exodus contributed to the protestant majorities in England, Holland, and Prussia. At the conclusion of the Wars of Louis XIV, Victor Amadeus of Savoy had ensured the survival of his small Alpine state, which would one day form the Kingdom of Italy. And besides all this, there is still a Bourbon on the throne of Spain. It will be demonstrated here that, primarily by military means, Louis XIV had a greater impact on the history of Europe than many French rulers before or afterwards.

The Inheritance of War

As a result of the Reformation, the kingdom of France had torn itself apart during a series of religious wars between the adherents of the old Roman Catholic religion and the new Protestant faith, who were called Huguenots. In the process, the ancient House of Valois was extinguished, and the throne passed to the cadet House of Bourbon, ironically to the Protestant Henry of Navarre. At once, the Huguenots, hitherto in rebellion against the Crown became faithful subjects of King Henry IV. But the Protestants were still a minority in an overwhelmingly Catholic country, and the Bourbon could not win a lasting peace against such odds. So, in order to end two generations of civil war and to secure his own throne, Henry quit his religion and converted to Roman Catholicism, famously remarking “Surely Paris is worth a mass,” but placated his Protestant subjects by issuing the Edict of Nantes, respecting their rights and freedom of worship. The peace was uneasy for both sides, and eventually Henry IV was assassinated by a Roman Catholic radical in 1610. The crown of France devolved to his nine-year-old son, who became the thirteenth Louis to sit upon the French throne, though the government of France was, even after the King arrived at his majority, controlled by Cardinal Richelieu. He was as his title suggests a Roman Catholic, and quashed a Huguenot rebellion in 1627, but in his foreign policy he thought only of France. This led him to intervene in the Thirty Years’ War on the side of the Protestant powers against the Hapsburgs, and to support the Dutch in their war of independence against the Spanish. For twenty years, the “Red Eminence” controlled the policy of France, until 1642, when Cardinal Richelieu died, followed by King Louis XIII the following year. They were replaced by Cardinal Mazarin as chief minister, and by Louis XIV as King, a tender five-year old boy, who inherited France’s commitment to the Thirty Years’ War, which ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia. The treaty ensured the survival of the Dutch Republic, and expanded the Protestant powers of Brandenburg and Sweden, and was also profitable for France, who was awarded most of the German-speaking territory of Alsace.

While the Austrian Hapsburgs were mollified in 1648, the Spanish Hapsburgs fought on a decade longer against France. This renewed Franco-Spanish War coincided with a massive popular revolt in France known as the Fronde, a name derived from petulant schoolboys who fling stones at policemen. This conflict was contemporary and had parallel with the English Civil Wars, which saw a broad coalition of those opposed to an overweening royal authority. However, rather than fatally weakening the French Crown, it was Cardinal Mazarin, upholding the authority of young King Louis XIV, which ensured that the Royal power would be maintained. The Battle of the Dunes in 1658 outside the Spanish controlled city of Dunkirk saw a French army under General Turenne with support from an English corps loyal to the Commonwealth defeat a Spanish army supported by English royalists. This battle is typically seen as the end of the Franco-Spanish War, the end of the Fronde, as well as a contender for the last battle of the English Civil Wars. It was followed the following year by the Treaty of the Pyrenees, in which France gained Artois and Hainault in the north, as well as the county of Roussillon along her southern border. Cardinal Mazarin cemented this peace in 1660 with the marriage of King Louis XIV with the Spanish Infanta, Maria Theresa. Charles II was restored to the impoverished thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland that same year, but when Cardinal Mazarin died the following year, a virulent 23-year-old Louis XIV began his personal reign of a France possessing a powerful military and robust borders on every side, with her position in Europe unchecked through many long wars.

The Spanish Succession, part un

            When King Felipe IV ascended the throne of Spain in 1621, it was the largest empire in the world. It was still the largest empire in the world when he died in 1665, though with some losses, Portugal and her colonies, Northern Catalonia, parts of Flanders. These losses were mere mosquito bites geographically, but in every other respect, the Spain which Phillip IV left to his 4-year-old son was a shadow of its former self. The child-king was sickly and inbred, and his empire feeble, and the rest of Europe began to draw up plans to carve up his domains from the outset of his reign. Yet the fact that Carlos II of Spain, said to be more inbred than if his parents had been siblings, defiantly lived to the age of 38, was a wonder, prolonging the inevitable war of succession until 1701. Yet there was one conflict that broke out at the outset of his reign in 1667. Louis XIV of France had married the Spanish infanta in 1660, before Carlos II had even been born. Maria Theresa could never contest her half-brother’s right to the Spanish throne, but Louis XIV pressed her claim to inherit the Spanish Netherlands, based on an ancient inheritance law. This claim was dismissed by Spanish authorities, but Louis declared war in 1667, based ostensibly on bankrupt Spain’s failure to pay the dowry for Maria Theresa, some half a million golden écu d'or, and this was the French King’s true casus belli. Louis invaded the Spanish Netherlands with an army led by Marshal Turenne, which was a walkover and temptingly called a “blitzkrieg,” with most of the great cities captured in just three months. This stood in startling contrast with the previous Franco-Spanish War which had drug on for 24 years, and Louis expected to dictate the peace. However, Spanish authorities dithered in agreeing to a treaty, so the French king then directed Prince Condé to invade the Charolais and Franche-Comté, the last Spanish-held territories in Burgundy, which fell in just three weeks. Louis hoped to retain all his conquests, but he was soon faced with the Triple Alliance of England, Holland, and Sweden. The generals Turenne and Condé were for continuing the war, but Louis’ other ministers urged him to take what he could get rather than risk a larger war. This time, the Sun King heeded the advice of his councilors, and had to be content with the gain of Armentieres, Bergues, Charleroi, Courtrai, Douai, Furnes, Lille, Oudenarde, and Tournai, while the cities of Cambrai, Aire, and St. Omer were returned to Spain along with Charolais and Franche-Comté.

Dutch Blitz

            Although humbugged by the Triple Alliance, Louis XIV knew that England and Sweden had only been drawn together by the Dutch Republic, through the diplomacy of Jan de Witt, which had prevented the full course of his gloire. This fact rankled Louis’ dynastic pride, that a tiny Protestant Republic, prosperous only due to trade, whose very existence it owed to France, had gone on to deny that Kingdom’s rightful conquests. Louis seethed against the Dutch, and spent the next four years working diplomatically to isolate them in Europe. He agreed a secret treaty with the Hapsburg Emperor Leopold of Austria to divide the Spanish inheritance when the sickly Carlos died, and another to ensure Imperial neutrality if France went to war with the Dutch Republic. He arranged another secret treaty with England, enticing its cash-strapped king to break his alliance with Holland for gold for French lucre, and the Swedes accepted a similar offer. Louis launched his attack against the Dutch Republic in May 1672, marching north up the Meuse while his allies from the bishoprics of Cologne and Münster attacked from the west. Within two months, thirty fortified towns had been seized, and the French army was within a few days’ march of Amsterdam. Louis again was prepared to dictate terms to his vanquished foe, but this time his demands proved too rapacious. The Dutch were to be deprived of their eastern provinces and forced to convert to Roman Catholicism. Facing the effective loss of their future independence, the national spirit of Holland revived again under the leadership of a new 22-year-old Prince of Orange and appointed him Captain General. William ordered the dykes to be opened, and all the land from the Zuider Zee to the Rhine to be flooded. “God made the earth,” it was said, “but the Dutch made the Netherlands,” and they were prepared to unmake it to forestall French domination.

From the moment the dykes were opened, the Dutch War became unwinnable, for though the French army occupied half the country, they could not march on water, much less subsist themselves in a flooded country. The French tide had crested, and it was doomed from July 1672 only to ebb, though it remained high throughout the summer, but by late autumn began at last to turn with a series of blows. William launched robust but unsuccessful attacks along the Holland Water Line, and in the north even managed to recapture Coevorden from the French-allied troops of Munster who had been set to garrison the city. William then hoped to coordinate his Dutch army with a Spanish and Imperial corps to march against Charleroi at the base of the tenuous French supply line. This was ultimately unsuccessful, and the Imperials never managed even to cross the Rhine, but it was a sign that the French conquests were in increasing danger of being rolled back. The campaign of the following year proved to be indecisive in Holland for the French, but King Louis’ actions in other theaters ensured that his few allies would desert and the war itself would expand into a war of attrition with Spain and the Empire too.

