Fifteen Years War (An Orange Dynasty)

The Fifteen Years War (1710 - 1725) was a major conflict that involved many of the world's leading powers and affected Europe, North America and South America, as well as parts of Africa, the Middle East, India and Indonesia. Beginning as a war primarily to decide who would sit upon the Polish-Lithuanian throne, the struggle cascaded into a more general conflict between the 'Grand Alliance' of maritime powers (England and the Dutch Republic) and the Holy Roman Empire, against a coalition between the Bourbon kingdoms of Spain and France, alongside their allies.

With the War of the Spanish Succession ending conclusively for the Grand Alliance, several issues still remained in its aftermath, particularly checks on the ambitions of the French king, Louis XIV. In 1709, three years after the end of the previous conflict the French monarchy began to bolster the Swedish-appointed King of Poland-Lithuania, Stanisław I, supporting Swedish soldiers in their campaign to cement the new king's control over his nation, as well as ward off Russian attacks. Fearful of the perceived French-aligned state now lying on his eastern borders, the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I ordered his armies to sweep into Poland-Lithuania and support the outed former monarch, Augustus II precipitating a decline in French relations that ultimately led to the outbreak of war in March 1710.

Realizing that both its east and west was open to France and its allies, the HRE hastily resembled their wartime Grand Alliance with the Anglo-Dutch power of William III, their anti-French intervention quickly being met with aggression from Sweden which entered the war on Louis XIV's side later in the year after the declaration of war by Austria on France. With Europe flaring up, a number of alliances in Eurasia were built up over the proceeding 15 years as the armies of almost all major nations clashed on nearly every continent in a drawn out struggle to determine which nations would have influence in the aftermath of the war.