War of the Spanish Succession

The War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) was a major European armed conflict that arose in 1701 after the death of the last Spanish Habsburg king, Charles II. Charles had bequeathed all of his possessions to Philip, duc d'Anjou (Philip V), a grandson of the French King Louis XIV. The war began slowly, as the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I fought to protect his own dynasty's claim to the Spanish inheritance. As Louis XIV began to expand his territories more aggressively, however, other European nations (chiefly England and the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands) entered on the Holy Roman Empire's side to check French expansion (and, in the English case, to safeguard the Protestant succession). Other states joined the coalition opposing France and Spain in an attempt to acquire new territories, or to protect existing dominions. The war was fought not only in Europe, but also in North America, where the conflict became known to the English colonists as Queen Anne's War.

Blenheim to Malplaquet

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.

Related Topics:
1704 - Ferdinand de Marsin

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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 man?uvres was to prevent the Franco-Bavarian army from advancing on Vienna. Having met, the forces under Marlborough and Eugene faced the French under the 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.

Related Topics:
Battle of Blenheim - Gibraltar

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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. Marlborough and Villeroi maneuvered indecisively in the Netherlands, and the story was much the same for Villars and Louis of Baden on the Rhine, and 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 by 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.

Related Topics:
1705 - 1706 - Battle of Ramillies - Antwerp - Dunkirk - Orleans - Battle of Turin

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

France having been expelled from Germany, the Low Countries and Italy, Spain became the centre of activity in the next few years. In 1706, Henry Massue de Ruvigny, given the optimistic Jacobite title Earl of Galway 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). 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.

Related Topics:
Henry Massue de Ruvigny, given the optimistic Jacobite title Earl of Galway - Madrid - Duke of Berwick - James II of England - 1707 - Battle of Almansa - 25 April

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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.

Related Topics:
1707 - Great Northern War - Charles XII - Saxony - Augustus II - Joseph I

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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 Duc de Bourgogne (Louis XIV's grandson) and the Duc de Vendôme were frequently at variance, the former often making unwise military decisions. Bourgogne'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.

Related Topics:
1708 - Duc de Bourgogne - Battle of Oudenarde - Lille

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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.

Related Topics:
The Hague - Naples

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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, and although they captured Mons, they 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.

Related Topics:
1709 - Battle of Malplaquet - Mons

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~