The War of the Spanish Succession, 1701–1714

James Falkner

• Editorial: Pen & Sword Military
• Año: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781473872899
• Categoría: History
• Categoría: European History

How the death of a childless monarch sparked a bloody conflict that raged across Europe and beyond. The War of the Spanish Succession, fought between 1701 and 1714 to decide who should inherit the Spanish throne, was a conflict on an unprecedented scale, stretching across most of western Europe, the high seas, and the Americas. Yet this major subject is not well known and little understood. James Falkner's absorbing new study fills that gap. In a clear and perceptive narrative, he describes and analyzes the complex political maneuvers and a series of military campaigns, which also involved the threat posed by Ottoman Turks in the east and Sweden and Russia in the north. Fighting took place not just in Europe but in the Americas and Canada, and on the high seas. All European powers, large and small, were involved—France, Spain, Great Britain, Holland, Austria and Portugal were the major players. The end result of over a decade of outright war was a French prince firmly established on the throne in Madrid and a division of the old Spanish empire. More notably though, French power, previously so dominant, was curbed for almost ninety years.

Chapter 1

This is the King of Spain

‘He lingered till November 1700.’¹

In November 1659, long before the ill-health of an invalid king in Madrid became the matter for international concern, peace had come to the warring nations of France and Spain with the conclusion of the Treaty of the Pyrenees; this welcome event coincided with an agreement for the marriage of the young French King, Louis XIV, and the Spanish Infanta Maria-Theresa, the eldest daughter of King Philip IV. The details of both the treaty and the marriage were confirmed and ratified at Toulouse and Madrid at the end of the same month. As a part of the marriage settlement. Maria-Theresa renounced any claim she or any children she bore might have to succeed to the Spanish throne, receiving in recognition of this renunciation a dowry set at the fabulous sum of 500,000 gold crowns, all to be paid within eighteen months of the date of the marriage. The royal couple were married on 9 June 1660, at Bayonne close to the Franco-Spanish border. Within twelve months, Louis XIV was sounding opinion in Madrid whether the renunciation of the succession to the throne was valid, and in particular that any child or grandchild of Maria-Theresa might, despite the explicit terms of the marriage settlement, be eligible. Philip IV proved incapable of paying the huge dowry for his daughter, which might well have been expected, and this gave Louis XIV the excuse he needed to embark on a course of territorial aggrandisement at the expense of Spain. It also could be argued, just, that the failure to pay the money made the renunciations in the marriage settlement ineligible, but this was a weak and highly debateable point, as the renunciations had not been dependent upon actual payment of the huge dowry. The seeds of future trouble had, however, been sown.

An heir to the Spanish throne was born to Philip IV and his Austrian-born second wife Marie-Ann, on 6 November 1661, and was named Carlos, a sickly and weak child from the start who was not expected to live all that long. Louis XIV, meanwhile, embarked on a war to seize Spanish territory in the Low Countries, claiming his wife’s ‘rights’ and unpaid dowry in the matter as rather spurious justification for his aggression. The king also concluded a confidential treaty with Emperor Leopold I of Austria who, like Louis XIV, was a grandson of Philip III of Spain. They would divide the Spanish inheritance and empire should, as widely anticipated, the young Spanish king, who had succeeded his father in 1665 at the tender age of four, not live long or be survived by an heir of his own. In effect, the treaty terms allowed for the emperor to succeed to the Spanish throne, together with the Spanish-held territories in Italy and the Indies, while Louis XIV would gain the southern Netherlands for France. In this way, the French king had no fear of renewed Habsburg encirclement such as had been achieved by Emperor Charles V many years before; he would, however, have gained extensive new territories in Flanders, Brabant, Guelders and Luxembourg. Understandably, Spanish opinion in the matter was not taken into account, and the whole arrangement was spoiled when Carlos II lived on much longer than had been thought likely. Diplomatic tensions, and intermittent wars waged by Louis XIV in order to expand his territories on the north-eastern borders of France, complicated the scene, and in growing concern the emperor sought the aid of England and Holland, the Maritime Powers as they were known, to counterbalance growing French power and influence.