Louis’ first objective for 1673 was the great fortress city of Maestricht, which had been bypassed during the blitzkrieg of the previous year. He personally attended the siege of the city, which submitted within a month, stunning all combatants. Meanwhile, Marshal Turenne faced an army from Brandenburg along the Rhine, and drove them back into Germany, imposing a treaty on the Elector of Brandenburg after devastating his lands in Mark. The Hapsburg Emperor then began to show signs of stirring, assembling an army in Bohemia, which detained Turenne’s army in Germany, further outraging the other German princes of the Empire. Then Louis set all of Germany on the road to war by ordering the seizure of Trier and some neutral cities in Alsace. Spain, whose possessions in the Netherlands were threatened by the French as well, began openly to seek alliance with the Empire and the Dutch Republic. Until this point, a peace conference had met at Cologne, mediated by the Swedes, which almost arrived at an advantageous peace, after Louis moderated his demands. However, a series of events gave the Dutch hope to hold out for better terms yet, as William recaptured the city of Narden on September 13^th. The Imperial commander Montecuccoli then outfoxed Turenne along the Main River and marched on the city of Bonn. The French deemed it prudent to begin evacuating Holland and pulling back to the Spanish Netherlands, and this they did, abandoning all their conquered cities except Grave and Maestricht. William and Montecuccoli linked up along the Lower Rhine, capturing the city of Bonn and compelling the Bishops of Cologne and Münster to make peace within the next few months. France’s only remaining ally, England, then began to seek terms from the Dutch, and made peace in February 1674.

Winning the Dutch War at Spain’s Expense

Louis’ rapacious demands had prevented an advantageous peace in 1672, and his actions in 1673 had expanded the war, rather than concluding it, while alienating his few allies. A war that had begun so splendidly for the French looked grim indeed in 1674, with generals Condé along the Meuse and Turenne along the Rhine each outnumbered and defensive in their respective theaters. Yet both men were among the greatest French commanders in history, and performed wonders with limited resources. The year opened with an easy French victory, the conquest in six weeks of Franche-Comté by Navailles, and this was followed by Turenne’s victory over an Imperial army at the battle of Sinsheim in June. In the Spanish Netherlands, Condé pounced on the Allied rearguard at Seneffe on August 13^th, overwhelming it. However, what would have been an easy victory turned into a highly-contested stalemate as the aggressive commander decided to press the attack against the main body, led by William of Orange, which produced 25,000 casualties on both sides. The fruits of victory were debated, but the battle stymied any future Allied attempts to march on the frontiers of France. Turenne led a highly praised campaign along the Rhine in the autumn and winter of 1674, fighting an inconclusive battle at Entzheim in October, but following it up with crushing victories at Mulhouse and Turkheim in December and January, expelling the Imperial army from Alsace.

1675 resulted in the capture of Dinant, Huy, and Limbourg by the French in Flanders, but this was matched by disaster on other fronts. France’s last ally, Sweden was decisively defeated by Brandenburg at the Battle of Fehrbellin in June, rolling back their invasion of the Elector’s territory. The next month, Marshal Turenne was killed by a cannonball at the Battle of Salzbach, and Condé was dispatched to replace him and restore the situation. Later in August, Marshal Créqui was crushed at the Battle of Konzer-Brücke, which resulted in the recapture of Trier. But the war dragged on, with the efforts of both sides yielding diminishing returns. A new front was opened in Sicily, with the French supporting local rebels against their Spanish rulers, but their success was limited and eventually the French would leave the Sicilian rebels holding the bag. Allied efforts in the Spanish Netherlands were continually frustrated by a lack of cohesion by powers who each had vastly different war aims. The French captured Aire, Valenciennes, St. Omer, and Cambrai by 1677. William was determined to fight for this last city, leading to the Battle of Cassel in April, which proved to be a terrible defeat. Peace negotiations had already begun at Nijmegen, as the French were already financially exhausted by the war, and were eager to come to an advantageous peace. The next year, 1678, as the English prepared to reenter the war on the Allied side with 20,000 men, the French got an early start in Flanders, capturing Ghent and Ypres, and threatened the city of Mons. William fought the disputed battle of Saint-Denis on August 14^th to prevent the capture of this last city, but it had all been meaningless, as the Treaty of Nijmegen ending the war had been signed four days before.

The Franco-Dutch War would prove to be only the first in a trilogy of wars that would curb the power of Louis XIV’s France, though that was not immediately apparent. Louis, whose armies seemed effortlessly to have conquered Flanders in 1667, Franche-Comté in 1668, and Holland in 1672, had at last met his match in the coalition-building William of Orange, the young Dutch captain-general tempered by the experience of six years of war. Ironically, William had managed to recover every inch of Dutch territory despite consistently being defeated and turned back, not even being able to recover isolated Maestricht by military means. This was to show the ultimate weakness of alliances with varied purposes, against a smaller state with central lines and central control. But both the French and the Dutch could look on the war as successful, for though the French had been forced to relinquish their easy conquests by Spain’s entry into the war, they concluded that war advantageously for themselves at Spain’s expense. By the Treaty of Nijmegen, Spain was made finally to give up Franche-Comté, as well as Valenciennes, Cambrai, Aire, St. Omer, Ypres, and Bouchain, all cities that had been captured after the evacuation of Holland in late 1673. In addition to this, the French continued to occupy the Duchy of Lorraine, since Duke Charles refused to receive his lands back on the terms that King Louis offered. This pattern of victimization of Spanish and Imperial territories would continue into the next decade.

“Kings just want to have fun:” Persecutions and Reunions in the 1680s

Although Louis XIV’s aim to create natural borders for his kingdom has only been retroactively applied to him, the famous siege engineer Vauban had first spoken of creating a pre-carré or “squared field” of fortresses in 1673, when the withdrawal from Holland back to France’s frontiers was being considered. At Nijmegen the choice of which cities to keep and which to relinquish seemed based on shortening the frontier, rather than having a patchwork of different fortifications. Hence isolated Maestricht and Charleroi were given up, but Cambrai and Aire both retained. After the Franco-Dutch War, still with lingering tensions between France and her neighbors, Louis attempted to expand his frontiers by legal means rather than by war through the Reunions Courts. These were dubious legal proceedings, which aimed to sort out contested land claims, coincidentally always in French favor. The rest of Alsace was brought under French control through these means, with Strasbourg submitting in September 1681, completing the bloodless conquest. The Duke of Mantua was bribed into giving up the important fortress of Casale between Piedmont and the Duchy of Milan in northern Italy in the same month. The French besieged and bombarded Luxembourg in 1682, only halting their aggression when the Ottoman Turks attacked the Holy Roman Empire, but renewed the conflict as soon as the siege of Vienna was lifted in 1683. Spain was forced to declare war, but found no allies willing to give more than good wishes. However, the Spanish Netherlands proved to be less of a walkover than they had in 1667. Only Courtrai and Dixmude fell by November 1683, though the Spanish refused to negotiate, anticipating a Dutch intervention which never came. The French invaded Catalonia in March 1684, and the city of Genoa was viciously bombarded in May, as reprisal for their having permitted Spanish troops to pass through its territory. Finally, after months of blockade and siege, the city of Luxembourg fell on June 3^rd. With the main French object of the War in their hands, Louis was willing to negotiate, and having been abandoned, Spain was forced to agree to the Truce of Ratisbon, a temporary cease-fire that merely recognized French control of Luxembourg in return for Courtrai and Dixmude.

This continued aggression against France’s neighbors coincided with a sharp turn within France against its Protestant minority in the 1680s. There had been uneasy peace between Catholic and Huguenot for almost a hundred years since Henry IV’s Edict of Nantes, granting toleration of Protestant worship. By the 1680s, the Wars of Religion and even the last of the Huguenot Rebellions were distant memories to almost all Frenchmen, and most Huguenots were content to participate normally in French society. Two prominent generals, Marshal Turenne and Marshal Schomburg were Huguenots. But Louis felt he could not trust his subjects whose convictions were different from his own, and he promoted the conversion of Protestants early in his reign with cash incentives. He made much of Marshal Turenne’s conversion after the War of Devolution, but this did not attract many other converts. With Louis victorious against his foreign foes, he felt confident enough to move against these domestic dissidents, as he saw them. He began to quarter ill-disciplined dragoons in the homes of Huguenots, hoping to intimidate them into conversion, and slowly began to roll back the rights and privileges that Protestants possessed in society, even forcing them to raise their children as Roman Catholics. Many fled to Protestant countries, if they could, and many more fled into Savoy, where the ancient Protestant communities of the Waldensians had dwelt in the Alpine passes since before the Reformation. Louis compelled Duke Victor Amadeus to expel the Waldensians and the Huguenot rebels, and turned his soldiers against his own subjects, with French assistance. Those who were not killed outright or taken captive fled into Switzerland. At last, Louis issued the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685, declaring Protestantism illegal in his kingdom. This at last unleashed a massive exodus of the Huguenots from France, including Marshal Schomburg, who would eventually enter the Dutch service. Louis XIV gained nothing by this persecution of his own subjects and lost their contributions to his enemies.

