The War of Spanish Succession causes the war. Causes of the War of the Spanish Succession

Causes of the War of the Spanish Succession

In the first half of the 17th century, the Peace of Westphalia ended the period of religious movements and wars for Western Europe, and the second half of the century saw the desire of the most powerful state in Western Europe, France, to strengthen itself even more at the expense of its weak neighbors and gain hegemony. Given the common life of peoples, to which Europe has already become accustomed, the weak begin to form alliances against the strong in order to restrain its aggressive movements. This is not the first time we have seen this phenomenon: at the beginning of modern history, France also sought to strengthen itself at the expense of its weak neighbors, namely Italy, as a result of which alliances were also formed against it; Even the huge state of Charles V was formed against it, engulfing France from different sides. But neither external obstacles nor internal unrest prevented the growth and strengthening of France, strong in its roundness and unity, and Louis XIV appeared more dangerous than Francis I, especially since there was no powerful Charles V against him. The soul of the alliances against Louis XIV is William of Orange, the leader of a different kind, a representative of a different power than old Charles V. As the Dutch stadtholder and the English king together, William concentrated in himself the representation of maritime trading powers that were not able to fight large continental states with large armies, but they had another powerful means, the nerve wars are money. This remedy has long appeared in Europe as a result of its industrial and commercial development and has become under the power of the sword; a sea power could not field its own large army, but could hire an army and buy an alliance.

Thus, due to the common life of the European peoples, in their activities, in their struggle, a division of occupations is noticeable: some field an army, others pay money, give subsidies - this is, in its way, a combination of labor and capital. Maritime merchant powers are not keen on wars, especially long ones: such wars are expensive; sea ​​powers fight only out of necessity or when trade benefits require it; for them, continental wars are pointless, because they do not seek conquest on the continent of Europe; the goal of their war is trade gain or a rich colony overseas. But now it was necessary for England and Holland to intervene in the continental war. Direct violence, offensive movement, seizure of someone else's property without any pretext were uncommon in the new, Christian Europe, and Louis XIV sought various pretexts to expand his possessions and established the Chambers of Union. But even without violence, conquest and legal tensions, it was possible for European states to strengthen themselves, to annex entire other states, precisely through marriages, inheritances, wills: we know that in this way the Scandinavian states were united at one time, Poland united with Lithuania, and The Habsburgs were especially famous for their ability to arrange profitable marriages and through them to form a vast state through wills and inheritances.

Now we, taught by historical experience and under the influence of the principle of nationality, affirm the fragility of such connections, point out the short duration of the Kalmar Union, the bad consequences of the Jagiellian marriage for Poland, the fragility of the motley monarchy of the Habsburgs; but they did not look that way before, and even now they do not completely refuse to attribute importance to the family ties between the owning houses: the terrible, exterminating war that we recently witnessed began due to the fact that one of the Hohenzollern princes was called to the Spanish throne. When the happy heir of all his relatives, Charles V, formed a vast state from the Austrian, Spanish and Burgundian possessions, no one took up arms against him for this, he was even chosen as the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, because his strength was seen as a bulwark against French power; but now, when the most powerful of the French kings, Louis XIV, turned his attention to the Spanish inheritance, Europe could not remain calm, because there was no equivalent power against the power of the Bourbons. Holland could not be at peace with the thought that between it and the terrible France there would no longer be a possession belonging to a separate independent state; that France, which recently almost destroyed it, will now become even stronger; the Whig party in England, which expelled the Stuarts, could not rest at the thought that the already powerful patron of the Stuarts would also have the forces of Spain; in Vienna they could not come to terms with the idea that Spain would pass from the Habsburgs to the Bourbons, that Austria would cease to be happy with marriages (et tu, felix Austria, nube) and that happiness would pass to France. Austria, Holland and England were supposed to prevent Louis XIV from receiving the Spanish inheritance, and William III was the stadtholder in Holland and king in England.

The fatal Spanish inheritance was supposed to lead to a terrible, general war; but they didn’t want war: the sea powers didn’t want it because of their always-on policy, naturally and necessarily peaceful, because of their natural aversion to spending a penny of labor on a war that would not bring direct trade benefits, immediate profits; The emperor did not want her, according to the custom of non-military Austria, due to lack of funds, due to the bad hope of help from Germany, due to the unfinished, albeit happy, war with Turkey. Louis XIV did not want war either: we saw what a sad state France was in at the end of the 17th century; voices were heard from different sides about the need to stop the warlike policy and could not help but impress the king, no matter how great his pride was, no matter how strong the habit of contemptuously treating opinions that were not similar to his opinions and desires, considering these opinions to be fantasies ; moreover, the last war, which did not end the way Louis would have liked, showed him that it is not very easy to fight coalitions. Everything is thus

The fatal Spanish inheritance was supposed to lead to a terrible, general war; but they didn’t want war: the sea powers didn’t want it because of their always-on policy, naturally and necessarily peaceful, because of their natural aversion to spending a penny of labor on a war that would not bring direct trade benefits, immediate profits; The emperor did not want her, according to the custom of non-military Austria, due to lack of funds, due to the bad hope of help from Germany, due to the unfinished, albeit happy, war with Turkey. Louis XIV did not want war either: we saw what a sad state France was in at the end of the 17th century; voices were heard from different sides about the need to stop the warlike policy and could not help but impress the king, no matter how great his pride was, no matter how strong the habit of contemptuously treating opinions that were not similar to his opinions and desires, considering these opinions to be fantasies ; Moreover, the last war, which did not end the way Louis would have liked, showed him that it is not very easy to fight coalitions. Everyone, therefore, was afraid of war and therefore came up with various means to solve a difficult matter diplomatically.

The Spanish inheritance was opened due to the fact that King Charles II, sickly, undeveloped mentally and physically, ended his miserable existence childless, and with him the Habsburg dynasty in Spain ended. The contenders for the throne were: Louis XIV, son of a Spanish princess and married to a Spanish princess, with whom he had issue; Emperor Leopold I, representative of the Habsburg dynasty, son of a Spanish princess; In his first marriage he had a Spanish princess, the sister of the Queen of France, the daughter of Philip IV, Margaret, to whom her father transferred the inheritance of the Spanish throne in case of the suppression of the male line, while her elder sister, when she married Louis XIV, renounced this inheritance. But Margaret died, leaving Leopold one daughter, Maria Antonia, who married the Elector of Bavaria and died in 1692, leaving a son; this child was the third contender and, on the basis of the will of Philip IV, had more than any other right to the Spanish throne; moreover, this Bavarian prince satisfied the interests of the maritime powers and the political balance of Europe. But Louis XIV did not want to renounce the Spanish inheritance; only to maintain political balance and satisfy the interests of the maritime powers, he offered the following concessions: Spain, passing to the Bourbon dynasty, was to have a king separate from France in the person of one of the grandsons of Louis XIV; to secure Holland, Spain must renounce its Netherlands, which will pass into the possession of the Elector of Bavaria, and Holland will retain the right to have its garrisons in Belgian fortresses, as it has hitherto; maritime powers will receive berths for their ships in the Mediterranean; Dunkirchen will be returned to England to secure its shores from the French landing.

But war was not avoided by this deal: the Elector of Bavaria could be satisfied with the Spanish Netherlands, but the other most powerful contender, Emperor Leopold, did not receive any satisfaction. And so William III, to satisfy the third contender, proposes to divide the Spanish monarchy: the grandson of Louis XIV will take Spain and America, the Elector of Bavaria will take the Netherlands, and the emperor will take the Italian possessions of Spain.

Western historians, who speak so much against the partition of Poland, usually either remain silent about the partition of Spain, or try to show that it was not actually a partition, similar to the partition of Poland; they argue that there was no national connection between the parts of the Spanish monarchy, but the question of national connection is a question of our time; that there was a strong connection between Spain and the Southern Netherlands and, in addition to the national one, proves that they did not separate from Spain when the Northern Netherlands separated from it; there is no doubt that there was much more connection between Spain and its possessions in Italy and the Netherlands than between Western Russia and Poland, between which there was antagonism due to differences in nationality and faith.

Louis XIV did not like William's proposal to give the emperor Spanish possessions in Italy, because a direct increase in the state area was considered much more profitable than placing a relative, albeit a very close one, on the Spanish throne, therefore, Austria received more benefits than France. Louis agreed to cede Spain, the Catholic Netherlands and colonies to the Bavarian prince, so that Naples and Sicily would be ceded to France, and the emperor would take Milan alone. Such an agreement actually followed in the fall of 1698.

When they learned in Spain that they wanted to divide it, King Charles II declared the Prince of Bavaria the heir to all his possessions, but this heir was no longer alive in February 1699, and worries about the fatal inheritance began again. Louis XIV sought to round up France with Lorraine and Savoy, so that the dukes of these lands would receive compensation with Spanish possessions in Italy. At the end of 1699, a second agreement took place: Spain and the Catholic Netherlands were to go to the second son of Emperor Leopold, and France received all Spanish possessions in Italy. However, the emperor constantly avoided entering into these agreements.

But in Madrid they still did not want the division of the monarchy. Of the two candidates now, the grandson of Louis XIV and the son of Emperor Leopold, it was necessary to choose the one who showed more hope that he would keep Spain undivided; the French envoy Harcourt was able to convince the Madrid court that such a candidate was the grandson of Louis XIV, and Charles II signed a will, according to which Spain passed to the second son of the Dauphin, Duke Philip of Anjou; he was to be followed by his brother, the Duke of Berry, followed by Archduke Charles of Austria; if all these princes refuse the inheritance or die childless, then Spain passes to the House of Savoy; In no case should Spain be united under one sovereign with either France or Austria).

Calculation forced Louis XIV to accept this will: although the direct increase of France by certain parts of the Spanish monarchy was more profitable for him, however, having rejected the will of Charles II, in order to carry out the division agreement concluded with William III, Louis had to enter into a war with the emperor, whose son received the entire Spanish monarchy indivisibly and could hope for the strong support of the Spanish people, who rejected the offensive idea of ​​partition; there was little hope for the support of the sea powers, because the vast majority in Holland and especially in England disagreed with William III, considering the elevation to the Spanish throne of one of the grandsons of Louis XIV less dangerous for Europe than the strengthening of France in Italy; all parties in England considered it a wild and incredible thing for England to help France get Italy.

In November 1700, England learned of the will of Charles II. Wilhelm expected that France would at least observe decency and begin negotiations on this matter in connection with last year’s treaty. But France remained deeply silent, and Wilhelm, in great irritation, wrote to a man who completely shared his views, the Dutch rat-pensionary Heinsius, complaining about French shamelessness, that Louis had deceived him; he also complained about the stupidity and blindness of the English, who were very pleased that France preferred a will to a partition treaty. Indeed, in England, where most of all they had in mind trade benefits and most of all spared money for the continental war, loud complaints were heard about the treaty on the division of Spain about the foreign policy of the king, about the terrible losses that Italian and Levantine trade should suffer as a result of the approval French rule in the Two Sicilies. Several times already the Tories had raised a storm in Parliament against the king's ill-intentioned advisers, and the treaty for the division of the Spanish monarchy was the subject of strong parliamentary antics.

Thus, the news that the Spanish monarchy would go entirely to one of the Bourbon princes was received with joy in England; even the ministers directly told the king that they considered this event a mercy from heaven, sent down to deliver him, the king, from the difficulties in which the division agreement had placed him; This agreement is so unpleasant to the people that the king would not be able to carry it out and it would cause him a lot of worries and grief. Numerous pamphlets that appeared on this occasion looked at the matter in exactly the same way, arguing that the power of France would not increase in the least by placing Philip on the Spanish throne; some praised the wisdom of Charles II, others the moderation of Louis XIV. The Whigs did not dare say anything against this. And indeed, it was difficult to say anything other than that it was too early to praise the moderation of Louis XIV, that the placement of Philip on the Spanish throne did not actually strengthen the power of France; but France was already powerful, and the king had not yet figured out the means to increase his possessions, and now, in the event of war with him, the Spanish Netherlands will be at his disposal, and these Netherlands are the key to an independent Netherlands. This is how the warlike Stadtholder party in the Netherlands looked at the matter, in whose brow stood Wilhelm’s personal friend, the Dutch Ratpensionary Anton Heinsius; but the majority of the deputies of the United Provinces looked at the accession of the Duke of Anjou in Spain as the desired outcome of the matter. However, the friends of the English king were not for a separate treaty: they could not help but realize that this treaty was a mistake on William’s part; Heinsius knew what aversion the Spaniards had to the idea of ​​dividing their state, and therefore wanted the undivided transfer of Spanish possessions only not to the Bourbon, but to the Habsburg prince: for this, in his opinion, it was necessary to raise a national movement in Spain in favor of Habsburg and put up 70,000 troops to support the emperor, who was encouraged to immediately enter Italy and conclude an alliance with Denmark, Poland, Venice, Savoy and all other states against France.

But without England it was impossible to start anything, and in England things were going badly for William. Whig ministers struggled with a hostile majority in the lower house and with their Tory comrades who had recently been called into the cabinet. Thus, there was discord in the government. The Tory trend was strengthening in the country. The Tories won the new parliamentary elections because they promised to maintain peace. But Louis XIV was in a hurry to justify the policies of William III and the Whigs. Charles II of Spain died on November 1, 1700; his heir, Philip of Anjou, going to Spain, handed over the management of Belgian affairs to his grandfather, Louis XIV, French troops immediately crossed the Belgian borders and captured Dutch garrisons in the fortresses, and in his justification, Louis announced that he did so to prevent what was directed against him US weapons.