William of Orange, the Dutch Stadtholder, replaced James II as King of England in 1688, becoming by Act of Parliament William III and ruling with his wife Mary, the elder daughter of the exiled king. The following year, England and Holland agreed to guarantee that Emperor Leopold should succeed Carlos II if he had no heir. The emperor’s position was strengthened by the marriage in that same year of his sister-in-law, Maria Ana of Neuburg, to the feeble Spanish king, but ruinously expensive war came to western Europe in 1689, which trundled aimlessly on and was only brought to a tired end with the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697. In the process, an apparently neat solution to the tricky problem of the succession had been devised by Louis XIV and his old opponent, William III, without, it should be said once again, consulting the Spanish nobility or their people on a matter of such importance to them. A Partition Treaty, one element of the negotiations to bring an end to the Nine Years War, was agreed between France, Holland and England in September 1698, and provided that the young son of the Elector of Bavaria, Joseph-Ferdinand Wittelsbach, should succeed to the throne in Madrid once Carlos was in his grave. The electoral prince was the grandson of Emperor Leopold I, who would be expected to set aside his own claim and that of his immediate family, as would Louis XIV and his own son and three grandsons. Joseph-Ferdinand was, in effect, a neutral choice, being the grandson of Carlos II’s younger sister, Margareta-Theresa, who had been the first wife of Emperor Leopold. In this way, by putting Joseph-Ferdinand on the throne once it became vacant it was intended that neither Imperial Austria or France would gain too great an accretion of power.

The French king’s eldest son, the Dauphin, born of Carlos II’s older half-sister Maria-Theresa, would receive Sicily, Naples and certain Italian territories, and Archduke Charles of Austria, the emperor’s younger son by his second wife, would get Luxembourg and the Milanese region in northern Italy, as compensation for any disappointed hopes they may have. England and Holland would have better trading rights in the wide Spanish Empire of the Indies; the French king wrote to the Comte de Tallard, his ambassador in London:

I have examined with great attention all the problems that one could foresee either by suspending the negotiations with the King of England or concluding them. The first seems to me to be the greater [danger]. In breaking with that Prince we should indirectly decide to force him to enter relations with Bavaria, and the other princes of the Empire … it would be easy for him to draw out their ideas and treaties could be signed during his stay in Holland.²

Louis XIV wanted no more wars with powerful coalitions, the experience of the hard years between 1688 to 1697 had made him wary, and in any case his treasury would probably not bear renewed conflict. ‘When one begins a war’ he added ‘one does not know the finish.’ By this treaty of partition, judiciously arrived at but without reference to the Spanish king and nobility, England and Holland also hoped to avert complications which could arise from whatever Carlos II might do about the inheritance. In this way, a new king acceptable to both Versailles and Vienna, and to the Maritime Powers, would be on the throne, and the Spanish Empire would be divided on terms which might in a favourable light be seen as being equitable between the rival parties.

Emperor Leopold was ill at ease when he learned of what was intended, recalling his earlier agreement with William III, and believing that far too much was being given away without reference to him. Equally unhappy were the Spanish nobility, whose firm intent was that the empire should not be divided at all, certainly not at the wish of foreign rulers more concerned with their own interests than those of Spain. Accordingly, on 14 November 1698, Carlos II signed and declared a new will, leaving the throne to young Joseph-Ferdinand of Bavaria on his death, together with the Spanish Empire in its entirety. This declaration had a logic that defied argument and plainly had legitimacy, certainly more so than what had been proposed under the recently concluded Partition Treaty. A sensible and workable solution, it seemed, had been reached by the Spanish monarch without reference to the opinions of the other powers in western Europe.

All might yet have been well, for despite the emperor’s ill-feeling over the issue it seemed unlikely that he could over-turn the will, either by negotiation of by force, and Austria, with many distractions in eastern Europe, would not go to war over the issue without the active participation of firm allies. Then fate intervened dramatically, and the young Bavarian prince, heir now to the vast Spanish Empire, suddenly caught smallpox while visiting the Spanish Netherlands where his father was governor-general, and died on 6 February 1699. Dark suspicions were raised at this unexpected and curious turn of events, perhaps so fortunate for Austrian hopes of gaining the throne in Madrid, but nothing could be proved, and there it was. A convenient solution to a thorny problem had now passed by, and the whole matter was again alive and would soon trouble Europe for another fifteen years.

Once more Louis XIV and William III were active over the question, and a second Partition Treaty, agreed on 11 June 1699, named the young Archduke Charles of Austria, second son of the emperor, as heir to the throne, as long as Spain was never to be united with the Empire. The Dauphin of France would receive Sicily, Naples and the Milanese as recompense for setting aside his own claim. Typically, Emperor Leopold, despite the glittering offer for his young son, was still reluctant to agree, concerned at such a growth in French power and influence in Italy, and he perversely refused to ratify the new treaty, England, France and Holland doing so alone on 25 March 1700, No amount of persuasion by England and Holland would move him, as his mind was set on gaining territories in Italy. ‘Our condition would be very wretched if we were to give France what she asks.’³ In this respect Leopold might be thought that he had played his hand high and that he lost equally high, for the terms were patently generous to Austria, which for the moment was not in conflict with the Ottoman Turks, and the prospect of war with France loomed as a result of his stubborn stand, but all that was yet to be seen with any clarity. The French king was alert to the danger, and he noted that an offer that had been made to his distant cousin Duke Victor-Amadeus II of Savoy, to transfer certain territories around Nice on the border with France and receive in their place the Duchy of Milan, had not been accepted. The duke could also advance a claim to the throne in Madrid based on his grandmother, the Spanish Infanta Catherina Michelle having been the daughter of King Philip II of Spain, and whose dowry was, just like that of Marie-Theresa, never paid. Victor-Amadeus appeared to be playing for time, that was his nature, and although the French offer had advantages for Savoy he was, like the emperor, perhaps aiming for higher stakes, ‘There is reason to believe,’ Louis XIV wrote, ‘that the Duke of Savoy, seeing himself the immediate successor to the Archduke [Charles] will lie up with the Emperor to obtain execution of the testament and the favour of the Emperor as soon as my grandchildren will have abandoned the new right that they could obtain from the testament.’⁴

