War of the Spanish Succession

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Related to War of the Spanish Succession: War of the Austrian Succession, Thirty Years War

Spanish Succession, War of the,

1701–14, last of the general European wars caused by the efforts of King Louis XIVLouis XIV,

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 to extend French power. The conflict in America corresponding to the period of the War of the Spanish Succession was known as Queen Anne's War (see French and Indian WarsFrench and Indian Wars,
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The precarious health of the childless King Charles IICharles II,
1661–1700, king of Spain, Naples, and Sicily (1665–1700), son and successor of Philip IV. The last of the Spanish Hapsburgs, he was physically crippled and mentally retarded.
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 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 VICharles VI,
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). 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 IIIWilliam III,
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 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 VPhilip V,
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 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 SavoyEugene of Savoy,
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, defeated Nicolas CatinatCatinat, Nicolas
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 and the duke of VilleroiVilleroi, François de Neufville, duc de
, 1644–1730, marshal of France and favorite of King Louis XIV. In the War of the Grand Alliance, he succeeded (1695) Marshal Luxembourg as commander in Flanders, where he was unsuccessful against King William III of England.
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. 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 MarlboroughMarlborough, John Churchill, 1st duke of
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, 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 VendômeVendôme, Louis Joseph, duc de
, 1654–1712, marshal of France; grandson of César de Vendôme and son of Laura Mancini. He fought in the War of the Grand Alliance.
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. The duke of VillarsVillars, Claude Louis Hector, duc de
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, 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 ofBlenheim, battle of,
major engagement of the War of the Spanish Succession (see Spanish Succession, War of the), fought on Aug. 13, 1704, at the village of Blenheim, near Höchstädt, Bavaria.
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), 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 ofRamillies, battle of
, fought May 23, 1706, near the village of Ramillies-Offus, Walloon Brabant prov., Belgium, 12 mi (19 km) S of Tienen, in the War of the Spanish Succession.
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), 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 ofMalplaquet, battle of
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Meanwhile the indecisive allied campaigns in Spain (1708–10) did little to weaken Philip V. The death (1711) of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph IJoseph I,
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, 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

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). With this settlement, the principle of a balance of powerbalance of power,
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See F. Taylor, The Wars of Marlborough, 1702–1709 (1921); J. B. Wolf, The Emergence of the Great Powers, 1685–1715 (1951).

Spanish Succession, War of the


a war from 1701 to 1714, caused by France’s long struggle against the Hapsburgs for hegemony in Europe and by the emergence in the European political arena of the young capitalist states of England and the Netherlands.

The pretext for the war was that the Hapsburg Spanish king, Charles II, was without a male heir. Monarchs who had offspring from marriages with Spanish princesses emerged as the principal pretenders to the Spanish throne (and the vast Spanish possessions in Europe and America): the Bourbon French king, Louis XIV, who was counting on obtaining the Spanish crown for his grandson Philip of Anjou; and the Hapsburg emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Leopold I, who nominated his son, the archduke Charles, for the Spanish throne. Epgland and the Netherlands, seeking both to profit from Spain’s incipient decline and to prevent the strengthening of the Holly Roman Empire and France, insisted on a division of Spanish possessions.

Under the pressure of French diplomacy, Charles II bequeathed the Spanish throne to Philip of Anjou, who ascended the throne and became Philip V in 1700 after the death of Charles. England and the Netherlands accepted this on condition that Spain would be independent of France and that any union whatsoever between them would be barred. But Louis XIV, by declaring Philip to be his heir (in February 1701), revealed his intention to unify Spain and France under one crown; Spain was in fact being governed by him. England and the Netherlands unsuccessfully sought trade privileges in the Spanish colonies. In The Hague, on Sept. 7, 1701, England and the Netherlands formed an alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor against France (the Grand Alliance) and in May 1702 declared war on France (hostilities between Imperial and French troops had begun already in 1701 in Italy). Later the anti-French coalition was joined by Brandenburg and most of the other German principalities, Denmark, and Portugal and then by a former ally of France, Savoy. France found itself in almost total isolation; the forces of France’s permanent and powerful ally, Sweden, were diverted indefinitely by the Northern War of 1700–21.

