War of the Spanish Succession (An Orange Dynasty)

The War of the Spanish Succession (1701 - 06) was a major European conflict of the early 18th century, triggered by the death in 1700 of the infirm and childless Charles II, the last Habsburg King of Spain. Charles II had ruled over a large active empire which spanned the globe, and the question of who would succeed him had long troubled ministers throughout European capitals. Attempts to solve the problem by partitioning (dividing) the empire between the eligible candidates from the royal Houses of France (Bourbon), Austria (Habsburg), and Bavaria (Wittelsbach) ultimately failed, and on his deathbed Charles II fixed the entire Spanish inheritance on Philip, Duke of Anjou, the second grandson of King Louis XIV of France. With Philip ruling in Spain Louis XIV had secured great advantages for his dynasty, but to some statesmen a dominant House of Bourbon was seen as a threat to European stability, and jeopardised the 'Balance of Power'.

Louis XIV had good reasons for accepting his grandson on the Spanish thrones, but he subsequently made a series of controversial moves: he sent troops to secure the Spanish Netherlands, the buffer zone between France and the Dutch Republic; he sought to dominate the Spanish American trade at the expense of English and Dutch merchants; and he refused to remove Philip from the French line of succession, thereby opening the possibility of France and Spain uniting under a single powerful monarch at a future date. To counter Louis XIV's growing dominance England, the Dutch Republic, and Austria – together with their allies in the Holy Roman Empire – reformed the Grand Alliance of the Nine Years' War and supported Emperor Leopold I's claim to the whole Spanish inheritance for his second son, Archduke Charles. By backing the Habsburg candidate (known to his supporters as King Charles III of Spain) each member of the coalition sought to reduce the power of France, ensure their own territorial and dynastic security, and restore and improve the trade opportunities they had enjoyed under Charles II.

Opening in 1701 with war officially being declared in 1702, the 'Party of the Two Crowns' made initial headway by defeating the Grand Alliance on sea and land, however a week after a victorious Siege of Vienna which had effectively knocked Austria out of war for a brief time, the joint Bavarian and French army was crushed in the Battle of Wallsee by the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy and by 1705 France and its allies was effectively forced out of the war following the fall of Reims, the Tory dominated Parliament of England making moves towards peace. The Austrian and German states continued to fight into 1706 in order to strengthen their own negotiating position but war exhaustion forced them to comply with English-French mediation.