Even before the occupation of Belgium, French troops crossed the Alps and established themselves in Milan and Mantua. The Whigs in England raised their heads, their flying political leaflets called on patriots to arm themselves to protect the Dutch borders, Protestant interests, and the balance of Europe. London merchants were alarmed not by the danger threatening Protestant interests and the balance of Europe, they were alarmed by rumors that Louis XIV intended to ban the import of English and Dutch goods into the Spanish colonies. In this case, the war was already a lesser evil for the peace-loving British. Out of horror, all trade transactions in London stopped for some time. The Tories, in turn, had to calm down. But they had a majority in parliament; in the spring of 1701, a memorial of the Dutch Republic was handed over to parliament, which stated that the States intended to demand guarantees of their future security from Louis XIV, but did not want to start business without the consent and assistance of England; since serious clashes with France may arise from these negotiations, it is advisable for the States to know to what extent they can rely on England. Parliament agreed that the English government should take part in the Dutch negotiations, without, however, giving the king the right to conclude alliances, insisting on maintaining peace.

European Union against Louis XIV

That same month, negotiations began in The Hague. In the first conference, the commissioners of the sea powers demanded the cleansing of Belgium from French troops and, conversely, the right for Holland and England to maintain their garrisons in famous Belgian fortresses; in addition, they demanded for the British and Dutch the same trading privileges in Spain that the French enjoyed. The representative of Louis XIV, Count d'Avo, rejected these demands and began to work on how to quarrel between the English and the Dutch, and began to convince the Dutch representatives that his sovereign could conclude an agreement with their republic and on the most favorable terms, if only England was removed from the negotiations; otherwise, he threatened an agreement between France and Austria and the formation of a large Catholic union. But the Dutch were not deceived: feeling the danger, they stood firmly and unanimously. The Dutch government informed the English about d'Avaux's suggestions, and announced that it would stick firmly to England. “But,” said the States’ letter, “danger is approaching. The Netherlands is surrounded by French troops and fortifications; Now the matter is no longer about recognition of previous treaties, but about their immediate implementation, and therefore we are waiting for British help.”

In the House of Lords, where the Whigs predominated, the States' letter was responded to with an ardent address to the king, authorizing him to conclude a defensive and offensive alliance not only with Holland, but with the emperor and other states. In the House of Commons, where the Tories dominated, they did not share this fervor, they did not want war, fearing that when it was declared, the hated Whigs would again be in control. But there was nothing to be done: the people spoke out loudly in favor of the war, because fears for trade benefits grew more and more intense: news came that societies had been formed in France to seize Spanish trade, and a company had been formed to transport blacks to America. The entire trading class of England cried out about the need for war, curses against deputies appeared in the press, they were accused of forgetting their duties and of treason. The Tories saw that if they continued to oppose the war with France, the parliament would be dissolved and the Whigs would certainly gain the upper hand at new elections. Thus, the lower house was forced to announce that it was ready to fulfill previous agreements, was ready to provide assistance to the allies and promised the king to support European freedom.

But the maritime powers alone could not support European freedom: they needed an alliance of continental European powers, and mainly the strongest of them, Austria. Could Emperor Leopold allow the Spanish monarchy to completely pass from the Habsburgs to the Bourbons, and at a time when Austria was in the most favorable circumstances? Thanks to the Holy Alliance between Austria, Venice, Russia and Poland, Turkey, having suffered severe defeats, had to make important concessions to the allies. According to the Treaty of Karlowitz, Austria acquired Slavonia, Croatia, Transylvania, and almost all of Hungary; but, in addition to these acquisitions, Austria also acquired a guarantee of future success - a good army and a first-class commander, Prince Eugene of Savoy; finally, the triumph of Austria over Turkey, the brilliantly profitable peace, was a sensitive blow for France, because the Porte was its constant ally against Austria, and the Peace of Karlowitz was concluded with the strong assistance of the sea powers, despite France’s efforts to support the war. Everything therefore promised that Austria, having freed its hands in the East, encouraged by brilliant successes here, would immediately turn its arms to the West and take an active part in the struggle for the Spanish inheritance. But Austria accepted this participation very slowly. Her behavior depended, firstly, on her constant slowness in politics, her aversion to decisive measures, and her habit of waiting for favorable circumstances to do everything for her without much strain on her part.

The Austrian ministers, quick to draw up plans and slow when it was necessary to carry them out, were afraid to take up the Spanish question, which contained truly great difficulties. It seemed to them much more profitable to annex part of the Spanish possessions directly to Austria than to fight to exclude the Bourbons from the Spanish inheritance and to deliver it entirely to the second son of Emperor Leopold, Charles; for all the Spanish possessions in Italy, they agreed to cede the rest to the grandson of Louis XIV, even the Catholic Netherlands, which was so contrary to the benefits of the sea powers, and Louis XIV also did not consider it beneficial for himself to cede all Spanish possessions in Italy to Austria.

In Vienna they really wanted to acquire something, not to give the entire Spanish monarchy to the Bourbons, and at the same time they could not come to any decision, waiting, out of habit, for favorable circumstances. Secondly, the behavior of Austria depended on the character of Emperor Leopold, a man of little talent, slow by nature, suspicious and highly dependent on his confessor; slowness was best expressed in his speech, fragmentary, incoherent; the most important matters lay on the emperor’s table for weeks and months without a decision, and in the present case the emperor’s determination was also influenced by the Jesuits, who really did not like the alliance of Austria with the heretics - the British and the Dutch; the Jesuits, on the contrary, worked to bring together the Catholic powers of Austria, France and Spain, so that with their combined forces they could restore the Stuarts in England.

At the Viennese court, however, there was a party that demanded decisive action, that demanded war: it was the party of the heir to the throne, Archduke Joseph, and Prince Eugene of Savoy; but the emperor’s old advisers acted against her, fearing that with the outbreak of war all importance would pass from them to Joseph’s warlike party. In such hesitation and waiting, the Viennese court was disturbed by the news that Charles II had died, that the new king, Philip V, was received with triumph in Madrid, that he was recognized with the same joy in Italy, that French troops had already entered this country and occupied Lombardy, that the conferences in The Hague could end in a deal between France and the sea powers, and Austria would get nothing. Things were moving in Vienna. In May 1701, the Austrian envoy in London proposed to King William that the emperor would be pleased if Naples, Sicily, Milan and the Southern Netherlands were ceded to him. The last requirement completely coincided with the interests of the maritime powers, who needed the possession of a strong power between France and Holland. In August, the naval powers made a final proposal to the Viennese court, which consisted of the following: a defensive and offensive alliance against France; if Louis XIV denies Austria a land reward and the maritime powers certain guarantees of their safety and benefits, then the allies will use every effort to take possession of Milan, Naples, Sicily, Tuscan coastal areas and the Catholic Netherlands for the emperor; England and Holland provide for themselves the conquest of the transatlantic Spanish colonies. On this basis, the next month the European Union was concluded between the emperor, England and Holland: Austria fielded 90,000 troops, Holland - 102,000, England - 40,000; Holland - 60 ships, England - 100.

At the very time when the great alliance was being sealed in The Hague, Louis XIV, with his orders, seemed to want to speed up the war; he dealt the British two sensitive blows: the first was dealt to their material interests by prohibiting the import of English goods into France; Another blow was dealt to their national feeling by the proclamation, after the death of James II, of his son as King of England under the name of James III, while shortly before that act of parliament the Protestant inheritance was approved: after the death of the widowed and childless King William III, his sister-in-law, the youngest daughter of James, entered the throne II Anna, the wife of Prince George of Denmark, after her the throne passed to the Elector of Hanover, the granddaughter of James I Stuart from his daughter Elizabeth, the wife of the Elector Frederick of the Palatinate (the ephemeral king of Bohemia).

As a consequence of these insults from France, William III received from his subjects many addresses of devotion; the country loudly demanded an immediate declaration of war on France and the dissolution of the non-belligerent parliament. During the new elections, the Tory candidates managed to hold out only because they shouted louder against Louis XIV than their rivals, the Whigs, and demanded war louder. In January 1702, the king opened the new parliament with a speech in which he reminded the lords and commons that at the moment the eyes of all Europe were turned to them; the world awaits their decision; we are talking about the greatest public goods - freedom and religion; a precious moment had arrived for the maintenance of English honor and English influence in the affairs of Europe.

This was William of Orange's last speech. He had not enjoyed good health for a long time; in England they were used to seeing him suffering, surrounded by doctors; but we were also accustomed to seeing that, as circumstances required, he did his best and quickly got down to business. At the time described, he hurt himself by falling from a horse, and this apparently slight bruise brought William closer to the grave. The king told those close to him that he felt his strength diminishing daily, that he could no longer be counted on, that he was leaving life without regret, although at present it offered him more consolation than ever before. On March 19, Wilhelm died. His sister-in-law Anna was proclaimed queen.

Modern historians glorify William III as the man who finally established the freedom of England in political and religious terms and at the same time worked hard to liberate Europe from French hegemony, linking the interests of England with the interests of the continent. But contemporaries in England did not look at things that way. Against their will, forced by necessity, they decided on the revolutionary movement of 1688 and looked with dissatisfied eyes at its consequences, when they had to place a foreigner on their throne who did not belong to the dominant Episcopal Church. They looked at the Dutch stadtholder with suspicion, they were afraid of his lust for power, they were also afraid that he would involve the country in continental wars and would spend English money for the benefit of his Holland; hence the parliament’s distrust of the king, the opposition to his intentions on the part of both parties - both the Tories and the Whigs, and the stinginess in providing subsidies for the war. Wilhelm, constantly irritated by this distrust and obstacles to his plans, could not treat his subjects kindly, and was not distinguished by kindness by nature: hidden, silent, indiscreet, constantly surrounded only by his Dutch favorites, with them he thought about the most important English affairs, Wilhelm could not possibly be popular in England. The more willingly the popular majority saw Queen Anne on the throne.

The new queen was not distinguished by any visible merits: her upbringing was neglected in her youth, and in her mature years she did nothing to make up for this deficiency; spiritual lethargy expressed itself in indecision and inability to work hard; As soon as the question emerged from the series of daily phenomena, she already became confused. But the more she needed someone else’s advice, the less independent she was, the more she wanted to appear so, because she considered independence necessary in her royal position, and woe to the unwary who would too clearly want to impose his opinion on the queen. Ardently committed to the Anglican Church, Anna treated both papism and the Protestant heresy with equal disgust, which is why she seemed to our Peter the Great “the true daughter of the Orthodox Church,” in his own words. Anna's shortcomings could not be sharply expressed before her accession to the throne: her good qualities were visible, her impeccable married life; but, of course, her most precious quality was the one that William lacked: she was English and distinguished by her commitment to the Anglican Church.

As for political parties, Anne's accession to the throne was greeted by the Tories with joyful hopes, and by the Whigs with distrust. The Whigs suspected Anna of being attached to her father and brother; the Whigs acted hostilely against Anne under William and were the culprits of a strong quarrel between them; The Whigs raised the question: Shouldn't the throne, after William's death, go directly to the Hanoverian line? The Tories stood all the more zealously for Anna. Since the conviction was rooted that the son of James II, proclaimed king on the continent under the name of James III, was a fake, the strict zealots of the correct succession to the throne considered Anna the legitimate heir to the throne immediately after the death of James II, and looked at William only as a temporary ruler. Anne's attachment to the Anglican Church made her an idol for all adherents of the latter, offended by the fact that King William was not one of them, and was a heretic in their eyes. Both universities, Oxford and Cambridge, always distinguished by their zeal for the Anglican Church, greeted Anna with fiery addresses; Oxford theologians proclaimed that now only with the accession to the throne of Anne, the Church was secured from the invasion of heresy, now a new, happy era had come for England.

In addition to the Whigs and Tories, there was a Jacobite party in England, which saw the legitimate king in the young James III, and this party was not hostile to Anna, because James III was still very young and could not immediately come to England to regain his father’s crown, and the leaders of his party thought it most prudent to wait; The disturbed health of the thirty-seven-year-old queen did not promise a long reign, and they knew that Anna could not stand her Hanoverian relatives, and even more so they could count on her affection for her brother. But the more hopeful the Jacobites were, the more fearful the adherents of the revolution of 1688 were; They were especially afraid of the influence of the Earl of Rochester, the queen’s uncle on her mother’s side, the son of the famous Lord Clarendon: Rochester was a famous Jacobite, and they were afraid that he would raise people like himself to the top, who would change foreign policy, tear England away from the great alliance and bring them closer to France.

John Churchill, Earl of Marlborough

But the fear was in vain: the new queen immediately let the Dutch government know that she would strictly adhere to the foreign policy of her predecessor; the same was announced in Vienna to other friendly powers. The party, conscious of the need to take an active part in the war against France, was, for reasons known to us, as strong in the first days of Anne as in the last days of William; and although interference in continental affairs, war for local interests, spending money on a war that did not promise immediate benefits could never be popular on the island, and the peace party should have prevailed at the first favorable opportunity and unleashed a war, however, such a favorable circumstance now it hasn't happened yet. As for the queen, the representative of the war party, Lord John Churchill, Earl of Marlborough, had the strongest influence on her at the time described.