Hostilities proceeded simultaneously in the Spanish Netherlands, Spain, Italy, and western Germany and on the seas. The Anglo-Dutch troops were commanded by the Duke of Marlborough, and the Imperial troops were headed by Eugene of Savoy. French troops (headed by Marshals C.-L. Villars, N. Catinat, and L. Vendôme) suffered a series of defeats: at Blenheim (Höchstädt; 1704), Ramillies (1706), Turin (1706), and Oudenarde (1708). The English fleet captured Gibraltar in 1704 and the island of Minorca in 1708. Archduke Charles, with the support of the English fleet, landed in Spain, proclaimed himself king of Spain, and seized Catalonia and Aragon. After the defeat of French troops at Malplaquet (1709), France’s position seemed hopeless. But a change in the international situation produced substantial changes in the position of various members of the anti-French coalition. In England, the Whigs, who had strongly advocated continuing the war against France, were replaced (after news of Russia’s victory over Sweden near Poltava, 1709) by the Tories, who were advocates of a rapprochement with France and whose objective was an active struggle against Russia. The accession of the Hapsburg Charles VI to the Imperial throne in 1711, which opened up the possibility that the Austrian and Spanish possessions would be unified under the Hapsburgs, contributed to the abandonment of the Holy Roman Empire by its allies. The allies’ failures in Spain and Villars’ victory over the troops of Eugene of Savoy at Denain (1712) created the preconditions for a peace with France. Negotiations between the allies (excluding the Empire) and France, which began in 1712 in Utrecht, ended with the signing of a peace treaty in the following year. The war between France and the Holy Roman Empire continued until 1714, when a treaty was concluded in Rastatt between Louis XIV on one side and the emperor and the German princes who supported him on the other (the Rastatt Peace of 1714).

As a result of the War of the Spanish Succession, Spain and its colonies were left to the Bourbon Philip V on condition that his heirs renounce their rights to the French throne. The Austrian Hapsburgs received Spanish possessions in the Netherlands (Belgium) and in Italy (including the Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of Naples). England achieved the most significant successes: the possessions it received were of great importance for strengthening its maritime and colonial power — Gibraltar and the island of Minorca in the Mediterranean Sea, territory in North America, and the monopolistic right of trade in African Negro slaves in Spanish colonies in America (asiento).


Istoriia diplomatii, 2nd ed., vol. 1. Moscow, 1959.
Nikiforov, L. A. Russko-angliiskie otnosheniia pri Petre I. [Moscow] 1950.
Gurevich, Ia. G. Proiskhozhdenie voiny za Ispanskoe nasledstvo i kommercheskie interesy Anglii. St. Petersburg, 1884.
Legrelle, A. La Diplomatic française et la succession d’Espagne, 2nd ed., vols. 1–6. Paris, 1895–99.


References in periodicals archive ?
Between the Peace of Munster in 1648 and the end of the War of the Spanish Succession (1713-1714), a new status quo made it clear that the relationship between Spain and the Netherlands was based on cooperation and mutual help in the face of the changes taking place in Europe.
They advised friends, acquaintances, and family members on stocks, investing for themselves, administering and brokering investments for relatives, and holding stock in a variety of enterprises, including the infamous South Sea Company, chartered in 1711 to help pay off Britain's debts incurred during the War of the Spanish Succession.
That century began disastrously with the War of the Spanish Succession (1705-1714), when Barcelona fell after a long siege, (a defeat that was the end of the freedoms of the Catalans, and was followed by the destruction of an entire district of the city, the Ribera, in order to construct a fortress).
Based on a Northern Arizona University doctoral thesis, this is an interesting and important study that focuses on the religious dimension of the War of the Spanish Succession.
The second did not take up residence in Rome because he supported the Franco-Spanish side in the war of the Spanish Succession - he had been there since 1689, when his great-uncle Pope Alexander VIII decided to take nepotism at its face value and created him a cardinal (and much besides).
Apparently he turned to piracy after a career as a privateer working for Britain during the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted from 1701 to 1713.
In the War of the Spanish Succession, Marlborough continued his winning ways, beating the French at Oudenarde on July 11, 1708, and at Malplaquet on September 11, 1709.
Queen Anne's War (1702-1713) was ended by the Treaty of Utrecht, which brought the War of the Spanish Succession to a close in Europe.
Principal wars: Turkish War (1683-1699); War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714).
They corresponded to more general wars in Europe: the War of the Grand Alliance, the War of the Spanish Succession, the War of the Austrian Succession, and the Seven Years' War.
Swift was the major political writer for the moderate Tories in their brief reign (1710 - 14) under Robert Harley, producing the Examiner (1710), a newspaper in the Tory interest, and The Conduct of the Allies (1711), a masterly pamphlet of his party's plan for peace in the war of the Spanish Succession.
Beginning with the economic and political crises besetting France during the War of the Spanish Succession [1701-1713/1714], he demonstrates that far from rejecting the need for peace and reform, many in Louis XIV's administration--and even the king himself--evolved during the war's final years toward embracing both.