The War of Spanish Succession was an armed struggle between France and Austria (Holy Roman Empire) for the throne of Spain. It broke out in 1701, when the French king Louis XIV put his grandson Philip of Anjou on the throne of Spain. It ended in 1714, with the signature of the Treaties of Utrecht by which Philip was recognized king of Spain by Austria but Spain had to cede territory in Europe. Thus, the War of the Spanish Succession was a dynastic war between the French House of Bourbon and the Austrian House of Habsburg, which attempted to crown Charles, younger son of Leopold I, the Austrian Emperor. France was militarily supported by Spain and Bavaria, while Austria formed an alliance with England, the Dutch Republic, and a Spanish faction that preferred the Habsburg candidate for the throne.
The War of Spanish Succession was caused by France’s long struggle against the Hapsburgs for hegemony in Europe and by the emergence in the European political arena of the young capitalist states of England and the Netherlands. The pretext for the war was that the Habsburg Spanish king, Charles II, died childless without an heir. Monarchs who had offspring from marriages with Spanish princesses emerged as the principal pretenders to the Spanish throne (and the vast Spanish possessions in Europe and America): the Bourbon French king, Louis XIV, who was counting on obtaining the Spanish crown for his grandson Philip of Anjou, while the Habsburg emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Leopold I, who nominated his son, the archduke Charles, for the Spanish throne.
Under the pressure of French diplomacy, the King of Spain Charles II bequeathed the Spanish throne to Philip of Anjou, who ascended the throne and became Philip V in 1701 after the death of Charles. England and the Netherlands accepted this on condition that Spain would be independent of France and that any union whatsoever between them would be barred. But Louis XIV, by declaring Philip to be his heir (in February 1701), revealed his intention to unify Spain and France under one crown; Spain was in fact being governed by him. England and the Netherlands unsuccessfully sought trade privileges in the Spanish colonies. Therefore, in The Hague, on September 7, 1701, England and the Netherlands formed an alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor against France (the Grand Alliance) and in May 1702 declared war on France, although hostilities between Austrian and French troops had already begun in 1701 in Italy.
Hostilities took place simultaneously in the Spanish Netherlands, Spain, Italy, and western Germany and on the seas. The Anglo-Dutch troops were commanded by the Duke of Marlborough, and the Imperial Austrian troops were headed by Eugene of Savoy. French troops (headed by Marshals Claude de Villars, N. Catinat, and L. Vendôme) suffered a series of defeats: at Blenheim (Höchstädt; 1704), Ramillies (1706), Turin (1706), and Oudenarde (1708). The English fleet captured Gibraltar in 1704 and the island of Minorca in 1708. Archduke Charles, with the support of the English fleet, landed in Spain, proclaimed himself king of Spain, and seized Catalonia and Aragon. After the defeat of French troops at Malplaquet (1709), France’s position seemed hopeless. But a change in the international situation produced substantial changes in the position of various members of the anti-French coalition. In England, the Whigs, who had strongly advocated continuing the war against France, were replaced by the Tories, who were advocates of a rapprochement with France and whose objective was an active struggle against Russia. The accession of the Habsburg Charles VI to the Imperial throne in 1711, which opened up the possibility that the Austrian and Spanish possessions would be unified under the Habsburgs, contributed to the abandonment of the Holy Roman Empire by its allies.
The allies’ failures in Spain and the French commander Claude de Villars’ victory over the troops of Eugene of Savoy at Denain (1712) created the preconditions for a peace with France. Negotiations between the allies (excluding the Empire) and France, which began in 1712 in Utrecht, ended with the signing of a peace treaty in the following year. The war between France and the Holy Roman Empire continued until 1714, when a treaty was concluded in Rastatt between Louis XIV on one side and the emperor and the German princes who supported him on the other (the Rastatt Peace of 1714).
As a result of the War of the Spanish Succession, Spain and its colonies were left to the Bourbon Philip V on condition that his heirs renounce their rights to the French throne. The Austrian Hapsburgs received Spanish possessions in the Netherlands (Belgium) and in Italy (including the Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of Naples). England achieved the most significant successes: the possessions it received were of great importance for strengthening its maritime and colonial power — Gibraltar and the island of Minorca in the Mediterranean Sea, territory in North America, and the monopolistic right of trade in African Negro slaves in Spanish colonies in America (asiento).
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| Above, the 1712 Battle of Denain, which was a French victory, securing the war on French terms. |