The Freewheelin’ Louis le Grand: Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall

William of Orange, Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, had already proved himself to be an implacable foe of French expansion during the Dutch War of 1672-1678. But in 1686, in the face of Huguenot persecution and further French aggression, he formed the League of Augsburg with the states along the Rhine as a coalition against any future French attack. It was still too weak to oppose France alone, but a series of events would unite almost all western Europe against Louis XIV. In 1685, the Elector Palatine died, and in a move reminiscent of the Devolution, Louis claimed half of the Palatinate for his sister-in-law. He hoped to leverage the Ottoman invasion of Austria into forcing the German princes to recognize his claims, but the war began to turn badly against the Ottomans. Louis wanted to secure more German territory while the Austrian Emperor Leopold was still weak, he also wanted a pro-French candidate to succeed to the Archbishopric of Cologne, which had proved to be a vital ally during the Dutch War. More than all of this, Louis wanted a formal treaty recognizing his gains in Luxembourg, Alsace, and Lorraine. He issued a manifesto in September 1688 declaring all this, and sent troops into the Palatinate the same month to besiege Phillipsburg, which resisted until the end of October, after which it and several cities fell to the French without a shot, and Louis became master of the Rhine River from Koblenz to the Alps. His position was unassailable, he thought, and Germany was too weak to resist him, and he hoped for a peace settlement, quick and dirty, to formalize his conquests, in the mold of the Wars of Devolution and Reunions. But when the Dutch Republic and the princes of Germany intimated their willingness to fight, Louis again faced the likelihood of a long war. The King, supported by his war minister Louvois, ordered the Palatinate to be devastated, and several cities were proscribed for destruction, including Bingen, Heidelberg, Mannheim, Oppenheim, Speyer, and Worms. Before this point Louis only faced the Dutch Republic and the princes of the Rhineland, but the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire declared war against the French in February 1689, followed by Spain in April, and, after an amazing turn of events, England declared war in May. Rather than a peace settlement, Louis XIV now faced the longest and most arduous war of his reign thus far.

The military and political revolution that occurred in Britain at the end of 1688 must be explained in a few words. Roman Catholic James, the Duke of York had ascended to the thrones of the Three British Kingdoms in 1685, which worried the vast majority of Protestant England and Scotland, fears that were only worsened with news coming from France of renewed persecution. Most were content to wait until James II died, but he had a son in June 1688 which opened up the terrifying prospect of a new Catholic dynasty. Seven English notables sent a letter to William of Orange, the King's son-in-law, inviting him to invade England to restore their liberties. The Dutch Stadtholder was just in the market for new allies in a brewing war with France, and took up their offer. William only brought about 15,000 men to invade England in November, 1688, about half the size of James' recently-enlarged British Army, but the desertion of key officers from James to William caused the King to leave heart, and flee into exile. William and his wife Mary then took the crown for themselves, but the now King William III was less than fully pleased. He had hoped for a quick and dirty coup in order to have the British Army in Flanders the next year to fight the French, but he ended up with a rebellion in Scotland and a full-scale war in Ireland. He sent the Earl of Marlborough with what troops he could to the Continent, while devoting most of his forces to fight the Jacobites in Ireland and Scotland. At this point, Louis XIV’s rapid conquest of the Palatinate had exploded into a war involving all the powers of Western Europe, extending not just to Ireland, but beyond the oceans to the Colonies as well, and there was no end in sight.

Nine Years of War

Flanders, or the Spanish Netherlands was the main theater of the Nine Years’ War from 1689 to 1697, as it had been during the Franco-Dutch War a decade before. The French held a line of fortresses from Dunkirk on the coast to Ypres, Menin, Lille, Tournai, Condé, Valenciennes, Maubeuge, Phillippville, Givet, into the Ardennes Forest surrounding the Duchy of Luxembourg. The 1689 campaign in Flanders saw Prince Waldeck leading a coalition army against the Duc d’Humieres, which fought a significant skirmish in August near the French frontier at Walcourt. Tactically it was quite a spree for the Allies, and especially for the English and their commander Marlborough in their first outing on a European battlefield, but it produced no strategic results. However, in the Rhine Theater, Bonn and Kaisersworth fell into Allied hands in 1689, as well as Mainz, clearing the Rhine of French fortresses down to Phillipsburg. Along the Catalonian front, the French and Spanish passed Camproden back and forth, but accomplished little else. In Scotland, the Jacobite commander Dundee won a crushing victory at Killiecrankie at the cost of his life, only to have his army repulsed at Dunkeld, and thereafter to languish toward defeat due to the lack of support from the Jacobites in Ireland. There they had problems of their own, as the Williamites had managed to lift the Siege of Derry, and the Duke of Schomburg landed in Ulster, capturing many towns, though suffering more terribly from disease than from battle at Dundalk that winter.

In 1690, Marshal Luxembourg won the most decisive victory of Louis XIV’s wars to date, making casualties of half of Prince Waldeck’s larger Allied army at Fleurus on July 1^st. However, the fruits of victory were denied the Marshal as the King ordered him to reinforce the Dauphin’s army along the Rhine, which accomplished nothing in return. However, on the same day in Ireland, King William, who had arrived in person at the head of 35,000 men, outflanked the Jacobite army along the Boyne River and won a tactical victory that left the Irish fleeing back to Dublin, and King James fleeing Ireland altogether. William then dispatched General Kirke to besiege Waterford and Lord Marlborough to capture the ports of Cork and Kinsale, which was all accomplished by the end of the summer, while King William himself pressed on to Limerick to capture the last major Jacobite stronghold. However, this victory was denied him when Jacobite cavalry commander Patrick Sarsfield intercepted the Williamite siege train and despoiled it. William was forced to abandon the siege and left Ireland altogether, entrusting Dutch General Ginkel to finish the Irish war. The Jacobite army in Scotland was crushed in June at the Battle of Cromdale, though the rebellion would linger on for two years more. Another theater opened in 1690 when the Duke of Savoy had grown restless at being a French puppet. He threw in his lot with the Allies, and his army along with the Spaniards from Milan met the inferior army of General Catinat at the Battle of Staffarda on August 18^th. The Duke of Savoy came immediately to regret his treachery as Catinat defeated his larger army and went on to capture most of his fortresses, but the war in Piedmont was far from over.

Catinat’s chief lieutenant at Staffarda, General Saint-Ruhe was dispatched to Ireland in 1691 with additional French troops and arms, in order to restore the situation from the serious setbacks of the year before. However, unable to lift the Siege of Athlone in June, Saint-Ruhe entrusted the Jacobite fortunes in Ireland to a field battle, but marched into disaster at the Battle of Aughrim on July 12^th, himself killed and his army dispersed. Limerick was again besieged, gallantly defended by Patrick Sarsfield, but the city fell in October 1691, and the Williamite War in Ireland came to a conclusion. The Treaty that Sarsfield signed permitted as many of the Irish soldiers who wished it to be transported to France, in order to continue fighting for King James in the army of King Louis. In this “Flight of the Wild Geese,” the Irish Jacobites added their numbers to the already existing Irish Brigade, distinctive in the French Army for their red coats. Meanwhile in Flanders, the French had opened the 1691 campaign with the capture, relatively early in the season, of Mons. This siege was personally attended by Louis XIV, and Marshal Luxembourg added to this the capture of Halle later in the season, and prevented all of King William’s attempts to recapture them. William departed his army after a frustrating campaign in September, leaving Prince Waldeck in command. Marshal Luxembourg exploited this opportunity to win a small tactical victory at Leuze, fought mainly with cavalry. In Piedmont, Victor Amadeus managed to lift the French siege of Cuneo, but little else was accomplished either in that theater, along the Rhine, or in Catalonia.

