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.

References

• Acton, J. E. E., 1st Baron. (1906). Lectures on Modern History. London: Macmillan and Co.
• Sainty, Guy Stair. (2004). "The French Succession: The Renunciations of 1712, the Treaties of Utrecht and Their Aftermath in International Affairs."
• "Spanish Succession, War of the." (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed. London: Cambridge University Press.
• Wolf, John B. (1951). The Emergence of the Great Powers, 1685-1715. New York: HarperCollins.
• Brodrick, Thomas (1713). "A Compleat History of the late war in The Netherlands together with an abstract of the treaty of Utrecht". London: William Pearson