A confidential clause in the treaty of partition allowed for the emperor to accept the provisions it contained no more than two months after the terms were agreed. Leopold did not take the opportunity to do so, and this clumsiness gave Louis XIV the chance, in the meantime, to accept the provisions of any new will in favour of his own son or grandson, without seeming to break his word over the treaty. Despite this legal nicety, Louis XIV in the meanwhile was certainly engaged in something of a double game, and his ambassador in Madrid, the Marquis de Blécourt, was exerting what influence he could, including the payment of large sums of money, to promote French interests, and in particular that of the king’s second grandson, the seventeen-year-old Philippe, Duc d’Anjou, as an eligible successor to Carlos II. In this endeavour he was assisted by the not-unrealistic belief that the best, perhaps the only, way to maintain the Spanish Empire undivided was by means of harnessing French interest in doing so. The pro-Austrian faction in the court, encouraged by the king’s wife who was the sister-in-law of Emperor Leopold, failed to prosper in part because of the overbearing manner of the imperial emissaries in their dealings with the proud Spanish nobles. The French king, however, was doubtful of the likelihood of success for his endeavours:

The King of Spain has always opposed the legitimate rights of my son. The mastery of the Queen over his mind and the attachment that she has for the Emperor’s interests have been such that it is not surprising that I demand assurances before listening to any proposition [that d’Anjou would be named heir to the throne] so contrary to the conduct of the King of Spain throughout his life.⁵

In fact, the Council of State in Madrid had met in June 1700 and voted in favour of the French aspirant to the throne; Carlos II did not attend the council, so that the vote should be seen as impartial. The following month the Pope declared himself to be in favour of Anjou, as being the choice most likely to ensure the continuance of peace in western Europe, but stressed that the opinion of the Council of State had already indicated the best way forward.

As the ailing Carlos II sank towards his deathbed, the Archbishop of Toledo, prominent in the pro-French faction at the Spanish court, took charge of the king’s sick chamber and had the German-born queen barred from entering. A new will, naming the Duc d’Anjou as successor with an undivided empire was drawn up, and completed on 7 October 1700, and the detailed provisions in the fifty-nine articles contained in the document were promptly conveyed in confidence to Louis XIV. The renunciations made by his mother, Anne of Austria, and his own Spanish wife, Maria-Theresa, were annulled and the succession was fixed on d’Anjou, or his younger brother.

Recognising as a result of several consultations with Minsters of State and of Justice that the reason why Doña Ana and Doña Maria Teresa, Queens of Spain, my aunt and sister, renounced succession to those kingdoms was to avoid the prejudice of uniting them to the Crown of France, and recognising that, this fundamental motive no longer existing, the right of succession in accordance with the laws if those kingdoms, and that today this condition is fulfilled by the second son of the French Dauphin, therefore, in obedience to these laws, I declare my successor to be (should God take me without leaving heirs) the Duke of Anjou, second son of that Dauphin; and as such, I call him to the succession in all my Kingdoms and dominions, without exception of any part of them.⁶

The Duc de Berry, Louis XIV’s younger grandson, was named next in line of succession, and only then was Archduke Charles of Austria, second son of the emperor, mentioned as, in effect, the third and least favoured choice. In the unlikely event that all three of the young princes should refuse, then the throne was to be offered to the Duke of Savoy. In the meantime, a regency was to be established to govern Spain until the new king, whoever that might be, should arrive in Madrid. The difference between the non-partitioning provisions contained in the new will, and the terms of the newly-agreed treaty between France and the Maritime Powers, although not ratified in Vienna, were obvious with the potential for renewed conflict on a wide scale if great care was not taken by all concerned.

Aware of the offer contained in the will, Louis XIV awaited the arrival of the expected and fateful news with feelings of some unease. ‘I see that from all sides one confirms that which you wrote to me about the disposition that he [Carlos II] made by his testament in favour of one of my grandsons.’ The king wrote to his ambassador in Madrid:

Nothing makes it more evident than the secrecy that they keep on this subject with the Emperor’s ministers’ and at the same time by the fact that some of those who witnessed the signature of the testament have assured you of this dispo...