The Earl of Marlborough himself had a strong influence on the queen, but even more powerful was his wife, who had a close friendship with Anna when both were not yet married. The friends had opposite characters, because the Countess of Marlborough (nee Sarah Jennings) was distinguished by extreme energy, expressed in all her movements, in her gaze, in strong and fast speech, she was witty and often evil. It is not surprising that the princess, who was lazy in mind, became strongly attached to the woman, who relieved her of the duty of thinking and speaking and so pleasantly entertained her with her mobility and her speech. Anna Stewart married the insignificant George of Denmark, and Sarah Jennings married the most prominent of the Duke of York's courtiers, Colonel John Churchill. It was difficult to find a more handsome man than John Churchill. He did not receive a school education and had to acquire the necessary information himself; but a clear mind, extraordinary memory and the ability to deal with the most remarkable people, whom he constantly met due to his position, helped him in the matter of self-education: extreme accuracy and perseverance in every matter early pushed him out of the crowd and showed him as a future famous figure; but while moving out of the crowd, the clever, ambitious man knew how not to push anyone, did not prick his eyes with his superiority, and lived in great friendship with the mighty of the earth. But cold, calculating, cautious and clever with everyone else, Churchill completely lost control of his wife, to whose influence he constantly submitted and to the detriment of his glory.

Churchill began his military activities in the Dutch wars of the seventies under the eyes of French commanders. James II raised him to the rank of lord, and in 1685 Lord Churchill performed an important service for the king by taming the Monmouth rebellion; but when Jacob began to act against the Anglican Church, Churchill, a zealous supporter of this Church, lagged behind him, and his transition to the side of William of Orange determined the quick and bloodless outcome of the revolution. Churchill was elevated to Earl of Marlborough for this, but soon did not get along with William, especially when his wife was insulted by Queen Mary, and a rift ensued between the royal court and Princess Anne. The dissatisfied Marlborough entered into relations with his old benefactor, James II, and even reported details about the English enterprise against Brest. However, later he again became close to William and was privy to all the king’s plans regarding foreign policy. William entrusted him with command of the auxiliary English army in the Netherlands and the final consolidation of continental alliances; the king saw in him a man who united the warmest heart with the coldest head.

It is easy to understand that Marlborough did not lose anything with the death of William and the accession to the throne of Anne, who looked at him as the most devoted person to herself. Lord Marlborough immediately received the highest order (of the Garter) and command of all English troops, and his wife was given the position of first lady of state. Marlborough, in fact, did not belong to any party, and yet both parties had reason and benefit to consider him one of their own: the Tories counted on his attachment to the Anglican Church, on his connections, on the persecution that he suffered during the reign of the Whigs under William, and hoped to have him on their side on all questions of domestic policy; the Whigs, for their part, saw that Lady Marlborough was in close contact with all the heads of their party, that the notorious Whig, Lord Spencer, was Marlborough's son-in-law; finally, the Whigs were in favor of the war, why their interest merged with the interests of the commander-in-chief of all the English troops, and the Whigs told him that, although they did not hope to occupy government seats in the present reign, they would nevertheless contribute to everything that would be done for the good of the nation .

Marlborough's first order of business was to go to Holland to cement the alliance between the two sea powers, which had necessarily weakened after the death of the king and stadtholder. The presence in Holland of the most influential person in the English government was also necessary because Louis XIV tried to tear Holland away from the great union with promises to cleanse Belgium and make other concessions, as a result of which some deputies in the United States began to lean toward peace with France. Marlborough solemnly, in the presence of foreign ambassadors, announced that the Queen would religiously fulfill the treaty of alliance, as a result of which the States finally rejected the French proposal. Meanwhile, in England, Rochester, taking advantage of Marlborough's absence, hurried to give the final triumph to the Tory party and managed to form a ministry from its members; we saw Marlborough's attitude towards the Tories, and he hastened to assure the States that the change in the English ministry would not have any influence on the course of foreign affairs. But Lady Marlborough took a strong part in the fight against the queen's uncle, who became a Whig. Here the friends collided for the first time: Queen Anne noticed a sharp difference between the respectful language of all the others who addressed her on this matter, and the unceremonious, demanding language in which Lady Sarah, out of old habit, spoke to her: from then on, a cooling began between the friends.

But be that as it may, the same conviction in the need for war with France to protect English interests prevailed in society, as in the latter part of William’s reign, and therefore changes in the ministry could not stop things. The national view was expressed in the State Council convened to finalize the question of war; voices were heard: “Why such an expensive and difficult intervention in continental unrest? Let the English fleet be in good condition; as the first fleet in Europe, let it guard the shores and protect trade. Let the continental states torment each other in a bloody struggle; the trade and wealth of central England will all the more increase. Since England does not need continental conquests, she should help her allies only with money, and if she absolutely must fight, she should limit herself to a naval war; in order to fulfill allied obligations with Holland, it is necessary to enter the war in the sense of only a helping power, but not independently.” All these opinions, as expressions of the fundamental national view, were very important for the future, for they were bound to prevail at the first opportunity; but now this convenience was not available to them when the majority was convinced of the need to restrain the terrible power of France, and war was declared.

Beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession

At the beginning of this war, precisely in the summer of 1702, the political and military advantage was not at all on the side of the allies, despite the great name of the European Union. The Northern powers refused to participate in the war against France; in the eastern regions of the Austrian monarchy an uprising was ready to break out; in Germany, Bavaria and Cologne were on the side of France, covered by Belgium, the Rhine Line, neutral Switzerland and possessing the forces of Spain, Portugal, and Italy. The Allies were supposed to field 232,000 troops, but in reality they could have had much less, so that the forces of Louis XIV and his allies were superior by 30,000 people. The income of France (187,552,200 livres) was equal to the sum of the income of the emperor, England and Holland; in addition, in his orders, Louis was not constrained by any parliament, any provincial ranks, or any individual nationalities; finally, the possessions of the continental allies were opened, while France was protected by strong fortresses.

Indeed, the first two years of the war (1702 and 1703) could not promise a favorable outcome for the European Union, despite the fact that on the part of France there were clear signs of decrepitude - a consequence of the materially and morally unproductive system of Louis XIV. An ally of France, Elector of Bavaria Max Emmanuel took the important imperial city of Ulm; in Italy, the emperor's commander, Prince Eugene of Savoy, could not cope with the French, who were under the command of Vendôme, and had to lift the siege of Mantua. Austria, due to shortcomings in internal governance, could not wage war with sufficient energy. “It is incomprehensible,” wrote the Dutch envoy, “how in such a vast state, consisting of so many fruitful provinces, they cannot find means to prevent state bankruptcy.” Income fluctuated because certain areas provided more or less; sometimes individual regions received the right not to pay anything for a year or more. The annual income extended to 14 million guilders: of this amount no more than four million came to the treasury; The national debt extended to 22 million guilders. The long Turkish war contributed greatly to the financial breakdown. The government did not dare to impose emergency taxes for fear of driving the peasants, who were already in a miserable situation, to despair, and therefore preferred to borrow money with payments ranging from 20 to 100 percent. But such financial distress did not prevent Emperor Leopold from incurring large expenses when it came to court pleasures or when his religious feelings were affected.

The treasury was eaten up by a huge number of officials who received their salaries, and during campaigns, salaries were delivered to the troops either very late or not at all, so that the commanders at the end of the campaign, and sometimes even in the middle of the campaign, were forced to leave the army and go to Vienna in order to speed up the sending of money . Constant hatred reigned between the commanders and officials of the court military council (Gofkriegsrat); especially all the generals looked at the president of the Khofkriegsrat as their mortal enemy; The emperor's eldest son, the Roman King Joseph, pointed to the managers of military and financial affairs in Vienna as the perpetrators of all evil. The Imperial Generalissimo learned about political negotiations and military events only from the Viennese newspaper. Production in the army was not at all based on ability, and the foreign ambassadors at the Viennese court were most amazed at the cynical frankness with which each officer spoke about the inability and dishonesty of his comrades and generals.

There was also a reformation party at the Viennese court: it consisted of Prince Eugene, Prince Salm, the counts of Kaunitz and Bratislava, and was led by the Roman King Joseph; but all her aspirations were dashed by the emperor’s irresistible distrust of new people and new thoughts. The Dutch envoy responded that he would rather drink the sea than act successfully against the crowd of Jesuits, women and Leopold's ministers. This disorder of the government machine in Austria was also accompanied by unrest in Hungary and Transylvania, where peasants burdened with taxes rose up, and these uprisings could intensify, because the eastern part of the state was exposed to troops as a result of the war in the west. At first, the Hungarian unrest was not of a political nature, but things changed when the rebels came into contact with Franz Rakoczy, who lived in exile in Poland. Prudent people demanded that the Hungarian unrest be stopped as soon as possible, either by mercy or severity; but the emperor preferred half measures - and the fire flared up, and at the same time the predicament of Austria in the European war reached its highest point: the army did not receive recruits, the soldiers were hungry and cold. This situation was supposed to lead to changes in Vienna: the presidents of the military and financial councils lost their places, finances were entrusted to Count Staremberg, and military administration was entrusted to Prince Eugene.

Thus, in the first period of the war, Austria, due to the state of its management, could not energetically contribute to the successes of the Allies. The naval powers, England and Holland, also could not wage a successful war in the Spanish Netherlands. Here the two campaigns of 1702 and 1703 ended unsatisfactorily. Marlborough, who commanded the allied forces, was in despair and rightly blamed the failure on the Republic of the United States, which hindered him with merchant frugality regarding people and money; In addition, the parties fighting in the united provinces, the Orange and the Republican, tore the army apart, the generals quarreled and refused to obey each other. The commander was embarrassed by the so-called “camping deputies” who were with him with a control role: they were in charge of food supplies for the troops, appointed commandants to the conquered places, had a voice in military councils with the right to stop their decisions, and these deputies were not military people at all. Finally, in Holland there was expressed distrust of the foreign commander; Pamphlets against Marlborough and his bold plans appeared in the press. Meanwhile, in England, as a result of the unsatisfactory nature of the two campaigns, people who were against the continental war raised their heads.

Portrait of Philip V of Spain, 1701

Great successes for England and Holland could be expected from maritime enterprises against Spain. We have seen the reasons why Spain fell asleep towards the end of the 17th century. The events that followed at the beginning of the 18th century were supposed to awaken her: indeed, the people were agitated when they heard that the hated heretics, the English and the Dutch, were planning to divide the Spanish possessions, and therefore the accession to the throne of Philip V with the guarantee of indivisibility found strong sympathy in Spain. Unfortunately, the new king was not able to take advantage of this sympathy. The Spanish infanta, whom Mazarin married Louis XIV, seemed to bring a sad dowry to the Bourbon dynasty: the offspring resulting from this marriage revealed features of the decrepitude that distinguished the last Habsburgs in Spain. Philip V appeared on the Spanish throne as such a decrepit youth, for whom the crown was a burden and any serious activity was a punishment; He accepted his grandfather’s smart, eloquent instructions and letters with indifferent submission, entrusting others with the responsibility of answering them and conducting all correspondence, even the most secret. Philip did the same in all other matters.

It was clear that a king with such a character needed a first minister, and Philip V found himself a first minister in a sixty-five-year-old old woman who, in contrast to the young king, was distinguished by youthful liveliness and masculine willpower: she was Maria Anna, by her second marriage the Italian Duchess of Bracciano-Orsini , daughter of the French Duke of Noirmoutier. In Italy, she maintained contact with her former fatherland and was an agent of Louis XIV in Rome, was very involved in the transfer of the Spanish inheritance to the Bourbon dynasty during the marriage between Philip V and the daughter of the Duke of Savoy, and when the bride went to Spain, she went with her and Princess Orsini as the future Chief Chamberlain. Many people wanted to master the will of the young king and queen; but Orsini defeated all rivals and brought Philip V and his wife into complete dependence on herself. From the party at the Madrid court, Orsini chose the most useful for the country - the National Reformation Party - and became its leader.

Louis XIV wanted, through Orsini, to rule Spain as a vassal kingdom; but Orsini did not want to be an instrument in the hands of the French king, and even if she was guided by the impulses of her own lust for power, only her behavior and desires, so that the influence of a foreign sovereign would not be noticeable in the actions of the Spanish king, coincided with the good and dignity of the country and contributed to the establishment of the Bourbon dynasty on the Spanish throne. But it is clear that with such a desire to make himself and the government in general popular, Orsini had to face the French ambassadors who wanted to dominate in Madrid.

Under such and such conditions, Spain had to participate in the war that Western Europe was waging because of it. In 1702, the British's intention to capture Cadiz failed, but they managed to capture the Spanish fleet, which was coming from the American colonies with precious metals. Spain should have expected a most dangerous struggle when Portugal joined the European Union, and Vienna decided to send Archduke Charles, the second son of Emperor Leopold, to the Iberian Peninsula as a contender for the Spanish throne; They hoped that in Spain there were many adherents of the Habsburg dynasty, many dissatisfied people who wanted change in general, and that under these conditions Philip V could easily be replaced by Charles III. This Charles was the favorite son of Emperor Leopold, because he looked like his father, while the eldest, Joseph, due to the dissimilarity of character and aspirations, stood at a distance from his father and even in opposition. Well-intentioned, conscientious, but sluggish, undeveloped, eighteen-year-old Charles had to set off on a distant enterprise - to conquer the Spanish throne, surrounded by parties, among which only some cardinal or court lady, grayed in intrigue, could make his way. After much preparation and obstacles, only in March 1704 the Anglo-Dutch fleet brought to the mouth of the Tagus “the Catholic king not by God, but by heretical mercy,” as stated in Jacobin pamphlets in England.