The rebellion in Scotland, which had dragged on even after the fall of Jacobite Ireland at last came to an end with the bloody Glencoe Massacre in February 1692, which saw Williamite soldiers murder dozens of men from Clan MacDonald to set an example to the other Jacobite clans. The size of armies in Flanders continued to increase, as the Allies were bolstered with Dutch and British troops from the war in Ireland, and the French added the Jacobite Irish Brigade to their own army. Louis hoped to send these troops to invade Britain itself, but his invasion fleet was battered at the naval Battle of Barfleur and crippled at La Hougue in June, with the loss of 15 ships of the line. The outcome proved to be decisive, and influenced the French to move away from large sea battles and to pursue guerre de course, in which they found more success. Louis defunded his navy, and henceforth funneled most of his expenditure into the army, which he understood better and could yield more tangible results. The same month as the disaster at La Hougue, King Louis attended the siege of Namur, which saw Marshal Vauban capturing the fortress defended by the equally famous Dutch engineer General Coehoorn. Later that summer, Marshal Luxembourg attacked William’s army at Steenkerque on August 3^rd, and succeeded in driving the Allies back with significant casualties, but were too exhausted themselves to follow up the victory. Duke Victor Amadeus of Savoy had managed to bring his army up to 30,000 men in 1692 and invaded the French province of Dauphiné, capturing Embrun and sacking Gap, but was forced to pull back to his own lands.

1693 was the last successful year of the war for the French until the very end. Heidelberg was captured along the Rhine. Louis almost had the opportunity to personally lead his army into battle against William’s army at Gembloux in June, but it did not come about, and later the French king decided at the feeble age of 54 that he was too old for warfare anymore. Luxembourg delivered him the city of Huy in July, and followed it up with a costly victory over William at Landen in August, which allowed him to capture Charleroi at the end of the campaigning season. Good news came from Piedmont as well, where Marshal Catinat delivered another crushing victory over Duke Victor Amadeus at Marsaglia on October 4^th. At sea in 1693, Admiral Tourville retrieved some of his lost plaudits when he captured dozens of Allied merchantmen off Lagos, Portugal on June 17^th. However, the French harvest failed that year, causing widespread famine and starvation. This combined with a worsening financial situation, Louis was anxious to bring this war to a conclusion. An Allied descent on Brest was turned back in June 1694, but the French were disappointed by the loss of Huy to the Allies in September, though this was matched in Catalonia by the triumph along the River Ter, allowing Marshal Noailles to capture much of the country. In 1695, the increasingly exhausted Allies achieved their greatest success of the war with the recapture of Namur in Flanders, but it was to be their last success. Brussels was brutally bombarded by the French during the siege of Namur, an act which accomplished nothing and needlessly victimized civilians.

1696 saw inaction on all fronts as the armies prepared for peace, and increasing success in the French guerre de course at sea, with Admiral Jean Bart and other captains seizing millions of livres, easing the strain on the French treasury. Victor Amadeus of Savoy, who had been last to join the Allied cause in 1690 was the first to leave it, conducting a phony siege of Pinerolo, and concluding the Treaty of Turin in August 1696, in which Louis returned all of his captured possessions in Savoy, and promised not to interfere in their politics any longer. Italy had been neutralized, the Allies undone by the betrayal, and the French eager to end the war well with massive efforts in 1697. Marshals Vauban and Catinat, freed from the campaign in Italy, besieged Ath in Flanders early in the season, and captured the town in two weeks at the cost of only 150 casualties. At the same time, the Spanish fortress town Cartagena de Indias in South America was successfully raided by the French, yielding 10 million livres. Marshal Vendôme besieged Barcelona from June to August, which finally yielded only a month before the war ended.

The French Army had been undefeated on all fronts during the Nine Years’ War, had won every major land battle, and held onto Ypres, Courtrai, Mons, Charleroi in Flanders, the Duchy of Luxembourg and the Duchy of Lorraine, and along the Rhine they held Philippsburg, Kehl, Breisach, and Freiburg. They had also secured the entire province of Catalonia by the end of the war. Yet, all of these above-mentioned cities and territories were given up to make peace in 1697 at the Treaty of Ryswick. It was far from the hardline that the Dutch and Imperials had insisted on at the outset of the war, to restore the 1659 border from the Treaty of the Pyrenees, before Louis XIV had even begun his personal reign, but it was progress. The Allies had forced Louis to give up much of what he had gained since the conclusion of the Dutch War in 1678. William had also gained recognition of his British crowns, neutralizing the Jacobite threat momentarily, while Louis was also made to give up claims in Cologne and the Palatinate. What had caused such a reversal? Louis’ armies were indeed undefeated, but France herself could not maintain the cost of the war any longer. Besides this, the famine of 1693-1694 had killed a million and a half people, with countless more suffering from typhoid and other diseases, which was sure to have long lasting effects even after the harvests recovered. Perhaps another reason for Louis’ willingness to make concessions was that he and the rest of Europe knew that there would likely be another great war along much the same lines to determine the outcome of the Spanish succession when Carlos II finally died.

The Spanish Succession, part deux

            Europe had been preparing for an impending succession crisis as soon as Carlos had ascended the throne of Spain at the tender age of four. He had never been expected to live long, and Louis XIV’s first war had been about his wife’s right to inherit the Spanish Netherlands. Louis had managed to sign a partition treaty with Emperor Leopold of Austria in 1668, but his later intervention into the Dutch War in 1674 had thrown that agreement out of the window. From that moment forward, Louis saw his main enemy as Leopold of Austria, and both monarchs vied to put forward a candidate of their own dynasty to succeed Carlos II of Spain. Time continued to pass, and the sickly child king became a sickly adult but stubbornly clung to life until he was approaching 40, but his health was growing worse, and after the Nine Years’ War concluded, each of the major powers feared the question of succession would be settled in blood. At first, the thorny issue was solved by the 1698 Treaty of the Hague which settled the Spanish Succession on young Joseph Ferdinand of the House of Wittelsbach, grandson of Emperor Leopold and grand-nephew of Carlos II. The treaty was remarkable in that it saw England, Holland, France and Austria all agree on something, and allowed for Spain’s other European possessions to be partitioned between France and Austria, which satisfied everyone except the Spanish themselves. However, the child heir-designate died just three months later, reopening the whole issue again. Yet Louis XIV, now past 60 and seeming to grow tired of long and costly wars, was still willing to work with King William III, and they agreed a second partition treaty between themselves in early 1700, without consulting either Austria or Spain. This second partition treaty recognized Emperor Leopold’s son Charles as the heir to the throne of Spain, while granting France all of Spain’s territory in Italy. However, when Carlos II finally died on November 1^st 1700, an eleventh hour change in his will left the entirety of the Spanish Empire to Philip of Anjou, Louis XIV’s grandson. The old French King faced the choice of either maintaining his treaty with William of Orange, or going with Carlos’ and his own desire of placing his grandson on the throne of Spain. He made his choice plain on November 16^th when he presented young Philip to his court with the famous words, “Gentlemen, this is the King of Spain.”

            As 1701 dawned, Philip went immediately to claim his crown from the Spanish who acclaimed him as their King without any resistance. French troops began to secure the Spanish possessions nearest their potential enemies, with Milan and Mantua in Northern Italy happy to accept Philip V as their king, and the Spanish Netherlands yielded up by their governor, Max Emanuel of Bavaria. In time, Bavaria too would betray its allegiance to the Holy Roman Empire. Naples soon declared for Philip V too, and it seemed that Louis XIV had secured the entire Spanish patrimony for his grandson without bloodshed. Four years before, Louis had signed a disadvantageous peace, giving up much of France’s conquests of the last war, but now he was in a strategic position stronger than ever before. He would have faced war with Austria in any event, but war need not necessarily break out with England, yet Louis began to overplay his hand. William of Orange still stood at the helm both of England and Holland, and the events of 1701 began to threaten them both. With the delivery of the Spanish Netherlands into French control, Holland lost her barrier against France and stood the risk of immediate invasion should war break out, while England faced the loss of important trade routes in the Mediterranean. William reformed the Grand Alliance at the Hague that September, uniting England, Holland, and the German states of the Holy Roman Empire in league together to place Archduke Charles on the Throne of Spain. England went to war reluctantly, but Louis XIV then did something that united most of the country against France. James II died in French exile in September, while the Allies were meeting in the Hague, and Louis formally recognized his son as James III of England and VIII of Scotland. England had passed the Act of Settlement that same year, formally denying the throne to any Roman Catholic, so Louis was making it known that he would foment rebellion and civil war in the British Isles, simply to accomplish his political goals. The War of Spanish Succession, long dreaded and long avoided, at last began, and it was not to end for another twelve years, with an outcome that might have been negotiated from the very beginning without bloodshed. But in the summer of 1701 the war was most definitely on, and the first shots had already been fired in Northern Italy.

