5.1 The War of the Spanish Succession

For some 35 years, Europe pondered the future of the Spanish Succession following Charles II. Without children, he had no direct heirs. To whom would Spain pass? There were two sets of claimants: the French Bourbons and the Austrian Habsburgs. Charles, Louis XIV, and Emperor Leopold were all grandsons of Spain’s King Philip III. They were all first cousins. Louis and Leopold’s mothers were both Spanish princesses. Both Louis and Leopold were married to Charles’ sisters. The question of the Spanish Succession was, in effect, all in the family.

The problem, however, was that the Bourbons and Habsburgs ruled two of the most powerful states in Europe: France and Austria. Whoever acquired Spain would add Spain’s power and resources to their already powerful crown. The result would be what the other states of Europe feared, a “universal monarchy” that would upset the balance of power and threaten the sovereignty of all lesser states. “Universal monarchy” meant a crown that was so powerful that it could subordinate other states to its will. It had been evident that Louis XIV aspired to universal monarchy. His wars to expand France threatened the security and interests of the United Provinces of the Netherlands (UPN), Savoy, and other regions that lay between France and the Rhine and Alps. Were the Austrian Habsburgs to get Spain, it would give them a powerful presence in Italy and the southern Netherlands from which to pursue their intent to increase their influence over the states of the Holy Roman Empire. Whichever family got Spain, the balance of power would be upset and Europe would be plunged into war. That war was avoided as long as Charles remained alive.

In anticipation of the demise of Charles II, a diplomatic effort was made to seek partition of the Spanish inheritance. Following the Treaty of Ryswick, it was in the interest of both England and the UPN to seek some sort of agreement with France to preserve the balance of power. Treaties were negotiated in 1698 and 1699 whereby England and the UPN would accept France’s receiving Spain’s Italian territories while the rest of Spain’s dominions would be awarded to the Austrian claimants. Partition, however, was not acceptable to the Spanish or the Austrians.

On his deathbed in the fall of 1700, Charles II was persuaded to make a will. The primary force behind the will was the Archbishop of Toledo, who convinced the dying king that Spain’s empire would be better able to survive were it under the protection of the French king. Charles agreed. Three weeks after making the will, Charles died. The will specified that there would be no partition of the Spanish inheritance. The crown of Spain and all of its possessions were to pass to the 17-year-old Bourbon prince Philip of Anjou, Louis XIV’s younger grandson (pictured above). The will specified, however, that the crowns of France and Spain were never to be united in the same person. Further, the will stated that if Louis were to reject the crown on behalf of his grandson, Spain and its dominions would pass under the same conditions to Archduke Charles, son of the Habsburg Emperor Leopold. Louis was delighted with the will. Word went out from Versailles that “the Pyrenees no longer exist” (Durant and Durant 702).

The new young king of Spain – he would be Philip V – would certainly look to his grandfather for direction and advice on how to be a king and what policies were to be made. Louis urged Philip to be a “good Spaniard” but reminded him that he was born a Frenchman and should maintain amity between the two countries. Louis also registered an edict with the Parlement of Paris, reaffirming Philip as an heir to the French crown in the event that all prior heirs should die before Philip. While unlikely that Philip would ever be the direct heir to the French crown, this, in effect, would negate the provision of Charles’ will prohibiting the union of the two crowns in one person.

While other states initially recognized the succession of Philip, the fear of universal monarchy undid the peace of Europe. The Austrian Habsburgs claimed that Charles had been insane and not competent to make a legal will. King William III of England demanded that Louis honor the partition treaty and compel his grandson to give up the Italian possessions and allow the Austrians to divide the rest. Louis sent French troops into the Spanish Netherlands, to “protect” them for Philip against Austrian ambitions. This put French military power too close for comfort for both the UPN and England. Seeing the combined power of Spain and France as a menace too great to tolerate, William formed the Grand Alliance. The Alliance members were England, the UPN, and the Austrian Habsburgs. They were later joined by Savoy, Portugal, and numerous German states including Brandenburg and Saxony. Of the German states, only Bavaria allied with the Bourbons. The War of the Spanish Succession began in the spring of 1702. It would last eleven years.