When going ashore, Charles receives news that his bride, the Portuguese princess, died of smallpox, and her father, Don Pedro, fell into deep melancholy. In Portugal, nothing was ready for war, the army did not receive pay, did not know how to wield weapons, did not want to fight; all the horses that were of any use were recently exported either to Spain or France; the people did not want war and looked with hatred at the heretical foreign regiments. Be that as it may, Portugal was firmly tied into an alliance by a trade agreement with England, according to which Portuguese wines were to be sold in Britain, where they were charged a third less duty than French wines, for which Portugal undertook not to allow any woolen goods to enter its territory, except English.

In addition to Portugal, the union acquired another member - the Duke of Savoy-Piedmont. Holding in their hands the keys to Italy and France and being between the possessions of two powerful dynasties, the Bourbon and Habsburg, the Dukes of Savoy and Piedmont had long been forced to strain all their attention to maintain independence in the struggle of their strongest neighbors and to strengthen themselves at every opportunity, taking advantage of this struggle ; Therefore, they were distinguished by their frugality, for they always had to maintain a significant army, and they were also distinguished by the most unceremonious policy: being in an alliance with one of the warring parties, they always conducted secret negotiations with the one against which they had to fight. During the full power of Louis XIV, Piedmont had a bad time: it was almost a vassal land of France. But when Louis’ lust for power began to provoke coalitions, when William of Orange became king of England and Austria, which was heavy on the rise, began to move, Piedmont’s position became easier: Louis XIV began to ingratiate himself with its Duke Victor Amedee II and, in order to tie the latter to himself, married two of his grandchildren to two his daughters. Victor Amedeus, as the father-in-law of Philip V of Spain, naturally had to be in alliance with him and with his grandfather; Moreover, with the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession, Louis XIV transferred the main command over the combined Franco-Spanish-Piedmontese troops to the matchmaker. But this was just an empty title: the French commanders, knowing the Piedmontese policy, looked at the orders of Victor Amedee with extreme suspicion and did not at all consider themselves obliged to obey him; The French envoy in Turin also treated him the same way. The arrogant treatment of his son-in-law, the King of Spain, in a decent meeting with him should have further increased the irritation of Victor Amedee. The Duke's complaints to Louis remained without consequences in practice: the king heard cries from everywhere about the treachery of his matchmaker, about the need to get rid of his unfaithful ally without ceremony.

Already in May 1702, the Dutch envoy informed from Vienna that the imperial ministers had established relations with the Duke of Savoy and at the same time Victor Amedee made a request in London whether the English government would help him in obtaining Milan. Negotiations dragged on for a whole year: Victor Amedey kept bargaining, kept bargaining for more land for himself and brought despair to the allies, who called for the vengeance of heaven and the contempt of humanity against the shameless, suspicious and greedy Savoyard, and Victor Amedey kept asking for more land, when suddenly, finally, in September 1703 years, he was disturbed in his trade by the news that the French were convinced of his treason. Vendôme captured many Piedmontese generals, disarmed some cavalry regiments and demanded the surrender of two fortresses as a guarantee for the duke's loyalty. Then Victor Amedee directly declared himself against France and moved to the Great Alliance, taking what was given, that is, the Milan and Mantua regions, with prospects for large rewards in the event of a successful end to the war.

Battle of Blenheim

Decisive success on the side of the alliance was revealed in 1704, when Marlborough decided to unite with Prince Eugene in Bavaria. The consequence of this connection was on August 13 the brilliant victory of the allies over the Franco-Bavarian army, which was under the command of the Elector of Bavaria and the French generals Tagliard and Marcin: this victory bears a double name: for the village of Blenheim or Blindheim, where the British won, and for the town of Hochstedt, where they won Germans; the allies paid for the victory with 4,500 killed and 7,500 wounded. The French and Bavarians, out of 60,000 troops, barely saved 20,000; Marshal Tagliard and up to 11,000 troops were captured. Here the character of the French was clearly revealed: fervent in the offensive, they are impatient, soon lose their spirit in case of failure and allow themselves to be captured by entire regiments. As a result, the Blindheim defeat had dire consequences for the French: despite heavy losses, they could still hold out in Bavaria, and Elector Max suggested this; but the French with their general Marcin completely lost their spirit; flight seemed to them the only means of salvation, and the fugitives stopped only on the left bank of the Rhine; Thus, as a result of one defeat, the French cleared Germany, one defeat crushed the glory of the French army, which they used to consider invincible; This surrender in large crowds on the battlefield made a particularly strong impression, and as much as the French fell in spirit, so did their enemies rise.

The winners wanted to erect a monument in honor of Blindheim’s victory and write on it: “May Louis XIV finally know that no one should be called happy or great before death.” But Louis at least bore his misfortune with dignity; In all his correspondence, the most secret, he knew how to maintain clarity and firmness of spirit, and never stooped to useless complaints, having one thing in mind - how to get things right as quickly as possible. He expressed only regret for Marshal Tagliard, sympathy for his grief and the loss of his son, who died in a disastrous battle; The king showed even more regret for his unfortunate ally, the Elector of Bavaria, he wrote to Marcin: “The present position of the Elector of Bavaria worries me more than my own fate; if he could conclude an agreement with the emperor that would protect his family from captivity and the country from devastation, then this would not upset me at all; assure him that my feelings for him will not change because of this and I will never make peace without taking care of returning all his possessions to him.” Elector Max paid Louis in the same coin: when Marlborough persuaded Prince Eugene to offer him the return of all his possessions and a significant amount of money annually if he turned his arms against France, the Elector did not agree.

The campaign, which concluded with such a brilliant victory, cost Marlborough dearly: his health suffered greatly from the terrible stress. “I am sure,” he wrote to his friends, “that when we meet, you will find me aged ten years.” The news of Blindheim's victory was received with delight in England both in the palace and in the crowds; In the midst of this delight, comments from the hostile party were also heard. Before the victory, people who were against the continental war loudly condemned Marlborough's movement into Germany, shouted that Marlborough had exceeded his power, abandoned Holland without protection and was exposing the English army to danger in a distant and dangerous enterprise. The victory did not silence the critics: “We won, no doubt, but this victory is bloody and useless: it will exhaust England, but will not harm France; A lot of people were taken from the French and beaten, but for the French king it’s the same as taking a bucket of water from the river.” Marlborough responded to this last comparison: “If these gentlemen allow us to take one or two more buckets of water like this, then the river will flow calmly and will not threaten our neighbors with flooding.”

Particularly hostile to Marlborough was that part of the Tory party that was called the Jacobites, that is, adherents of the pretender, James III Stuart. It is understandable that these Jacobites must have looked unfavorably on a victory that humiliated France, for only with the help of France could they hope for the return of their king, James III. Annoyed by the glory of Blindheim's winner, the Tories tried to oppose him to Admiral Rook, whose exploits in Spain were more than doubtful; one thing could be put forward in his favor - this was assistance in the capture of Gibraltar. The capture was made easier by the fact that the Spanish garrison consisted of less than 100 people. The British did not take Gibraltar from Philip V in favor of Charles III: they took it for themselves and retained this key to the Mediterranean Sea forever.

Relations with the English parties could only make Marlborough work harder for the continuation, and successful continuation of the war. The weakest point of the alliance was Italy, where Victor Amedee could not resist the best French general, the Duke of Vendôme, where Turin was ready to surrender. It was impossible to separate part of the army that was under the command of Marlborough and Prince Eugene to Italy without harming military operations in Germany; a new army could not be demanded from the emperor, because the Austrian troops were engaged against the Hungarian rebels. Marlborough looked everywhere to get troops, and settled on Brandenburg, which Elector Frederick accepted the title of King of Prussia. Marlborough himself went to Berlin: here they were very flattered by the courtesy of the famous Blindheim winner and gave him 8,000 troops for English money.

Camisards

In Hungary, things were going well for the emperor: the rebels who had initially threatened Vienna suffered a severe defeat, but Rakoczi still held out. Marlborough really wanted to end this war harmful to the union, and he insisted that the emperor give his Hungarian subjects complete religious freedom; but the emperor, under the influence of the Jesuits, did not want to agree to this; The Jesuits saw that they had the right to fear an alliance with heretics. But Louis XIV, who fanned the Hungarian uprising, saw a similar phenomenon in his own possessions, where the Protestant population rebelled in the Ceven mountains. As a result of persecution, religious enthusiasm reached its highest degree here: prophets appeared, children prophesied; the government intensified the persecution, but those persecuted took advantage of the war, the withdrawal of garrisons from the cities of Languedoc, rebelled, and began a guerrilla war; the leaders of the troops were prophets (voyants); the most important place was given to the one who was distinguished by a greater degree of inspiration; one of the main leaders was a seventeen-year-old boy, Cavalier; the most important leader was a young man, 27 years old, Roland, who combined with wild courage something romantic that amazed the imagination. Roland soon had 3,000 troops who called themselves children of God, and Catholics called them camisards (shirt makers) because of the white shirts they wore at night to recognize each other. (This is how they usually explain it, but it is known that sectarians, distinguished by a similar mood of spirit, love to use white shirts in their meetings.) The caves in the mountains served them as fortresses and arsenals; They destroyed all the churches and priestly houses in the Seven Mountains, killed or drove out the priests, captured castles and cities, destroyed the troops sent against them, collected taxes and tithes.

Languedoc officials gathered and decided to convene the police. When Paris learned about these events, Chamillard and Maintenon first conspired to hide them from the king; but it was impossible to hide it for long when the uprising spread, when the Governor-General of Languedoc, Count Broglie, was defeated by the Camisards. The king sent Marshal Montrevel with 10,000 troops against the rebels; Montrevel defeated Roland and wanted to first put out the rebellion by gentle means; but when the Camisards shot those of their own who accepted the amnesty, Montrevel began to rage. The Catholic peasants also armed themselves against the Camisards under the command of a hermit. This holy militia, as the pope put it, began to commit robbery against friends and foes so much that Montrevel had to pacify it; the camisards did not subside; Miracles happened between them: one prophet, to maintain his faith, climbed onto a blazing fire and came down from it unharmed. But the year 1704 was unhappy for the Camisards: Cavalier was forced to enter into an agreement with the government and left France; Roland was defeated and killed; after the Battle of Blindheim, the vast conspiracy of the Camisards failed; their remaining leaders were burned, hanged, and the uprising died down, especially since the government, busy with a terrible external war, turned a blind eye to Protestant religious gatherings.

War of the Spanish Succession 1705–1709

The war with the Camisards ended very conveniently in 1704, because by the next year Louis XIV needed to think about a defensive war! The first days of 1705 in London there was a celebration on the occasion of the arrival of Marlborough with trophies and noble captives. The House of Commons presented an address to the Queen with a request to perpetuate the glory of the great services rendered by the Duke of Marlborough. The Duke received the royal estate of Woodstock, where they built a castle and named it Blenheim. The Emperor gave Marlborough the title of prince and also an estate in Swabia. Only Oxford University, which belonged to the Tory party, insulted Marlborough by placing him in its solemn speeches and poems completely on an equal footing with Admiral Rooke.

Marlborough, back in 1704, came to an agreement with Prince Eugene about the campaign of 1705, persuaded to attack France from the Moselle, where it was less fortified; In early spring, both armies were supposed to begin the siege of Saarlouis, and they were supposed to enter into relations with the Duke of Lorraine, who was only unwillingly for France. Louis XIV also did not waste time, prepared and in the spring of 1705 he could write: “The enemy does not have as much infantry as I have in the Flanders, Mosel and Rhine armies, although in cavalry he is almost equal to me.” But Louis XIV's main advantage was that he could dispose of his relatively numerous troops as he wished, while Marlborough spent his time in The Hague in the spring of 1705 persuading the Dutch government to agree to his plan. When he finally forced this agreement and appeared with an army on the Moselle, he found in front of him a large, sufficiently equipped French army under the leadership of the good General Marshal Villars, while he himself did not have the famous comrade of the Battle of Blindheim: the emperor transferred Prince Eugene to Italy to improve affairs there, and instead of Eugene Marlborough had to deal with Margrave Louis of Baden, who did not move, making excuses either by illness or by insufficient supplies for his troops.