Enter Eugene, Stage Right

Prince Eugene of Savoy, a cousin of Victor Amadeus of Savoy and a Frenchman by birth, though entirely opposed to Louis XIV by allegiance, is a figure that has lurked in the sidelines of our story thus far, but who bursts onto the first scene of this war. He had been by his cousin’s side at the Battle of Staffarda in 1690, though he had spent most of the Nine Years’ War and had made his name fighting Turks in the Balkans. Eugene was the best Imperial commander that Emperor Leopold had, so he was dispatched in the summer of 1701 into Northern Italy to secure the Duchy of Milan for Archduke Charles, now claiming himself to be Carlos III of Spain. He faced Marshal Catinat, victor of Staffarda and Marsaglia, but outflanked him near the French-held fortress of Carpi on July 9^th, forcing him to retreat up the Po Valley. Catinat was quickly removed from command and Louis dispatched one of his favorites, Marshal Villeroi to restore the situation, who possessed neither the plaudits nor the actual skill of the man he replaced. He immediately elected to attack Eugene at Chiari on September 1^st, but was repulsed. Villeroi hunkered down for the winter in Cremona, but it was here that Eugene surprised the city in February 1702 and managed to capture the French marshal, though was later repulsed by rallying Irish troops. Louis dispatched yet another commander, Marshal Vendôme, the conqueror of Catalonia in the last war, to finally restore the situation in Northern Italy, which he did. He captured Modena and Reggio in July and besieged Luzzara the next month. Here Eugene was forced to attack the French marshal behind field fortifications on August 15^th, but was repulsed, and soon Luzzara fell into French hands. Eugene was soon recalled, but not as a consequence of defeat, rather to conduct the already flagging Imperial war effort from Vienna. Despite his setbacks, Eugene had conducted the war brilliantly in 1701, and did his best as money and supplies dried up from Vienna. His campaign had combined daring with lightning-fast judgement, restoring something of the glitter to warfare which had not been seen since the days of Turenne, hurtling towards the enemy for victory or death. Another captain in the Low Countries looked on this conduct with approval and envy.

Marlborough Redivivus

The Earl of Marlborough had a brief but brilliant part in the Nine Years’ War, whose sordid desertion of King James in 1688 helped ensure William’s bloodless coup in England. He had been dispatched with the first expedition of English troops to Flanders the following year and acquitted himself well at Walcourt. He accomplished the reduction of Cork and Kinsale efficiently during the war in Ireland, but had arrived on the battlefield of Leuze too late to join the fighting in 1691. He disappears at this point, political intrigue having denied him any further part in William’s war, as he was highly suspected of having betrayed the Brest expedition in 1694 to the French through Jacobite agents. William had never trusted Marlborough, and perhaps he had good reason to do so, but William knew that after he was gone, Princess Anne would become Queen, and she would give Marlborough the chief command of the army. So William resolved to make amends with this suspect earl, restoring his position in government, entrusting him with the reformation of the Grand Alliance at the Hague in 1701. But before England and Holland officially joined the war, Providence denied William III another opportunity to fight Louis XIV, as he died in March 1702 of pneumonia from a broken collar-bone. This turn of fate was certainly the best thing that could be done for the war effort, relieving the valiant but oft-defeated William of his duties and passing it to a commander of infinitely more abilities.

Anne duly became Queen, and gave Marlborough command of the English war effort, and he went to Holland and secured the Captain-Generalcy of the Dutch army as well. However, his command was limited by the presence of deputies who had authority to veto any of his decisions. When he began his campaign in the Low Countries in the summer of 1702, Marshal Boufflers was threatening Nijmegen, but Marlborough marched into Brabant and forced the French commander to follow. Marlborough had the opportunity to fight a battle at Peer, and later at Helchteren, but he was prevented from doing so by the Dutch deputies, unwilling to risk their own troops in battle under an unproven commander. It seems maddening in hindsight, knowing Marlborough’s capabilities, but he was 52 and had never had independent command of a battle before, and seemed to be a mere favorite of Queen Anne, with little else to commend him. Marlborough wrote a letter of apology to Marshal Boufflers for having declined the two actions, but offered no apology for then capturing Venloo, Roermond, Stevensweert, then crowning the sweep with the siege of Liège, which fell in October. For this Queen Anne elevated him to the Dukedom of Marlborough, and there were great expectations for the following year. Marlborough himself felt confident enough to propose a “great design” on the port city of Antwerp, but in this he would be forced to rely again on the Dutch, who hampered his progress, then blamed him for their repulse at Ekeren in June. Here Boufflers and Villeroi, recently exchanged from captivity, pounced upon a Dutch column outside Antwerp, and inflicted heavy casualties, but failed entirely to destroy it. Recriminations flew back and forth, and Marlborough had only to content himself with the capture of the minor fortresses Guelders, Limburg, and Huy in 1703. Marlborough returned to England that winter determined to relinquish his command.

The Spanish Distraction, 1702-1707

By the time the War of Spanish Succession had begun, Philip V had been placed firmly on his throne, and whatever success the Allies met with on other fronts, there was no way for them to displace him without doing so physically in Spain itself. And so all of Iberia became a front of the war, as the Allies attempted from every cardinal direction to conquer the peninsula for Archduke Charles. But the Spanish themselves never seemed very enthused with this “Carlos III,” except for separatist Catalonia, and the entire theater would prove to be a costly distraction and drain on Allied resources throughout the war. However, this reality was masked early on by the glitter of victory. A failed expedition against Cadiz by English and Dutch marine troops in September 1702 was redeemed by the naval triumph at Vigo Bay the next month, which saw 18 Franco-Spanish warships captured or burnt, and a great deal of treasure seized. This victory convinced King Peter II of Portugal of the viability of Allied prospects in the war, and he agreed to join the Grand Alliance and opened a new front the following year along his border with Spain. While campaigns ranged back and forth along this frontier, the British managed to capture Gibraltar in August 1704 and subsequently disappointed every Spanish attempt to recapture it, even to the present day. Barcelona and Valencia fell to Allied arms in 1705, closing much of the Mediterranean coast off to Philip V. Most gloriously of all, the Allies managed to enter Madrid from Portugal in 1706, but just as suddenly were forced to retreat again. However, the following year saw the Duke of Berwick commanding a French army defeat the Allied commander the Earl of Galway at the Battle of Almansa on April 25^th. (Berwick was an illegitimate son of James II and nephew of Marlborough, and therefore an Englishman, so it was natural for him to beat the Earl of Galway, who after all was born a Frenchman.) Almansa saw the return of Valencia’s allegiance to King Philip V, but the war in Spain would drag on to the bitter end.

Two Treacheries

Victor Amadeus of Savoy had switched sides twice during the last war, and started the War of Spanish Succession on the Bourbon side, even contributing his troops to fight his cousin Eugene at Chiari and Luzzara. Victor Amadeus was well connected dynastically to the French court, he had married the niece of the French King, had married one daughter to the Dauphin, another to Philip V himself, so Louis XIV had reason to believe that he was well on their side. However, the Duke of Savoy had greater aspirations for his country than to be a turnstile for the French to enter Italy. He had quite a strong claim to the Spanish throne himself, but would be content with inheriting some of their provinces in Italy, though he knew he could not trust the French King to honor these ambitions. Victor Amadeus saw the massive subsidies that England and Holland were offering, and decided once again to throw in his lot with the Allies in 1703. However, just as in the last war he came to regret this decision almost immediately as the French revenged themselves against this thrice-fold traitor and his subjects. Marshal la Feuillade immediately invaded the Duke’s transalpine provinces in the autumn of 1703, and went on to capture Susa and Pinerolo the next summer. Victor Amadeus’ capital at Turin lay open and undefended. But though the Savoyard defection seemed at once a terrible decision, it had immediate consequence in Bavaria.

