The Succession Crisis

On the first of November 1700, Charles II of Spain — the last Habsburg king, grotesquely deformed by two centuries of dynastic inbreeding, unable to chew his food, barely able to walk — died without a direct heir. His will, signed in his final hours, left the Spanish throne and its vast empire to Philip, Duke of Anjou, the grandson of Louis XIV of France.

Louis had a choice. He had already signed a Partition Treaty with England and the Dutch Republic dividing the Spanish inheritance peacefully. Now he held the entire prize. He chose the prize.

When Louis XIV presented his grandson to the French court with the declaration 'Gentlemen, here is the King of Spain,' his foreign minister pointedly added that the Pyrenees had ceased to exist. The maritime powers — England and the Dutch Republic — had feared this moment for decades. A union of France and Spain under Bourbon rule, controlling the western Mediterranean, the Spanish Americas, and the Spanish Netherlands, would shatter the balance of power that kept any single state from dominating Europe.

Louis accelerated the crisis himself. He moved French troops into the Spanish Netherlands, displacing Dutch garrisons. He recognized James Francis Edward Stuart — the 'Old Pretender' — as King of England, enraging the English. He gave French merchants exclusive trading rights in the Spanish empire that English and Dutch merchants had long enjoyed.

By September 1701, England, the Dutch Republic, and the Holy Roman Empire had signed the Grand Alliance at The Hague. When Louis XIV's ally the Elector of Bavaria joined France, war became inevitable. William III of England, architect of the Alliance, died in March 1702 before hostilities formally began. His successor, Queen Anne, honored his commitments. The war that would last thirteen years and kill more than a million people had begun.

The stakes could not have been higher. This was not a border dispute or a dynastic quarrel — it was a war over the shape of European civilization, fought on four continents and the seas between them.