The news of the death of Emperor Leopold (May 5, New Year) gave the English commander hope that under his energetic successor, Joseph I, things would go faster. As we have seen, Joseph promised to be an energetic sovereign when he was the heir, when he was the head of the militant party, the head of the opposition to his father’s ministry, his father’s system. And indeed, at first there was something similar to energetic action in Vienna; but soon afterwards everything went as before, as a result of which neither Marlborough on the Moselle nor Eugene in Italy could do anything during the entire year 1705; only in Spain were the allies happier: Barcelona surrendered to Archduke Charles; in Catalonia, Valence, Arragonia he was recognized as king. In 1706, things also went well in Spain for the allies: Philip V had to leave Madrid. On the other hand, things went poorly for the French in the north from the Netherlands: here in May Marlborough defeated the Elector of Bavaria and Marshal Villeroy at Romilly, near Leuvain, as a result of which the French were driven out of Belgium; finally they were driven out of Italy; and although at the end of the year affairs in Spain took a favorable turn for France, thanks to a popular uprising in favor of Philip V out of hatred of the heretics who supported Charles III, this success could not compensate for the losses in Italy and Belgium, and Louis XIV began to think how would end the unhappy war at the expense of the people who so diligently defended the throne of his grandson: he proposed the division of Spanish possessions, Spain and America ceded to Charles III, Belgium to Holland, holding only Italian possessions for Philip V. But the Allies rejected the proposal.

The campaign of 1707 began with a brilliant victory of the Franco-Spanish troops over the allies (English, Dutch and Portuguese), won at Almanza by the Duke of Berwick (the illegitimate son of James II Stuart). On the German side, the French also made a successful offensive movement and penetrated as far as the Danube; but the Austrian troops captured Naples, and on the other hand penetrated into Provence, although they were soon to leave it. France held out after Hochstedt and Romilly, held out thanks to a strong government, but this government was draining the country's last funds. Since 1700, the number of officials has almost doubled due to the intensive creation of new positions for sale; they overflowed the coin, raised its price, but this only brought benefit to foreigners; the issuance of unpaid notes undermined credit, and meanwhile expenses, which had reached 146 million in 1701, reached 258 million in 1707. They began to take duties on baptisms, marriages, and funerals: the poor began to baptize their children themselves without a priest, they began to get married in secret, and between Meanwhile, in the castles of noble nobles they made counterfeit coins and life at court continued to be luxurious.

The famous Vauban published a book in 1707 in which he proposed a plan for the necessary financial reforms. The book was found outrageous, the fifty-year service of a man whose name was known to every educated person in Europe was forgotten, and Vauban’s book was pilloried; six weeks after this book execution, the author died at the age of 74. But the chief controller Chamillard, not seeing any possibility of conducting business at enormous military costs, resigned from his position. In trouble, they called in his place his nephew Colbert Desmarais, who had been out of favor for twenty years. Entrusting Demarais with a new position, the king told him: “I will be grateful to you if you can find some remedy, and I will not be surprised if things get worse and worse day by day.” Desmarais used desperate means to obtain money to continue the war; he doubled duties on the transport of goods by land and along rivers, which dealt a decisive blow to trade.

The money thus obtained was spent on an unhappy campaign: in the north Marlborough again united with Eugene, and complete agreement still reigned between both commanders, while between the French commanders opposed to them - the king's grandson, the Duke of Burgundy, and the Duke Vendôme - complete disagreement reigned. The consequence was that the French were defeated on the Scheldt at Oudenard and lost the main city of French Flanders, Lille, fortified by Vauban. This was accompanied by a physical disaster: at the beginning of 1709, terrible colds came throughout Europe, not excluding the South; the sea froze off the coast of France, almost all the fruit trees died, the strongest tree trunks and stones cracked; courts, theaters, offices were locked, business and pleasure stopped; Poor people with their entire families froze to death in their huts. The cold stopped in March; but they knew that the seeds were frozen, there would be no harvest, and the price of bread had risen. In the villages they died of hunger quietly; in the cities there were riots and in the markets they posted obscenities against the government. The mortality rate has doubled compared to ordinary years, the loss of livestock has not been compensated even in fifty years.

In March 1709, Louis XIV renewed his peace proposal: he agreed that Philip V would receive only Naples and Sicily. But the allies demanded the entire Spanish monarchy for Charles III, did not agree to return Lille and, regarding Germany, demanded a return to the Peace of Westphalia. Louis XIV convened his council, but the advisers answered the question about means of salvation with tears; Louis agreed to the demands of the allies, asked for one Naples for his grandson, and with these proposals the Minister of Foreign Affairs Torcy himself secretly went to Holland. He bowed to Heinsius, Prince Eugene, Marlborough, offered the latter four million - and all in vain: the allies demanded that the grandson of Louis XIV leave Spain in two months, and if he does not do this before the expiration of the specified period, then the French king and the allies will jointly take measures for execution of your contract; French merchant ships should not appear in Spanish overseas possessions, etc. Louis rejected these conditions and sent a circular to the governors, which said: “I am sure that my people themselves will oppose peace on conditions that are equally contrary to justice and the honor of the French name.” Here Louis addressed the people for the first time and met in this ruined and hungry people the most lively sympathy, which made it possible to maintain the honor of the French name.

Particularly offensive in their senselessness were the demands of the allies that he, Louis, who had made such sacrifices for peace, should continue the war to expel his grandson from Spain, and the war was necessary because Philip felt strong in Spain thanks to the disposition of the popular majority and, of course, , under the dictation of his energetic wife and energetic governess, he wrote to his grandfather: “God has placed the Spanish crown on me, and I will keep it until one drop of blood remains in my veins.” Therefore, Louis had the right to say: “It is better for me to wage war With with their enemies than with their children."

But to save France it was necessary to continue its ruin. There were enough people in the army, because peasants and townspeople, fleeing hunger, became soldiers, but besides people, there was nothing else in the army - no bread, no weapons. A French soldier sold his gun so as not to die of hunger; and the allies had everything in abundance; Thus, the hungry had to fight against the well-fed, the well-fed attacked, the hungry defended, and defended well, because Marlborough and Eugene bought the victory at Malplaquet with the loss of more than 20,000 people. But nevertheless, the allies won, and Louis decided to ask for peace again, agreeing to everything, as long as they did not force him to fight again, and to fight with his grandson. In response, the allies demanded that Louis take it upon himself to expel his grandson from Spain.

The English Tories' fight for peace

The war continued. In 1710, Marlborough and Eugene again made several acquisitions in French Flanders. Louis XIV demanded a tenth of the income from all those belonging to the taxable and non-taxable classes; but due to the exhaustion of the country and dishonesty in payment, the treasury received no more than 24 million. Funds for the 1711 campaign were prepared; but the year began with peace negotiations, and this time the peace proposal did not come from France. In January, Abbé Gautier, secret correspondent for the French Foreign Office in London, came to Versailles to see Torcy with the words: “Do you want peace? I have brought you a means of concluding it independently of the Dutch." “Asking the French minister if he wants peace is like asking a patient with a long and dangerous illness if he wants to be cured,” answered Torcy. Gautier had instructions from the English ministry to propose to the French government that it begin negotiations. England will force Holland to finish them.

We have seen that England's national policy was non-interference in the affairs of the continent unless England's commercial interests were affected. These trading interests were affected before the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession, when the union of Spain with France threatened to deprive England of the opportunity to trade in the vast and rich Spanish possessions. Here the peaceful party, that is, the party that adhered to national politics, had to fall silent, and the war began. But this party, which fell silent for a while, rose up at the first opportunity and was confident that it would meet with strong sympathy among the people as soon as their fears regarding their interests dissipated, for the people were disgusted with spending money on a war waged for other people’s interests, increasing troops and an intensification of his significance, an intensification of the significance of a victorious commander, who aroused the unpleasant memory of the Cromwells and the Monks. The war dragged on for a long time, a lot of money was spent on it, the goal was achieved: the hitherto terrible France was brought to the last extreme, brought to such exhaustion, after which it would not be able to recover for a long time and again begin to threaten English trade interests; The old ambitious king, who haunted Europe, has no more funds, and his days are numbered; the family connection of the Spanish kings with the French is not dangerous after the death of Louis XIV, and it is not worth spending so much money and people in order to impose Charles III on the Spaniards instead of Philip V, if only Gibraltar and trade benefits in America remained with England; It is even stranger to wage a war for the benefits of Holland, this dangerous rival in trade and industrial relations, to spend English blood and English money in order to secure the Dutch border from France. Thus, the successes of the allied forces and the obvious exhaustion of France strengthened the peace party in England, the Tory party. This party grew stronger because its aspirations and views coincided with national aspirations and views; some people who understood what was going on could come forward, pursuing national aspirations and views, and could make peace.

These people who connected their names with the end of the War of the Spanish Succession were Harley and St. John. Robert Harley in 1701 is an orator or president of the House of Commons, and in 1704, thanks to his friendship with Marlborough, becomes Foreign Secretary. The new minister belonged to moderate Tories and was distinguished by the art of maneuvering between parties and influential persons. Marlborough and his friend, the Minister of Finance (Lord Treasurer) Godolphin, themselves not attached by strong convictions to any party, thought that Harley would be their humble servant; but Harley, not morally attached to anyone or anything, pursued his own goals, and the demands of Marlborough and Godolphin, in which Harley saw an encroachment on his independence, only irritated him and made him more eager to get rid of the despotism of his patron friends. The Queen began to noticeably cool towards the Duchess of Marlborough, and she had another favorite, Abigail Gill, or, by marriage, Mesham, a relative of the Duchess of Marlborough, who attached her to the court. Harley became close to Mesh, which, of course, greatly irritated Marlborough and Godolphin, forced them to express their jealousy and demandingness, made them suspect Harley of influencing such decisions of the queen that were unpleasant for them, in which he did not participate. Harley swore that he would remain true to his constant principle of uniting moderate Tories with moderate Whigs so that neither party should prevail decisively; the queen adhered to the same principle and therefore loved Harley, loved him because he was a zealous supporter of the Anglican Church. And Marlborough and Godolphin were not at all against the principle put forward by Harley, if Harley were their obedient instrument in everything. But, suspecting him of treason, they united with the Whigs to overthrow him; Harley had to leave the ministry and, naturally, went over to the Tory side.

Along with Harley, Henry St. John, who ran the War Ministry, was supposed to retire. Like Harley, St. John considered the party only a means to play an important role in governing the country. An aristocrat by birth, he was distinguished by his beauty, brilliant abilities and the most riotous life; he had an extraordinary memory, amazing quickness of thought and equally amazing ease in expressing thoughts verbally and in writing; these abilities made it possible for him, when occupying an important position, during serious work, to devote a lot of time to women, games, wine and conversations with all the literary celebrities of the time. At the very beginning of the twenty-something year, St. John became a member of the House of Commons, and since most of the talent was on the side of the Whigs, he took the side of the Tories and immediately attracted attention as a first-class orator. In order to show off his talent in all its brilliance, he deliberately touched on the most difficult issues that other speakers avoided. St. John thundered against the continental war, against the useless costs of it. But Marlborough realized that these thunders did not come from ardent convictions, and offered the thunderer control of the military department. St. John, having received such an important and difficult, especially then, place, did not change his way of life, but surprised everyone with the moderation of his speeches; he was the most ardent supporter of Godolphin and a passionate admirer of Marlborough. But then, together with Harley, he went over to the side of Lady Mesham and then had to leave his place, which passed to the later famous Robert Walpole.

The triumph of the Whigs could not last long. The queen parted with Harley against her will and was offended by the concession she had to make to the Whigs, Godolphin and Marlborough; These personal relationships were also joined by a higher interest: cries were heard, mainly from Oxford University, about the danger that the Whigs threatened the Anglican Church, and Anna, due to her convictions, was very sensitive to these cries. The most powerful attacks against the principles of the revolution, which the Whigs adhered to, were distinguished by the preacher Sechverel, who denied the legality of resistance to any tyranny. He armed himself against dissidents, against tolerance regarding Calvinism, a tolerance that threatens the English Church with terrible danger, and did not refrain from making allusions to individuals, especially Godolphin. The Whigs sounded the alarm, and Sechverel was put on trial by decision of the House of Commons; the Tories considered it their duty to intercede for the preacher; the House of Lords found him guilty by a slight majority; but when it came to determining the punishment, it was only necessary to ban him from preaching for three years and publicly burn his last two sermons. Such a light punishment was a defeat for the Whigs who had started the affair, and a triumph for the Tories, and this triumph was increased by the sympathy that was expressed for Sechverel: women flocked in droves to the churches where he served (for he was only forbidden to preach), he was invited to baptize children, illuminations were made in his honor, fireworks were burned; when he went to Wallis, they gave him ceremonial greetings in the cities along the way (1710).

The Queen, led by Lady Mesh, who in turn was led by Harley, showed clearly that she no longer wanted to have Whigs among her ministers; So, she first dismissed the most zealous Whig, Sunderland, who managed foreign affairs, married to Marlborough’s daughter; The Tories were delighted and told Anna: “Your Majesty is now a real queen.” The Whigs patiently endured this defeat, which, of course, gave courage to their opponents, and the queen took a decisive step - she fired Godolphin; Harley was again brought into the cabinet and made Lord Treasurer, St. John received control of foreign affairs. Parliament was dissolved, and in new elections the Tories took the lead.

The new Parliament, which opened in November 1710, rejected the proposal to offer an address of thanks to Marlborough for the last campaign; of the ministers, St. John was not averse to an alliance with the “great man,” as Marlborough was called, on the condition that the Duke leave the Whigs and restrain the rage of his wife; but Harley did not want this union. In December, Marlborough arrived in London, was greeted with warm greetings from the people, and was received kindly but coldly by the queen. Anna said to him: “I wish you to continue to serve me, and I guarantee the behavior of all my ministers regarding you; I must ask you not to allow any addresses of thanks to you in parliament this year, because my ministers will oppose it.” The Duke replied: “I am glad to serve Your Majesty, if recent events do not deprive me of the opportunity to do so.” Anna was not against the Duke, but against the Duchess and demanded that the latter give up all her court positions, and the Duchess wanted to retain them at all costs.