Maximilian Emmanuel of the House of Wittelsbach was the Elector of Bavaria and, immediately before the war, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands. He was long suspected of collusion with the French, but he had remained staunch to the Allied cause during the Nine Years War. His young son Joseph Ferdinand had been briefly considered as a candidate for the Spanish throne in 1699, but his untimely demise had thrown all of Europe into an uproar again. However, the strategic revolution which immediately preceded the outbreak of war offered Max Emmanuel an outlet for his dynastic ambitions. As Governor of the Spanish Netherlands he permitted French troops to occupy its fortresses in spring 1701, sending the Dutch troops garrisoned in the province home and completely undoing all the Dutch preparations for war. As Elector of Bavaria, lying nearest Austria itself, he decided to break his allegiance to the Empire and throw in his lot with the Bourbon monarchies, and seized the Imperial free city of Ulm in 1702 for his French masters. Meanwhile on the upper Rhine, the Margrave of Baden captured the city of Landau from the French on the left bank of the Rhine, but was soon defeated at the Battle of Friedlingen by an up-and-coming French general named Claude Villars, who for his victory won his marshal’s baton, and who followed this victory with the capture of Kehl in early 1703.

Meanwhile, the Elector of Bavaria, having secured his own territory, was attempting to march south through the Alps to link up with Marshal Vendôme, who was coming north from Italy. Austria was in a tight spot, with Emperor Leopold beleaguered on three sides, firstly by Hungarian rebels to the east, treacherous Bavaria to the west, and the French in Italy to the southwest. The Empire, which was too enfeebled to face more than one serious opponent at one time was attempting to deal with all three threats simultaneously and doing so badly. The defection of Savoy in 1703 offered a bit of relief on the Italian front. The attempted juncture of Vendôme and the Elector of Bavaria came to nothing, as the French marshal only got as far north as Trent before other crises demanded his attention to other places in his theater. Meanwhile, the Margrave of Baden threatened the Elector’s city of Augsburg, who was forced to retreat from Innsbruck back into his own territory. But the French were determined to send aid to Max Emmanuel in Bavaria, Louis seeing him as having opened the surest road to victory in forcing Austria out of the war. Villars was dispatched through the Black Forest to aid Bavaria, who linked up with the Elector and defeated an Imperial force at the Battle of Höchstädt on September 20^th, 1703. However, Villars soon fell out with the Elector and requested to be relieved of his command, which was soon done by Marshal Marsin. Meanwhile back on the Rhine, Marshal Tallard captured Breisach and recaptured Landau, then defeated an Imperial force at the Battle of Speyerbach on November 16^th. Louis XIV had seemed to win the War of Spanish Succession by default in 1701, with Philip V firmly emplaced at Madrid, and the other Spanish territories quickly secured in his name, and all he need do it seemed was to wait for terms from the Allies. Whatever successes the Allies enjoyed in the first three years of war could not change the fact that the strategic situation for the Empire was grim. All combatants looked to 1704 to be a decisive year.

Blenheim

The Duke of Marlborough had been successful in the Netherlands in the first two years of the war, clearing the Lower Rhine of French fortresses, and clearing the Meuse down to Hoy. But he had been denied the chance to fight a battle, and he was fed-up with working with the Dutch. So, when a request for aid from the Holy Roman Empire arrived at the English court between the winter of 1703-04, a new and glittering opportunity offered itself to the Duke, a field where he could command with distinction, but he kept his cards close to his chest as he returned to Holland for the next years’ campaign. In any event, Marlborough must get out of Flanders, so he secured the agreement of the States General to permit him to march his English troops down to campaign along the Moselle, where the French held the fortresses of Trier and Trarbach. But as Marlborough marched past Koblenz, none could be certain of his intentions, neither his friends nor his enemies. However, when the English corps marched through Mainz and continued southeast, it became apparent that the English general was attempting to march to Bavaria to join Prince Eugene and the Margrave of Baden who were already campaigning there. Louis immediately dispatched Marshal Tallard on the Rhine to march through the Black Forest and join Marsin and the Elector. Eugene was dispatched to deal with that threat, while Marlborough and the Margrave struck the Bavarians on July 2^nd at a fortified hill above the city of Donauworth called the Schellenberg, unused since the Thirty Years’ War. The incredible speed of the attack soon overwhelmed the outnumbered Bavarian defenders, and those who did not escape or drown across the Danube river were captured. At last crowned with the glory of a victory in battle, Marlborough then set about devastating the countryside of Bavaria in an attempt to bring the Elector to negotiate, and also captured the fortress of Rain. However, Tallard soon outmarched Eugene, who sent Max Emmanuel a message that help was on the way. The Elector, Marsin, and Tallard linked up and emplaced themselves before Höchstädt on August 12^th, the site of the battle the previous year, while Marlborough linked up with Eugene at Münster, and ordered an attack for the following day.

The battle that followed on August 13^th could properly be called the 2^nd Battle of Höchstädt, since it was fought on the same ground as the battle the year previous. However, historical memory is rarely logical, and English-language sources have overwhelmingly called it the Battle of Blenheim, to reflect the focus of most of the British troops present at the battle. The actual name of the village is Blindheim, and it was here along the Danube River that Marshal Tallard had anchored his end of the line, followed by Marshal Marsin around the village of Oberglau, and Elector Max Emmanuel around the village of Lutzingen, each village being about a mile north of Höchstädt. Altogether the Franco-Bavarians had about 58,000 men, facing a slightly inferior Allied army led by Marlborough and Eugene. Once fighting began around noon, it raged all day, with Marlborough and Eugene not able to make any progress against the French and Bavarian soldiers ensconced in the villages. But Tallard was being forced to denude his center in order to feed troops into Blindheim and Oberglau, and Marlborough exploited this late in the day with a massive cavalry charge, which cut Tallard off in Blindhiem itself away from the Elector and Marsin. Everyone trapped in Blindheim was either killed or captured, and many of those who tried to escape across the Danube drowned. 27,000 Franco-Bavarians became casualties that day, half of which became prisoners, including Marshal Tallard himself. However, Marsin and the Elector, against which Eugene had made no head all this time, were able to withdraw mostly intact all the way back to France. It cannot be denied or exaggerated that Blenheim was a shattering victory for the Duke of Marlborough, one that closed an entire front of the war and greatly restored the fortunes of the Empire. And the honors he won for it were fit for his achievements, Queen Anne awarded him a massive palatial home, and the Emperor made him a sovereign prince of the Holy Roman Empire. Marlborough closed the 1704 campaign along the Moselle River capturing Trier and Trarbach, in preparation for the next year’s campaign.

Cassano, Turin, and Toulon: Reenter Eugene in Italy

The Duke of Savoy was greatly suffering from his defection to the Allies, and risked being squeezed out of the Alliance just as the Elector of Bavaria had been from the Bourbons. Turin was the only major fortress left to the Duke, but his cousin Eugene came to his aid in 1705, facing Marshal Vendôme again. The Imperial commander led ill-equipped, ill-paid, half starved, but well-disciplined men across northern Italy to meet the French marshal in battle outside Cassano on August 16^th, 1705, along the Adda River on the border of the Duchy of Milan. Vendôme was well-entrenched, just as he has been at Luzzara in 1702, but Eugene attacked with ferocity for six hours. A quarter of the soldiers present became casualties, but there would be no Blenheim-like breakthrough that day, as both sides slunk away the following day. Strategically, Eugene might have claimed a victory, since the battle delayed the siege of Turin for another year. 1706 opened auspiciously for the French in Italy, with Vendôme obliterating an Imperial detachment at Calcinato early in the campaigning season, and he might have thought he need not fear further Allied interference in the theater that year. However, Eugene was preparing the greatest campaign of his life.

Disaster in Flanders in May 1706 forced Louis XIV to recall Marshal Vendôme to that theater, leaving the King’s much less talented nephew, the Duke of Orléans in command in Italy. Marshal Marsin, last seen withdrawing from the battlefield at Blenheim, was tasked with holding Eugene and the Imperial army back while Orléans besieged Turin in June. It was intended to be a mere matter of time, an opportunity for easy glory for a member of the royal family. But Eugene began his march to relieve Turin, crossing the Po River early in July, working around the flank of Marshal Marsin, accomplishing greater distances with men that were worse-fed than the ones Marlborough had marched to the Danube with two years before. On August 29^th, he linked up with the Prince of Savoy, commanding a flying column of cavalry, and the two cousins prepared their army for an attempt to relieve the city. When Eugene finally struck on September 7^th, the besiegers Marsin and Orléans became pinned from two sides as Eugene attacked their front, while the garrison sortied into their rear. But Eugene pressed the attack vigorously against the larger French army, while Orléans was injured and Marsin mortally wounded. At last the French lines broke, and they began to flee, abandoning baggage, siege artillery, and 6,000 prisoners on the field. Here was another front-closing victory, as after the French army retreated back into their own country, it was easy for the cousins to eliminate the smaller garrisons left behind in Piedmont and Lombardy. Then early the next year, the Kingdom of Naples surrendered to the Austrians, then the convention of Milan was signed, closing the Italian theater for the duration of the war.