The war, as a contest of armies and strategies, is not going to be discussed in this reading. Suffice it to say that it was a major international war fought by “new” armies of professional soldiers, all organized on the model of the reformed French army. It was the largest war fought in Europe since the Thirty Years War. It was fought primarily in the Spanish Netherlands, Germany, and Italy. Significant were the campaigns of the English general John Churchill (later the Duke of Marlborough), whose forces won a decisive victory over the French at the Battle of Blenheim in Bavaria in 1704. Unlike the Thirty Years War, this war did not inflict massive social and economic disruption on civilian populations. The armies were generally well controlled by their officers and did not loot and destroy defenseless towns and cities. It was a war of tremendous financial burden for the taxpayers of the states involved as the armies were supplied, fed, uniformed, armed, and sustained at government expense. His treasury bankrupting under the financial strain, Louis XIV was even compelled to ask his nobles and clergy to make contributions to the war effort. It was a “world war” that was fought by navies at sea and by colonial militias and regular troops where Spanish, French, English, and Dutch colonial interests conflicted in the Caribbean, North America, and India.[1] In short, it was a big one and it foretold what wars would be like for the next two centuries.

The Peace of Utrecht, 1713

Peace came, not because one side was decisively defeated but largely because the financial resources of both sides were exhausted. They simply could not afford to sustain the war. The peace that ended the war was actually two treaties, one made between France and the allies at Utrecht in 1713, the other between France and Austria at Rastatt in 1714. Both are known as the Peace of Utrecht.

The Peace of Utrecht did what all peace settlements have done since the Peace of Westphalia: it resolved the issue that caused the war and restored the balance of power. The issue that caused the war was the Spanish Succession. The peace established that Philip V was the legitimate King of Spain. The Bourbons would remain Spain’s hereditary ruling family. The peace also specified that the crowns of France and Spain could never be united in the same person. Consequently, there would be no universal monarchy. Thousands of men were killed and injured and millions of dollars worth of royal currencies were spent over a period of 11 years to confirm what was put in place by Charles II’s will in 1700. The Spanish inheritance, however, would be partitioned. The Peace of Utrecht restored the balance of power through territorial and other provisions of the treaties.

The Peace required Spain to cede the southern Netherlands and its Italian territories to the Austrian Habsburgs. Thus, the Spanish Netherlands became the Austrian Netherlands. Milan and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Naples and Sicily) all now became Austrian possessions. Spain also had to cede Sardinia to the Duke of Savoy.

Spain was required to cede Gibraltar and the Balearic island of Minorca to Britain.[2] (British forces had seized and occupied both locations in 1703.) Gibraltar had great strategic value as it controlled the straits between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. With naval bases at Gibraltar and Minorca, Britain joined France, Spain, and the Ottoman Empire as a Mediterranean power.

Perhaps more important for British interest was the Asiento, the agreement with Spain on the slave trade. The Peace required Spain to turn control of Spain’s trade in African slaves to Latin America over to Britain. In addition, Spain would allow Britain to send one shipload of trade goods a year to Panama. We might see the one shipload of trade goods as of little importance, but it marked beginning of the end of Spain’s mercantilist monopoly in Latin America. In time the British would expand their commerce in Spanish America through smuggling. The British control of the Spanish American slave trade was highly profitable, and was to the British a valued aspect of the Peace.

France was required to cede some of its North American colonial possessions to Britain. These were Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Hudson’s Bay in Canada. Newfoundland and Nova Scotia had both strategic and economic value. Located at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, they gave Britain control of France’s St. Lawrence access to Quebec and the rest of colonial New France. They also provided Britain with improved access to the profitable Grand Banks fishing grounds. The Hudson’s Bay region was valued for its access to the fur trade.

The Peace required France to recognize the Protestant Hanoverians as the legitimate ruling family in Britain. As explained below, Louis XIV had heretofore recognized only the Catholic Stuarts as the legitimate monarchs of England and Scotland.