At the beginning of 1711, Marlborough presented the queen with a letter from his wife, written in the most humble tone, but Anna, having read the letter, said: “I cannot change my mind.” The Blenheim winner began to beg on his knees to beg the queen to appease, but Anna was inexorable. The Duke himself remained in the service after that and went to the army on solid ground, but the ministry was trying to find a way to no longer need Marlborough's service: this means was the conclusion of peace, and Gautier went to Paris. Soon a new circumstance was to cool England even more towards the Great Alliance: in April 1711, Emperor Joseph I died, leaving no male children, so that all his possessions passed to his brother, Charles, King of Spain - a more severe disruption of the political balance of Europe than the occupation of the Spanish throne by a prince of the house of Bourbon. Harley, who was elevated to the Duke of Oxford, and St. John continued peace negotiations with Louis XIV: they sent their friend Prior to France for this purpose, who was supposed to announce that England would not insist on taking Spain away from the House of Bourbon, and in September the French commissioner Menage signed the preliminary articles in London, after which the matter was reported to the Dutch government. The states were very dissatisfied, but had to agree to conduct peace negotiations for their part, for which the city of Utrecht was chosen. Austria was even more dissatisfied; There were also dissatisfied people in England, as a result of which, as usual, a brutal war began with pamphlets in prose and poetry.

The question of peace was connected with another question - about the Protestant inheritance; The Whigs feared that peace would lead to a rapprochement with France and would give the queen and her ministers the opportunity to act against the Protestant Hanoverian heir in favor of James III Stuart. In December 1711, Parliament met and heated debate began. The Whigs proclaimed that peace could not be safe and honorable for Great Britain and Europe if Spain with its transatlantic possessions remained with the Bourbon dynasty; Marlborough claimed the same thing. But a terrible remedy was found against Marlborough: he was exposed in huge bribes received from a contractor in the army, and on this basis the queen dismissed him from all the posts he held, and in order to strengthen her majority in the upper house, Anna took advantage of the right of the English kings and appointed 12 new lords. Thus began the year 1712.

The Spanish king Charles III, now in possession of the Austrian lands and elected emperor under the name of Charles VI, sent Prince Eugene to London to help the Whigs, but he arrived too late and, after living in vain for two months in London, returned to solid ground to prepare for a future campaign , which had to be done alone, without Marlborough. Meanwhile, in January, conferences opened in Utrecht: they were conducted in the language of defeated France, although it was announced that this should not lead to any consequences, because the emperor’s representatives should speak only Latin; but it was difficult for a dead language to fight with a living one on such pressing issues. In France, hope was being revived that the terrible disasters were approaching an end: peace could no longer be concluded on such shameful terms as had been proposed before. A change took place inside France, which also reassured us about the future: the Dauphin, who had a completely colorless character, died; his eldest son Louis, Duke of Burgundy, a pupil of Fenelon, a young man of strict morality, religious, energetic and gifted, was proclaimed heir to the throne; His wife, Maria Adelaide of Savoy, delighted the French with her liveliness and charming treatment of everyone. But amid these delights and hopes, Maria Adelaide suddenly fell ill with smallpox and died at the age of twenty-six; A few days later the Dauphin, infected from his wife, followed her; Two of their little sons fell ill with the same disease, and the eldest died. These terrible blows that befell the royal French house slowed down the peace negotiations, because the opportunity arose for Philip V of Spain to take the French throne, and England began to demand guarantees that this would never happen. Philip V renounced the French crown forever. England demanded that Philip's abdication be sealed by the government officials of France; but Louis XIV could not hear about state ranks and answered: “The meaning that foreigners attribute to ranks is unknown in France.” He promised only to accept Philip’s abdication, ordered it to be made public and included in the protocols of parliament.

Treaties of Utrecht and Rastadt

Meanwhile, hostilities opened in May, and the French gained the upper hand because the British troops separated from the German and Dutch. St. John, now bearing the title of Viscount Bolingbroke, came to France to speed up peace negotiations. But not earlier than April 1713, peace was concluded between France, on the one hand, England, Holland, Portugal, Savoy and Prussia (separate from Germany) - on the other: France ceded to England in America the lands of Hudson Bay, the island of Newfoundland, the Acadia Peninsula and the right trade blacks in the Spanish colonies (assiento); in Europe, it suffered significant losses in Flanders and had to tear down the fortifications of Dunkirchen. France returned Savoy and Nice to Victor Amedee. Austria continued the war in 1713, but the successful actions of Marshal Villars, the last of the skilled generals of Louis XIV (for Vendome died shortly before), showed her the impossibility of fighting a war alone even with exhausted France. The Emperor authorized Prince Eugene to begin negotiations with Villars at Rastadt. Charles VI renounced the Spanish throne in favor of Philip V; but Spain was still divided: Austria received the Spanish Netherlands, which was considered necessary to secure Holland from France, and also received Spanish possessions in Italy, except for the island of Sicily, which was received by Victor Amedee of Savoy, who consequently took the title of King of Sicily; The electors of Bavaria and Cologne received their possessions back.

Borders of the main European states according to the Utrecht and Rastadt peace treaties

Results of the War of the Spanish Succession

Thus ended the famous War of the Spanish Succession, that is, the war of the Great European Union against France, which was striving for dominance. The power of Louis XIV was broken, just as the power of Charles V and Ferdinand II had been broken before. But the crushing of the power of both named Habsburgs resulted in the strengthening of France, while after the War of the Spanish Succession we do not see a single state in Western Europe that was stronger than all the others and could pose a danger to its freedom. France was humiliated and terribly exhausted, the Bourbon dynasty remained in Spain, and there was no shortage of people who, praising Louis XIV as a great king, pointed out that, be that as it may, he knew how to achieve his goal, to place and keep his grandson in prison. Spanish throne. But we see that, firstly, Louis was not at all to blame for this success and, secondly, France did not gain anything from it. Austria, apparently, received rich booty, but this booty, which increased the national diversity of the Habsburg monarchy, of course, did not add any strength to it, and the splendor of the victories of the foreign commander, Eugene of Savoy, gave only instant glory, for after the death of Eugene, the Austrian troops turned to the old habit of “being beaten,” as Suvorov put it.

Thanks to Marlborough, England advanced even more; but the power of this power was one-sided; due to its island position, it could not and did not want to take an active part in the affairs of the continent; it could not play the role of France in relation to it. At the conclusion of the Peace of Utrecht, the first example of the division of a state was set in the name of the political balance of Europe: the project of William III was carried out - Spain was divided. As for the unexpected end of the war, we have already seen that it cannot be attributed either to Queen Anne’s break with Marlborough, or to the intrigues of Oxford and Bolingbroke. The war ended because there was no longer any reason to wage it: France no longer posed a danger, and there was no point in starting a war in order to force Spain under the rule of not only one dynasty, but also one sovereign with Austria.

In October 1700, the childless Spanish King Charles II declared his great-nephew and grandson of Louis XIV, Philip of Anjou, heir to the throne. At the same time, however, the king set the condition that the Spanish possessions would never be annexed to the French crown. Louis accepted this will, but reserved for his grandson (who in April 1701, after the coronation in Madrid, took the name Philip V) the rights to the French throne and introduced French garrisons into some of the Belgian cities (Belgium at that time remained part of Spain).

This strengthening of France did not suit many states, in particular the eternal rivals of the French kings - the Habsburg emperors. The Austrian party nominated its contender for the Spanish throne - Archduke Charles of Habsburg, the son of Emperor Leopold I. England and Holland, which was in a union with it, were Austria's allies. The Prussian king, the Elector of Hanover, many imperial cities and petty princes of Upper Germany also joined the anti-French alliance. The Electors of Bavaria, Cologne, and the Dukes of Savoy and Mantua came out on the side of Louis XIV.

The war (known to history as the War of the Spanish Succession) began in the summer of 1701 with the invasion of the Duchy of Milan (which belonged to Philip as the Spanish king) by imperial troops under the command of Prince Eugene of Savoy.

Evgeny Savoysky is a highly remarkable figure. He belonged to the ancient family of the Dukes of Savoy; there were rumors that he was the son of Louis XIV, famous for his love. The “Sun King,” however, did not want to admit this fact, which is why Eugene fell out of favor and left France to seek his fortune in Austria. The prince was celebrated at lifting the Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683, and then went on to have a spectacular military career in the empire. By the age of 29, the talented commander had already received the title of field marshal.

At first, military operations in Italy developed successfully for France, but the betrayal of the Duke of Savoy in 1702 gave the Austrians an advantage. An English army led by the Duke of Marlborough landed in Belgium. At the same time, the war began in Spain, and the Portuguese king went over to the side of the coalition. This allowed the British and Archduke Charles to launch successful actions against Philip directly on the territory of his state.

Military actions also unfolded in Germany. The French occupied Lorraine, entered Nancy, and in 1703 moved to the banks of the Danube and began to threaten Vienna. The Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene hastened to the rescue of Emperor Leopold. In August 1704, the Battle of Gechstedt took place, in which the French were completely defeated. All of Southern Germany was then lost to them, which marked the beginning of a long series of failures. Bad news came to Versailles from all sides. In May 1706, the French were defeated at Ramilly, near Brussels, as a result of which they left Belgium. In Italy, they were defeated by Prince Eugene near Turin and retreated, abandoning all artillery. The Austrians took possession of the duchies of Milan and Mantua and entered Neapolitan territory. The British captured Sardinia, Minorca and the Balearic Islands. In June 1707, an Austrian army of forty thousand crossed the Alps, invaded Provence and besieged Toulon for five months. At the same time, things were going very badly in Spain: Philip was expelled from Madrid and miraculously retained the throne.

The war completely exhausted France. If the huge budget deficit affected the royal court, then what can we say about ordinary French people. Hunger and poverty worsened during the unprecedentedly harsh winter of 1709.

Back in May 1709, Louis XIV was already ready to make serious concessions to his opponents. He not only renounced the Bourbon claims to the Spanish crown, Strasbourg, Landau and Alsace, but was also ready to return French possessions in the Spanish Netherlands and even announced his readiness to support with money the coalition's fight against his grandson, the Spanish king Philip V. However, these negotiations were disrupted .

September 11, 1709 in the bloodiest battle of the 18th century. At Malplaquet on the Scheldt, the French were defeated by the combined forces of the Duke of Marlborough and the Prince of Savoy. The position of France seemed hopeless. In the summer of 1710, the Allies intensified their actions in Spain. In Catalonia they enjoyed full support, but the rest of Spain en masse supported Philip V. However, a year later the coalition began to disintegrate. England's foreign policy has changed. In 1710, the Tories, opponents of continuing the war, won the parliamentary elections. The position of the military party was weakened due to the disgrace of the Duchess of Marlborough, Queen Anne's maid of honor. The death of Emperor Joseph (the eldest son of Leopold I) and the election of Archduke Charles in his place created a real threat to the revival of the power of Charles V, that is, the unification of the empire with Spain. This did not suit England either. In July 1711, the British government entered into secret negotiations with France.

In January 1712, a peace congress opened in Utrecht, Holland, with the participation of France, England, Holland, Savoy, Portugal, Prussia and a number of other countries. The result of his work was the signing from April 11, 1713 to February 6, 1715 of a series of treaties, collectively called the “Peace of Utrecht”.

Philip V was recognized as King of Spain and its overseas possessions on the condition that he and his heirs renounced their rights to the French throne; Spain ceded Sicily to the Duchy of Savoy, and Gibraltar and the island of Minorca to Great Britain, and also gave it the right to a monopoly on the sale of African slaves in its American colonies; France gave the British a number of possessions in North America (Nova Scotia, the islands of St. Christopher and Newfoundland) and pledged to demolish the fortifications of Dunkirk; France recognized the title of “King of Prussia” for the Elector of Brandenburg, Prussia acquired Geldern and the County of Neufchatel, Portugal acquired some territories in the Amazon Valley; Holland received equal rights with England in trade with France.

Left without allies, the emperor tried to continue the war against France on his own. He and some German princes wanted to restore the terms of the Peace of Westphalia, return Strasbourg and Alsace, and ensure the privileges of the Catalans who had shown loyalty to Austria. The French rushed to the Rhine, took Landau, Freiburg and were preparing to invade Swabia. However, after the defeat inflicted on the Austrians by the French military leader Villars at Denen on July 24, 1712, and the French successes on the Rhine in the summer of 1713, the emperor was forced in November 1713 to agree to negotiations, which ended with the signing of the Treaty of Rastadt on May 6, 1714. Emperor Charles VI recognized the transfer of the Spanish crown to the Bourbons, receiving for this a significant part of Spain's European possessions - the Kingdom of Naples, the Duchy of Milan, the Spanish Netherlands and Sardinia; France returned the fortresses it had captured on the right bank of the Rhine, but retained all its previous territorial acquisitions in Alsace and the Netherlands; The Bavarian and Cologne electors received their possessions back. In addition, Louis XIV insisted on maintaining in the treaty the article of the Treaty of Peace of Ryswick, according to which Catholic worship was to continue in those Protestant cities in which the French had introduced it.