However, what was a triumph for Eugene and salvation for the realm of the Duke of Savoy turned out to be a nuisance to the rest of the Allies, as the closing of the Italian theater meant that French troops would be freed to fight in Flanders and along the Rhine. The Maritime Powers, England and Holland, who were bankrolling the Grand Alliance, made it clear that their subsidies would be cut off unless Eugene made an attempt against southern France. They specifically desired him to capture the port of Toulon, the main French naval base on the Mediterranean coast. That, combined with Barcelona and Valencia already in Allied hands would deny the Mediterranean to the navies of the Bourbon monarchies. Eugene duly made the effort in July 1707, crossing mountains and rivers again with speed to try to recreate his success of the previous year, but it was not meant to be. The port was bombarded, and the French forced to scuttle their own ships to prevent capture, but the city itself never yielded, being defended by about equal numbers as the Allies. Eugene then retreated in August, with Toulon still in French hands. It was a defeat, but one that secured strategic gains, as the 46 ships-of-the-line scuttled in Toulon harbor would not rise again any time soon, and the siege also lifted pressure in Spain after the disastrous defeat at Almansa earlier that year, as the French were forced to siphon troops away from that theater to cover the siege. That combined with the destruction of the Lines of Stolhoffen by Marshal Villars at the same time meant that 1707 was a dismal year for the Allies, leaving Flanders as the only hopeful theater of the war.

Marlborough Undefeated

            With a year of glory along the Danube following two years of limited gains along the Meuse, Marlborough was not eager to return to a campaign in the Low Countries, and hoped for the year 1705 to bypass it altogether by campaigning along the Moselle. This theater had not been the stage of much action in any of Louis XIV’s wars to date, abutting hilly terrain and terminating in the impassible Ardennes Forest which was as impregnable as any of Vauban’s pre-carré fortresses along the northern frontier. But it was an unconsidered invasion route into France, a fit challenge for Marlborough, who had primed his 1705 campaign along the Moselle with the capture of Trier and Trarbach after his victory at Blenheim. In this theater he would be cooperating with the Margrave of Baden again, whom Marlborough had soured by sidelining him before the glorious triumph at Blenheim. Baden, the older commander who had made his name fighting against the Turks was not willing to play second-fiddle to an up jumped English duke, and dawdled in sending Marlborough Imperial troops and supplies at the start of the 1705 campaign. Besides this, Marlborough faced the willy Villars on the Moselle, who chose a defensive posture and declined a battle. The Dispute between Baden and Marlborough went unresolved as news of Marshal Villeroi’s recapture of Huy forced the English commander to return to the Meuse and restore the situation there. Abandoning his campaign on the Moselle, Marlborough reluctantly returned to the Low Countries, and recaptured Huy by the middle of July. With half the campaign season spent, Marlborough looked to see what else he could accomplish in that theater, and sent a detachment to feint towards Namur, the next fortress down the Meuse, while he sent his main army barreling west.

            To counteract the interminable raiding and pillaging conducted throughout the wars of Louis XIV, both sides had resorted to the construction of long defensive lines to act as a screen against the passage of raiding bands. The Lines of Brabant running east from Antwerp and north from Namur and meeting at a 90 degree angle around Tirlemont had protected western Flanders from Allied cavalry raids throughout the war. But Marlborough’s feint towards Namur had denuded the lines around Elixheim, and it was here on the night of July 17^th that Marlborough passed them unopposed. The next day, Marshal Villeroi marched north to contest the Allied passage, but was repulsed, then took up a position behind the Dyle River as Marlborough captured Tirlemont and ordered the destruction of the lines both north and south. After several attempts, Marlborough finally succeeded in crossing the Dyle on August 16^th, and the two armies stood off around Waterloo for several days, but the English commander was prevented from fighting a battle again by the Dutch deputies. There was little else accomplished that year, and the Duke spent most of that winter securing the recommitment of the Allies after the death of Emperor Leopold that year, who left the Empire to his eldest son Joseph. Compared to other generals, the great theme of time pervades the life of Marlborough, who was denied a greater part in the Nine Years’ War. He was the primary English commander for ten years during the War of Spanish Succession, and he had at most six months each year in which to accomplish all his designs, who fought as much against time as he did against the French and his political opponents. Against the former he was undefeated, but he eventually lost his long war of attrition against the later.

            Both sides were ready to fight a battle in Flanders in 1706, and just two weeks after the start of the campaign, Villeroi and Marlborough fought a battle at Ramillies on May 23^rd in the most clearcut victory of the English duke’s career. General Orkney, commanding the Allied right, had conducted an attack on the French left, but just as his offensive was developing he was recalled by Lord Marlborough, who then attacked the French right and broke through the elite French household cavalry, the Maison du Roi. Suffering less than 4,000 casualties, Marlborough inflicted more than three times that number on the French in their rout from Ramillies. The relatively light casualties allowed the Duke to follow up his victory closely, and within the next two weeks, the towns of Louvain, Malines, Brussels, Alost, Ghent, Oudenaarde, Bruges, Antwerp, and Ostend, all fell into Allied hands by the beginning of July, almost without a shot, followed by Dendermonde, Ath, and Menin throughout the rest of the campaigning season. Almost the entirety of the Spanish Netherlands had come into Allied hands, which immediately raised the question of who should receive the captured territory, either the Austrians or the Dutch. This threatened to divide the Allies, but none could deny their good success in 1706, when the news of Ramillies was combined with Eugene’s equally transformative victory at Turin later that year. The only news that deflated Allied hopes that year was from Spain, where Das Minas and Galway had been forced to abandon Madrid after a brief occupation. Peace seemed imminent. However, 1707 would prove a disappointing year, with Galway crushed at Almansa, Eugene repulsed from Toulon, the Lines of Stolhoffen captured and dismantled on the Rhine, and Marlborough unable to accomplish anything of note in Flanders.

            These setbacks persisted into 1708, with Bourbon forces capturing Denia and Tortosa in Spain, though Minorca was eventually captured by the British. Early in the year, a French naval expedition threatened to land in Scotland, which drew British troops out of Flanders for several months and contributed to the defection and recapture of Ghent and Bruges in early July. Here Marshal Villeroi had been replaced by Vendôme, and Marlborough joined by Eugene, both the chief combatants from the dormant Italian theater. Together Marlborough and Eugene were able to forestall a French attempt against Oudenaarde on July 11^th, 1708, in an approach battle. Vendôme attacked aggressively, but went unsupported by the Duke of Burgundy, Louis XIV’s lackluster grandson, which enabled Marlborough and Eugene to gain an easy victory, killing or capturing 14,000 men. After this, they moved against Lille in August, the foremost city of Vauban’s pre-carré, and the first French city in this theater to be threatened in all the long record of Louis XIV’s wars. In a three-month siege, facing a gallant enemy within the city, and a voracious enemy without, the twin commanders pressed forward the work. The French succeeded in smuggling gunpowder into the fortress to extend the siege, while the Allies risked the cutting of their supply lines, repulsing a superior French force at the Battle of Wijnendale on September 28^th. But the city itself fell on October 22^nd, and the citadel at last capitulated on December 10^th. The Allies then added to this campaign the recapture of Ghent and Bruges.

The State of the War

By the end of 1708, King Louis XIV of France had arrived at his seventieth year of age and could look back on four decades of semi-constant conflict, but his youthful wars of gloire now seemed marred by futility and vainglory. He had entered the War of Spanish Succession hoping merely to wait for terms and had even come close to victory in Bavaria and Northern Italy, but all that was reversed. And now, despite a respite in 1707, the campaign of 1708 had seen the capture of Lille, the strongest fortress in France and one of the first of his conquests over forty years before. This combined with a return to famine conditions that winter almost as bad as 1693, Louis had enough and was ready to make peace. He offered terms in April 1709 which granted concessions on all points which had begun the conflict, giving up Milan and the Spanish Netherlands, even the throne of Spain itself to Archduke Charles, insisting only on Naples and Sicily going to Philip V. But the Allies, like Louis had been in 1672, proved too voracious and sent a counter-offer which the aging Sun King was bound to refuse in honor. And so the war dragged on, and entered its moribund endgame.