Why? In 1688 the Catholic Stuart monarchy in England was expelled by Parliament in favor of a continued Protestant succession. The former Stuart king James II and his family had fled to France where they were Louis’ guests at the St. Germain-en-Laye palace near Paris. Louis XIV continued to recognize the exiled Stuarts as the legitimate heirs to the English Crown. Among the reasons England's King William III formed the Grand Alliance to oppose Louis was to prevent Louis from returning the Stuarts to the throne. In 1701 Parliament passed the Act of Settlement requiring the crown of England to pass always to the closest Protestant heirs, either within or without the country. As it was clear that the English Queen Anne would die without direct heirs, the Act of Settlement required that the English crown pass to the Queen's Protestant cousins - the ruling family of the small German state of Hanover.

As the security of the Netherlands was threatened by France, the Peace permitted the Dutch to have a line of “barrier forts” just inside the border of the Austrian Netherlands with France. Dutch soldiers would garrison these bases, which would serve as a front line against possible French aggression. The Austrian Habsburgs were willing to accept the Dutch military presence within their territory as the Dutch would then be protecting the Austrian Netherlands as well.

The Peace changed the status of two states. The ruler of Brandenburg was recognized as the King of Prussia. Thus Brandenburg, which heretofore had been a princely state within the Holy Roman Empire, now officially became the Kingdom of Prussia under the hereditary monarchy of its ruling Hohenzollern family. It still, however, remained part of the Empire.

The Duke of Savoy was likewise awarded a new title, King of Sardinia. Savoy was now officially the Kingdom of Sardinia and consisted of Savoy (sometimes called Piedmont) and the island of Sardinia.[3]

The Peace of Utrecht restored the balance of power in Europe, but was there a clear “winner” of the War of the Spanish Succession? The Peace shows Louis’ France exhausted but not defeated. Other than in North America, France lost no territories. The French monarchy’s absolutism survived and the Bourbons were now the rulers of Spain. The Austrian Habsburgs certainly benefited from the peace settlement, acquiring the southern Netherlands, Milan, Naples, and Sicily. Spain appeared to be the “loser,” compelled to cede territories in the southern Netherlands, Italy, Sardinia, Gibraltar, and Minorca, and make trade concessions in Spanish America. Spain’s time as a significant major power was now over. The Netherlands now had their security and could continue to enjoy the profits of their commerce. Prussia and Sardinia were now kingdoms. But the country that benefited most from the Peace was Britain. Britain’s empire in North America was now larger and more profitable. Britain now had a presence in the Mediterranean. Britain had the tremendously profitable Latin American slave trade. No longer a second-rate kingdom on the rise, Britain was now a major player in the affairs of Europe.

The Peace of Utrecht established the European international order for the next century. While Britain and Prussia would rise in power, France and Austria, still great powers, would remain in check. Not until the emergence of Napoleon’s France in the early 1800s would any one state again be able to exercise hegemony in the way that Louis XIV attempted to do in the late 17^th century.

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The images in this section are from Wikipedia sources.

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Sources for the War of the Spanish Succession

Ashley, Maurice. The Age of Absolutism 1648 – 1775. Springfield, MA: Merriam, 1974.

Bernier, Olivier. Louis XIV: A Royal Life. New York: Doubleday, 1987.

Durant, Will and Ariel. The Age of Louis XIV. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963.

Knapton, Ernest. Europe 1450 – 1815. New York: Scribners, 1958.

Langer, William et al. Western Civilization. New York: Harper, 1968.

Merriman, John. A History of Modern Europe. New York: Norton, 1996.

Palmer, Robert R. et al. A History of the Modern World. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002.

[1] In colonial America, the war was known as “Queen Anne’s War,” named for the queen who came to the English throne in 1702. It was one of several “French and Indian” wars wherein the English colonists and their Indian allies fought the French colonists and their Indian allies.

[2] In 1707 England and Scotland were formally unified as the United Kingdom of Great Britain

[3] It is interesting to note that in looking ahead it will be Sardinia that will unify the Italian states as the Kingdom of Italy in 1860, and that Prussia will unify the German states as the German Empire in 1871.