In general, the result of the war was the division of the huge Spanish power, which finally lost its great status, and the weakening of France, which dominated Europe in the second half of the 17th century. At the same time, the maritime and colonial power of Great Britain in Central and Southern Europe increased significantly, and the position of the Austrian Habsburgs strengthened; and in Northern Germany the influence of Prussia increased.

France
Spain
Bavaria
Catalans Commanders Duke of Marlborough
Evgeniy Savoysky
Margrave of Baden
Earl of Galway Marshall Villar
Duke of Berwick
Duke of Vendôme
Duke of Villeroy
Maximilian II Strengths of the parties 220,000 450,000

War of the Spanish Succession(-) is a major European conflict that began in 1701 after the death of the last Spanish Habsburg king, Charles II. Charles bequeathed all his possessions to Philip, Duke of Anjou - grandson of the French king Louis XIV - who later became Philip V of Spain. The war began with an attempt by the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I to protect his dynasty's right to Spanish possessions. When Louis XIV began to more aggressively expand his territories, some European powers (mainly England and the Dutch Republic) sided with the Holy Roman Empire to prevent the rise of France. Other states joined the alliance against France and Spain to try to gain new territories or protect existing ones. The war took place not only in Europe, but also in North America, where the local conflict was called Queen Anne's War by English colonists.

The war lasted more than a decade and featured the talents of such famous commanders as the Duke of Villars and the Duke of Berwick (France), the Duke of Marlborough (England) and Prince Eugene of Savoy (Austria). The war ended with the signing of the Utrecht (1713) and Rastatt (1714) agreements. As a result, Philip V remained king of Spain, but lost the right to inherit the French throne, which broke the dynastic union of the crowns of France and Spain. The Austrians received most of the Spanish possessions in Italy and the Netherlands. As a result, French hegemony over continental Europe ended, and the idea of ​​the balance of power, reflected in the Utrecht Agreement, became part of the international order.

Prerequisites

Venice declared its neutrality, despite pressure from the powers, but could not prevent foreign armies from violating its sovereignty. Pope Innocent XII initially supported Austria, but after some concessions from Louis XIV - France.

First battles (1701-1703)

The main theaters of combat in Europe were the Netherlands, Southern Germany, Northern Italy and Spain itself. At sea, the main events took place in the Mediterranean basin.

For Spain, devastated and falling into poverty, the outbreak of war became a real disaster. The state treasury was empty. The government had neither ships nor army; in 1702, with difficulty, it was possible to gather two thousand soldiers for an expedition to Italy. The dilapidated fortresses contained extremely insignificant garrisons, which became the reason for the loss of Gibraltar in 1704. The soldiers, who had neither money, nor weapons, nor clothing, fled without any remorse, and France had to use its fleets and armies to protect the vast Spanish possessions.

Military operations began in the spring of 1701. Victor Amadeus II, at the head of the Piedmontese troops, moved towards Milan, entered it without difficulty, Mantua also surrendered to him. The French tried to prevent Austrian troops from entering Italy at all, but Eugene of Savoy nevertheless led the army through the Alpine passes and in June reached the rear of the French near Verona. In July 1701, he defeated the French at Carpi and captured Mirandola and Modena. On September 1, the Spaniards attacked him in the town of Chiari, but retreated after a short battle.

In the spring of 1702, England sent a squadron to Portugal and forced King Pedro II to terminate the treaty with France. On October 22, 1702, 30 English and 20 Dutch ships under the command of Admiral George Rook broke through the log barriers, broke into Vigo Bay and landed 4 thousand people here. landing A significant part of the armada that delivered silver from Spanish possessions in America was sunk, some of the silver was captured, and some sank along with the ships.

The following year, Marlborough captured Bonn and forced the Elector of Cologne to flee, but he failed to take Antwerp, and the French were successful in Germany. The combined Franco-Bavarian army under the command of Villars and Maximilian of Bavaria defeated the imperial armies of the Margrave of Baden and Hermann Stirum, but the timidity of the Bavarian Elector did not allow an attack on Vienna, which led to Villars' resignation. French victories in southern Germany continued under Villars' replacement, Camille de Tallard. The French command made serious plans, including the capture of the Austrian capital by the combined forces of France and Bavaria as early as next year.

In May 1703, a nationwide uprising broke out in Hungary, in June it was led by the nobleman Ferenc Rakoczi II, a descendant of Transylvanian princes; by the end of the year, the uprising covered the entire territory of the Kingdom of Hungary and diverted large Austrian forces to the east. But in May 1703, Portugal went over to the side of the anti-French coalition, and in September, Savoy. At the same time, England, having previously observed Philip's attempts to cling to the Spanish throne, now decided that its commercial interests would be safer under the reign of Archduke Charles.

From Blindheim to Malplaquet (1704-1709)

In mid-March 1704, Archduke Charles arrived in Lisbon on 30 allied ships with the Anglo-Austrian army, but the British attack from Portugal on Spain was unsuccessful. In 1704, the French planned to use Villeroy's army in the Netherlands to hold off Marlborough's advance while the Franco-Bavarian army of Tallard, Maximilian Emmanuel and Ferdinand de Marcin advanced on Vienna. In May 1704, Hungarian rebels (Kurucs) threatened Vienna from the east, Emperor Leopold was about to move to Prague, but the Hungarians still retreated without receiving French support.

Marlborough, ignoring the desire of the Dutch to leave troops in the Netherlands, led the combined English and Dutch troops south to Germany, and at the same time Eugene of Savoy with the Austrian army moved from Italy to the north. The purpose of these maneuvers was to eliminate the threat to Vienna from the Franco-Bavarian army. Having united, the troops of Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy entered the battle of Blindheim with the French army of Tallard (August 13). The Allies won a victory that cost France another ally - Bavaria left the war; The French alone lost 15 thousand people as prisoners, including Marshal Tallard; France had not seen such defeats since the time of Richelieu; at Versailles they were very surprised that “God took the side of heretics and usurpers.” In August, England achieved an important success: with the help of Dutch troops, the English landing of George Rooke took the fortress of Gibraltar in just two days of fighting. On August 24, off Malaga, the Prince of Toulouse, the natural son of Louis XIV, attacked the British fleet, receiving orders to recapture Gibraltar at any cost. However, the battle ended in a draw, both sides did not lose a single ship; for Rooke it was more important to preserve the fleet for the defense of Gibraltar than to win the battle, and thus the Battle of Malaga ended in favor of the British. After this battle, the French fleet completely abandoned major operations, essentially ceding the ocean to the enemy and only defending itself in the Mediterranean Sea.

After the Battle of Blindheim, Marlborough and Eugene separated again and returned to their respective fronts. In 1705, the situation on them practically did not change: Marlborough and Villeroy maneuvered in the Netherlands, and Eugene and Vendôme in Italy.

The British fleet appeared off the coast of Catalonia and attacked Barcelona on September 14, 1705; On October 9, the Earl of Peterborough took possession of the city; the majority of Catalans, out of hatred of Madrid, went over to his side and recognized Charles of Habsburg as king. Part of Aragon, almost all of Valencia, Murcia and the Balearic Islands openly sided with the pretender; in the west, the Allies besieged Badajoz.

In February 1706 Peterborough entered Valencia; Philip V marched on Barcelona, ​​but the siege ended in heavy defeat. On 23 May 1706, Marlborough defeated Villeroy's forces at the Battle of Ramilly in May and captured Antwerp and Dunkirk, driving the French out of most of the Spanish Netherlands. Prince Eugene was also successful; On September 7, after Vendôme left for the Netherlands to support the divided army operating there, Eugene, together with the Duke of Savoy Victor Amadeus, inflicted heavy losses on the French troops of the Duke of Orleans and Marcin in the Battle of Turin, which allowed them to be expelled from all of Northern Italy by the end of the year.

After the French were driven out of Germany, the Netherlands and Italy, Spain became the center of military activity. In 1706, the Portuguese general Marquis Minas launched an attack on Spain from Portugal: in April he took Alcantara, then Salamanca and entered Madrid in June. But Karl Habsburg never managed to enter the capital; Philip V moved his residence to Burgos and declared that he would “rather shed his blood to the last drop than renounce the throne.” The Castilians were outraged that the eastern provinces and the heretical English wanted to impose their king on them. A popular movement began everywhere in Spain, the nobility took up arms, food supplies and monetary contributions began to flow into the French camp from all sides. The Spanish rebelled west of Madrid and cut Charles off from Portugal. In October 1706, the allies, not seeing support from anywhere, left Madrid, and Philip of Bourbon, with the help of the Duke of Berwick (the illegitimate son of the English king James II), returned to the capital. The allies retreated to Valencia, and Barcelona became the residence of Charles Habsburg until 1711.

The Earl of Galway made a new attempt to take Madrid in the spring of 1707, advancing from Valencia, but Berwick inflicted a crushing defeat on him in the Battle of Almansa on April 25, 10 thousand British were captured, Valencia opened the gates to the victors, Aragon - all of Spain - soon submitted to them, except for Catalonia, it again passed to Philip. After this, the war in Spain turned into a series of small clashes, which generally did not change the overall picture.

In 1707, the War of the Spanish Succession briefly overlapped with the Great Northern War, which was taking place in Northern Europe. The Swedish army of Charles XII arrived in Saxony, where they forced Elector Augustus II to renounce the Polish throne. The French and the anti-French coalition sent their diplomats to Charles's camp. Louis XIV sought to set Charles up for war with Emperor Joseph I, who supported Augustus. However, Charles, who considered himself the defender of Protestant Europe, strongly disliked Louis for his persecution of the Huguenots and was not interested in waging a Western war. He concluded an agreement with the Austrians and headed to Russia.

The Duke of Marlborough developed a new plan that called for a simultaneous advance into France from Flanders and from Piedmont to Provence in order to force Louis XIV to make peace. In June 1707, 40 thousand. The Austrian army crossed the Alps, invaded Provence and besieged Toulon for several months, but the city was well fortified and the siege was unsuccessful. But in the summer of 1707, the imperial army marched through the Papal States to Naples and captured the entire Kingdom of Naples. Marlborough continued to operate in the Netherlands, where he captured French and Spanish fortresses one after another.

In 1708, Marlborough's army encountered the French, who were experiencing serious problems with their commanders: the Duke of Burgundy (grandson of Louis XIV) and the Duke of Vendôme often did not find a common language and made short-sighted decisions. The indecision of the Duke of Burgundy led to the fact that the troops of Marlborough and Eugene reunited, which allowed the Allied army to crush the French at the Battle of Oudenaarde on May 11, 1708, and then capture Bruges, Ghent, Lille. Meanwhile, the English fleet forced Sicily and Sardinia to recognize the power of the Habsburgs; On September 5, 1708, the British took the fortress of Port Mahon on the island of Minorca, where the French garrison had been held all this time. From that moment on, England became the strongest power in the Mediterranean. The Austrians almost simultaneously inflicted a heavy defeat on the Hungarian rebels in the battle of Trencin; Since the new Emperor Joseph I easily granted amnesty to the rebels and tolerated Protestants, the Hungarians began to go over to the side of the Habsburgs en masse.

Disastrous failures at Oudenaarde and Lille brought France to the brink of defeat and forced Louis XIV to agree to negotiate peace; he sent his foreign minister, the Marquis de Torcy, to meet Allied commanders in The Hague. Louis agreed to give Spain and all its territories to the allies, with the exception of Naples, expel the Old Pretender from France and recognize Anne as Queen of England. Moreover, he was ready to finance the expulsion of Philip V from Spain. However, the allies put forward even more humiliating conditions for France: they demanded the cession of French possessions in the West Indies and South America, and also insisted that Louis XIV send an army to remove his own grandson from the throne. Louis rejected all conditions and decided to fight to the end. He turned to the French people for help, his army was replenished with thousands of new recruits.

In 1709, the Allies attempted three offensives against France, two of which were minor and served as a distraction. A more serious offensive was organized by Marlborough and Eugene, who were advancing towards Paris. They faced the forces of the Duke of Villars at the Battle of Malplaque (September 11, 1709), the bloodiest battle of the war. Although the Allies defeated the French, they lost thirty thousand killed and wounded, and their opponents only fourteen thousand. Mons was in the hands of the united army, but it was no longer able to build on its success. The battle became a turning point in the war, because despite the victory, the Allies, due to huge losses, did not have the strength to continue the offensive. Nevertheless, the overall situation of the Franco-Spanish coalition seemed hopeless: Louis XIV was forced to withdraw French troops from Spain, and Philip V was left with only a weak Spanish army against the combined forces of the coalition.

Last stages (1710-1714)

The Siege of Barcelona was the last major military engagement of the war.

In 1710, the Allies began their final campaign in Spain, with Charles of Habsburg's army marching from Barcelona to Madrid under the command of James Stanhope. On July 10, at Almenara, the British attacked and, after a fierce battle, defeated the Spaniards; Only the coming night saved the army of Philip V from complete destruction. On August 20, the Battle of Zaragoza took place between 25 thousand Spaniards and 23 thousand allies (Austrians, British, Dutch, Portuguese). On the right flank, the Portuguese retreated, but the center and left flank held out and defeated the enemy. Philip's defeat seemed final; he fled to Madrid and a few days later moved his residence to Valladolid.