With Marlborough and Eugene having bested all of France’s greatest marshals, there was no one left to command the French army in Flanders but Marshal Claude Villars, victor of Friedlingen and Höchstädt, destroyer of the Lines of Stolhoffen. He had only faced Marlborough before briefly on the Moselle in 1705 and had never fought Eugene. Louis was sure he was the man to restore French fortunes on their northern frontier. Yet, he seemed powerless to prevent the fall of Tournai in the summer of 1709, and was pressed into action when the city of Mons was invested by the Allied army in September. He took up a defensive position south of Mons, anchored by two forests near the village of Malplaquet. Here, Marlborough and Eugene attacked him on September 11^th with all their usual ferocity. The slaughter that ensued was unparalleled, akin to Landen or Seneffe, with between a fifth and quarter of all soldiers present made casualties, the Allies receiving the worst of it. But the twin commanders’ attack was accomplishing the same effect that had sealed Marshal Tallard’s fate at Blenheim, with Villars’ center being denuded to strengthen his flanks. At last, an attack in the center by the hard-fighting Orkney compromised Villars’ line, who was soon incapacitated by a wound. Command of the French army passed to Boufflers, who ordered a withdrawal. Malplaquet proved to be another French defeat, and doubly so with the fall of Mons six weeks later. Yet Villars did not lose the confidence of Louis XIV and assured the King that, were the Allies to win another battle at such a cost, he could be sure to win the war.

The Pyrrhic victory at Malplaquet was not met by any other terms from the French, who hoped now merely to outlast the Grand Alliance, which was beginning to fray at the edges with the cost and exertions of the war. But the year 1710 seemed at first to be another decisive year for the Allies, who gained two victories in Spain. The first was on July 27^th at Almenar where Starhemberg and Stanhope routed Philip V’s Spanish army, and followed it with another crushing victory at Saragossa the next month, entering Madrid for a second time at the end of September. Meanwhile in Flanders, Marlborough had captured Douai, Béthune, Saint-Venant, and Aire, entirely dismantling Villars’ Lines of Cambrin. Louis was again ready for peace, but again the Allies’ demands proved too high-handed, and he resolved, once again, to fight on for better terms. Villars set about constructing the Lines of Ne Plus Ultra, or “not further beyond,” while Vendôme was sent into Spain with fresh troops to recover some of his crestfallen honors lost of Oudenaarde. The Allied position in Madrid soon became untenable with a hostile populace, and Spanish guerillas harassing their lines of communication. So the Allied commanders Stanhope and Starhemberg began retreating to Catalonia at the beginning of December 1710, with Vendôme on their track. The French Marshal surrounded Stanhope and the British troops in the town of Brihuega on December 8^th and forced it to surrender after a brief battle, and attacked the main Allied column the following day at Villaviciosa. Although Starhemberg led a gallant defense against overwhelming odds, inflicting as many casualties as he suffered, he was forced to continue his retreat, where over the next month his army continued to suffer from lack of supplies and Spanish guerilla attacks. At the beginning of 1711, Spain was then firmly in Philip V’s control and the death of Emperor Joseph in April meant that the Hapsburg claimant to the Spanish throne, Archduke Charles, would be Holy Roman Emperor. None of the Allies were willing to fight to create another Hapsburg union between Spain and the Empire, so their main political goal in the war had been obviated, while their efforts flagged and the initiative passed back to the Bourbons on every front except Flanders, where Marlborough continued to dominate.

But Marlborough’s time was running out at the head of the Allied army in the Low Countries, though he had conquered well into France’s territory itself. Personal differences had led to his wife’s dismissal from Queen Anne’s court in early 1711, and with his flank uncovered, Marlborough’s enemies in government began to attack him in the rear. But still the Duke went on what would be his last campaign and led his army in a brilliant deception in which the Allied army passed through the Lines of Ne Plus Ultra without a shot being fired. He went on to capture Bouchain, one of the last fortresses standing between the Allied army and an invasion of France itself, and he hoped to lead it the next year, even while the English government was negotiating a separate peace with France. When Marlborough returned to court that winter, he was at last dismissed from his offices, and soon went into exile with his wife. Eugene of Savoy came to London that same winter to plead for England not to desert the Allied cause. He was received with all honors but could not secure any promises from the Queen’s Tory ministers. Eugene went to the Low Countries again in 1712 to lead the campaign alone, and succeeded in capturing Le Quesnoy, despite the refusal of the new English commander, Ormonde to participate. While Eugene invested Landrecies, Villars attacked his lines at Denain where the Imperial commander was not himself present, capturing the fortifications around Denain itself along with 4,000 Dutch prisoners, and following it with the recapture of Le Quesnoy, Douai, and Bouchain. Now the Dutch lost heart in the war, and the only party willing to continue the fight was Austria. In 1709, France had been on its knees, but Louis determined to fight on, and now at the beginning of 1713, it seemed that the Maritime Powers were willing to accept Philip V on the throne of Spain just so long as England could expand her trade and Holland could have a barrier of fortresses. Most of the Allies signed the Treaty of Utrecht in April, 1713, and there was peace on all fronts of the war except two. Eugene and Villars would meet again along the Rhine in 1713 for one last campaign, which saw the French commander seize Landau and Freiburg. Meanwhile the Allies began pulling out of Catalonia, a province with a long history of separatism and the only one in Spain which had taken to the supposed King Carlos III. The Catalans continued the fight alone, and Barcelona was surrounded by Spanish forces from July 1713. The Duke of Berwick, victor of Almansa, arrived in April the following year, and led a five month siege of Barcelona, which finally fell on September 11^th, 1714. The War of Spanish Succession was over.

The Peace of Utrecht

By the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, signed by all the warring nations between 1713 and 1715, Philip V was confirmed as King of Spain, but was forever barred from the succession to the French throne. Philip preserved all the territories of the Spanish Empire for himself, but lost all of Spain’s other possessions in Europe. Gibraltar and Minorca went to Britain. The Spanish Netherlands and all her possessions in Italy went to Austria, except Sicily. This island was awarded to Savoy, whose sovereign became King Victor Amadeus, who also gained the Duchy of Montferrat as well as Exiles and Barcelonnette from France; a worthy reward for three treasons in two wars. France gave up Ypres and Tournai and joined them to the Austrian Netherlands, but gained the tiny Principality of Orange. Holland was given its barrier fortresses. Every nation was happy, having gained the terms they might have had before the war without bloodshed. Except Spain, once again, peace had been made at Spain’s expense. So, Philip V, still young and warlike in 1718, invaded Sardinia and then tried to wrest Sicily from its new Savoyard masters. A quadruple alliance of Austria, Britain, Holland, and even France intervened to enforce the Peace of Utrecht, and King Philip was chastened. The resulting treaty only saw Austria and Savoy exchange Sardinia and Sicily. The rest of the wars of the 18^th Century saw only minor territorial changes, Prussia gaining Silesia, with the other European powers continually exchanging Italian duchies. Lorraine at last became a province of France in 1766. But beyond these, the conditions of the Peace of Utrecht would continue mostly unchanged until the Napoleonic Wars.

Coda

When Louis XIV died in 1715 at the age of 76, he was the longest reigning monarch in history, and had outlived all his sons and grandsons still in the line of succession. A five-year-old great-grandson was brought into the dying Sun-King’s presence, to whom he gave some parting reflections, that he had loved war too much. In his youth he had started several wars of gloire to enhance his personal and dynastic honor, but war eventually overcame his kingdom, which suffered greatly from famine and economic distress. Louis was the driving force behind each of “his” wars, but in his last war the narrative shifted from him to the men who rose to oppose him, such as Marlborough and Eugene. At the end of his life, Louis had come to regret the war he had pursued with such delight throughout his reign, and grown weary with the endless expense and bloodshed, much as this author has grown weary in writing of it. But as the Sun King died and left the rule of France to his great-grandson, the fifteenth Louis in her long history, she possessed the hexagonal borders that are still recognizable to this day.

Annotated Bibliography to follow in a future post.

Soli Deo Gloria!