Charles Habsburg occupied Madrid for the second time, but most of the nobility followed the “legitimate” Philip V to Valladolid, and the people almost openly showed hostility. Charles's position was very precarious, his army suffered from hunger; Louis XIV advised his grandson to renounce the throne, but Philip did not agree, and soon Charles retreated from Madrid, since he could not collect food for his army there. A new army arrived from France; Pursuing the retreating, on December 9, 1710, at Brihuega, Vendôme forced the capitulation of an English detachment that had run out of ammunition, and General Stanhope was also captured. Almost all of Spain came under the rule of Philip V, Charles retained only Barcelona and Tortosa with part of Catalonia. The alliance began to weaken and disintegrate. The Duke of Marlborough lost his political influence in London, falling out of favor due to a quarrel between his wife and Queen Anne. Moreover, the Whigs who supported the war effort were replaced by the Tories, supporters of peace. Marlborough, the only able English military commander, was recalled to Britain in 1711 and replaced by the Duke of Ormonde.

After the sudden death of his elder brother Joseph (17 April 1711), Archduke Charles, still in Barcelona, ​​was proclaimed Holy Roman Emperor under the name Charles VI. This meant that in the event of an Austrian victory, the Catholic empire of Charles V would be revived, which did not suit either the British or the Dutch at all. The British began secret one-sided negotiations with the Marquis de Torcy. The Duke of Ormond withdrew British troops from the allied army, and the French under Villars were able to regain many of the lost territories in 1712.

On July 24, 1712, Marshal Villar even defeated the allies at the Battle of Denen; Eugene of Savoy was unable to save the situation. After this, the Allies abandoned plans to attack Paris, and Eugene began to withdraw troops from the Spanish Netherlands. On September 11, 1712, the French fleet, which had not been active for a long time, attacked Rio de Janeiro, took a large indemnity from the city and returned safely to Europe.

Peace negotiations took place in 1713 and ended with the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht, in which Great Britain and Holland withdrew from the war with France. Barcelona, ​​which had declared its support for Archduke Charles in his struggle for the Spanish throne back in 1705, surrendered to the Bourbon army on September 11, 1714 after a long siege. Many leaders of the Catalan separatists were repressed, the ancient liberties - fueros - were burned by the hand of the executioner. The day of Barcelona's surrender is celebrated today as National Day of Catalonia. After this defeat, the Allies finally lost ground in Spain. Hostilities between France and Austria continued until the end of the year, until the signing of the Rastatt and Baden agreements. The War of the Spanish Succession was over, although Spain was technically at war with Austria until 1720.

Result

Division of Spanish possessions under the Treaty of Utrecht.

According to the Treaty of Utrecht, Philip was recognized as King Philip V of Spain, but he renounced the right to inherit the French throne, thereby breaking the union of the royal families of France and Spain. Philip retained Spain's overseas possessions, but

The war was caused by the lack of male offspring of the Spanish king Charles II of Habsburg and claims to the Spanish throne from the French king Louis XIV of Bourbon and the Holy Roman (Austrian) Emperor Leopold I of Habsburg. Louis proposed the candidacy of his grandson Philip of Anjou, and Leopold - his son Archduke Charles. Both contenders were the sons of Spanish princesses. England and Holland, hoping to seize the Spanish colonies or at least secure the preferential rights of their trading companies there, advocated the division of Spanish possessions.

In the end, Charles II bequeathed his throne to Philip of Anjou, hoping with the help of France to maintain the integrity of the Spanish empire. In 1700, after the death of Charles, Louis's son became King of Spain - Philip V. England and Holland expressed their readiness to recognize his rights to the throne, provided that there was no personal union between France and Spain.

However, Louis in February 1701 declared Philip heir to the French crown, and he himself actually began to rule Spain. That same year, fighting began between Austrian and French troops in Italy.

In September, England and Holland entered into an alliance with Austria and in 1702 declared war on the king of France. Most of the German principalities, Denmark and Portugal joined the anti-French coalition. Savoy, which was at first an ally of France, changed front and joined the Anglo-Austro-Dutch alliance, which was also supported by the authorities of some Spanish provinces that did not recognize the rights of Philip of Anjou. In fact, the War of the Spanish Succession was the struggle of the main European states against French hegemony on the continent.

The Anglo-Dutch troops were commanded by Duke John of Marlborough, and the Austrian troops were commanded by Generalissimo Prince Eugene of Savoy. In 1704 they defeated French troops.

In 1706, the French besieged the capital of the Duchy of Savoy, Turin. On May 26, two armies approached the city: Prince Philip of Orleans, numbering 18 thousand people, and General Louis de Feuillade, which had 27 thousand soldiers. On June 17, the Duke of Savoy left the city and joined the army of Eugene of Savoy. They moved to the aid of the Turin garrison, which defended itself bravely and skillfully under the command of General Downe, having lost 5 thousand people killed, wounded and died from disease during the siege.

After the Battle of Turin, all of Northern Italy came under Austrian control. In 1708, the French were defeated by them at Oudenaarde, and the British conquered the Spanish island of Minorca and. Archduke Charles, with the help of the British fleet, landed in Spain. He was recognized as their king of the province of Catalonia and Aragon.

On September 11, 1709, the bloodiest battle of the war took place near the village of Malplaquet.

After the victory at Malplaquet, the allied forces captured the fortress of Mons in October 1709.

After the Battle of Malplaquet, the French were so weakened that the possible strengthening of Austria in the event of its unification with Spain now seemed more dangerous for the British and Dutch. England and Holland began to gradually curtail their participation in the war. England formally withdrew from the war in 1711.

The defeat of the army of Eugene of Savoy at the Battle of Denen in 1712 also played into the hands of the French. But France could no longer turn the tide of the war.

The War of the Spanish Succession ended with two peace treaties - the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 and the Treaty of Rastadt in 1714.

Changing borders following the war.

According to the terms Peace of Utrecht England and Prussia, and according to the Peace of Rastadt, Austria recognized the rights of Philip of Bourbon to the Spanish throne, but on the condition of renouncing the union of France and Spain. France, in turn, recognized the right of the Electors of Hanover to inherit the English throne after the death of the childless Queen Anne Stuart. The Kingdom of Savoy received Sicily. Spanish possessions in the Netherlands and Italy went to Austria, Gibraltar and the island of Menorca from the Balearic Islands group went to England, and, in addition, right asiento- monopoly of the import of black slaves into Spanish possessions in America, as well as a number of French islands in the West Indies and North America.

The War of the Spanish Succession marked the end of French hegemony in Europe. France was extremely exhausted by the war and throughout the 18th century was unable to restore its former leading position. As a result of the war, the position of Austria on the European continent and England as a leading maritime and colonial power was strengthened.

Source - "100 Great Battles", M., 2001.

Last updated 2003

War of the Spanish Succession (1701 - 1714).

This is a war between France and Spain on the one hand, and the opposing coalition led by the Austrian Habsburgs and Great Britain on the other. The cause of the war was the lack of a direct heir to the last representative of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty, Charles II, who died in 1700. As a result of the war, the Spanish throne went to Philip of Bourbon (grandson of the French king Louis XIV), but the participants in the anti-Bourbon coalition received significant territorial compensation.

The beginning of the war.

The late Spanish King Charles II of Habsburg was related to the French King Louis XIV and the Holy Roman Emperor, Archduke Leopold I of Habsburg of Austria. Spain at that time owned most of Italy and the Southern Netherlands in Europe, territories in South, Central and North America, Africa, as well as the Canary, Antilles, and Philippine Islands. The choice of the new Spanish king largely determined the balance of power in Europe. Therefore, the struggle of coalitions for the right to elevate their candidacy to the Spanish throne was called the War of the Spanish Succession.

One of the opposing coalitions was led by France, on whose side were Spain, Bavaria, the Electorate of Cologne, Savoy (which soon went over to the enemy’s side), Parma and Mantua. Another coalition led by Austria, England and Holland also included Denmark, Portugal, Prussia and other states of the Holy Roman Empire.

In November 1700, after the death of Charles II, Louis XIV proclaimed his grandson Philip V, Duke of Anjou, king of Spain. European states resolutely opposed the actions of Louis XIV aimed at uniting France and Spain under one crown. On September 7, 1701, England, Holland and Austria concluded the “Grand Alliance” - a military alliance against France. The Anglo-Dutch troops were led by the Duke of Marlborough, the troops of the “Holy Roman Empire” were led by Prince Eugene of Savoy. Military operations were carried out simultaneously in the Spanish Netherlands (modern Belgium), Spain, Italy, the Rhineland, in the colonies and on the seas.

The fighting began in June 1701 with the invasion of Austrian troops (20 thousand infantry and 12 thousand cavalry) led by Eugene of Savoy into Northern Italy. Thanks to a bold maneuver, Austrian troops reached the French rear near Verona, but then the activity subsided, and success could not be consolidated. A 50,000-strong French army pushed back the Austrians.

French defeats.

In 1703, in connection with the start of the liberation movement of Ferenc II Rakoczi in Hungary against the Habsburgs, part of the imperial troops was recalled to suppress it. The Anglo-Austrian coalition sought to remove France's ally, Bavaria, from the war. A major battle took place on August 13, 1704 near Hochstedt. The united armies of the Austrians and British, numbering 60 thousand people, defeated the Franco-Bavarian troops (56 thousand people), turning the tide of the war. The losses of the Franco-Bavarian troops amounted to 28 thousand people, and the Anglo-Austrian army - 12.5 thousand people.

The imperial army, led by Archduke Charles, began to attempt to invade Spain, but it was not until May 1704 that Anglo-Austrian troops managed to enter its territory. On August 4, 1704, the English fleet captured the fortress of Gibraltar, which is the key to the Mediterranean Sea. The armies of the Grand Alliance occupied a number of Spanish provinces and entered Madrid in June 1706.

In Italy, the largest battle took place on September 7, 1706 near Turin. The 60 thousand French who besieged the city were unable to take it by storm; the Austrian army of 36 thousand people managed to break the siege of the city and defeat the enemy. The battle showed the ineffectiveness of the uniform, linear battle formation of the French against the concentrated attack of the Austrian troops. Having lost 40 thousand people in the battle, the French were forced to leave Italy.
In the Spanish Netherlands, Marlborough's army was active. At the Battle of Ramini on May 23, 1706, the British defeated an 80,000-strong French army, whose losses amounted to 20,000 people.

In July 1707, Austro-British troops besieged Toulon. The French army was exhausted by battles, the country was exhausted, the treasury was empty. Louis XIV asked for peace. But due to the fact that the demands of the victors turned out to be unacceptable for France (renunciation of the Spanish Netherlands, Milan, French possessions in the West Indies and South America, consent to the elevation of Charles Habsburg to the Spanish throne), Louis XIV refused to fulfill them and resumed military actions.

End of the war. Peace treaties.

After the defeat at Malplaquet on September 11, 1709, the position of France seemed hopeless. But by this time the anti-French coalition began to disintegrate. One of the reasons is a change in England's political course under the influence of Russia's successes in the Northern War of 1700-21. In 1710, the Tories came to power in England, with the goal of rapprochement with France and the fight against Russia. In addition, in London it became known about negotiations between Peter I, Louis XIV and King Philip V of Spain on concluding an alliance treaty. Under these conditions, England ceased hostilities; Holland, Prussia, Savoy, and Portugal followed suit.

Left alone, Austria tried to continue the fight, but in July 1712, in the Denen region (a city in northern France), the French army of Marshal C. Villars defeated the outnumbered imperial army of Eugene of Savoy. On July 24, Villars, with 8 infantry columns, having cavalry in reserve, attacked Denen and captured it. Two-thirds of the 12,000-strong garrison of Denen died in the battle, while the losses of French troops amounted to 2,000 people. The fall of Denen put Eugene of Savoy in a hopeless situation: his troops began to retreat from the Spanish Netherlands. Villars' victory forced the Habsburgs to end the war.

In 1713 the Peace of Utrecht was concluded between France and Spain on the one hand, and England, Holland, Prussia, Savoy and Portugal on the other, and in 1714 in Rastatt a peace treaty was concluded between France and the “Holy Roman Empire”. As a result, Philip V was recognized as King of Spain and its colonies, subject to the condition that his heirs renounce their rights to the French throne. England received significant benefits from the war: it received the fortress of Gibraltar, the island of Minorca in the Mediterranean Sea, French possessions in North America (the lands around Hudson Bay, the island of Newfoundland), in addition, the right of asiento from Spain. Holland received the right to maintain military garrisons in the fortresses of Namur, Tourn, Ypres and others. The Spanish Netherlands, the southern part of Italy, Sardinia, part of Tuscany, Milan and Mantua were annexed to Austria, and territories on the Rhine were returned. Sicily went to Savoy. As a result of the war, France lost its former power and influence in Europe. The strategy of both sides was characterized by indecision, the absence of a unified war plan and a unified command of the coalition forces. The main method of strategic action was marches and counter-marches, defense and siege of fortresses; Field battles were rarely fought. The total number of killed and wounded in the war was about 600 thousand people. The strengthening of English maritime and colonial power was the main result of the War of the Spanish Succession.