| Copyright | ||
|
Home A Period of Foreign Wars, 1689-1714 Part 5 |
Part 5On land during these years (1691-7) the English operations are confined to the Spanish Netherlands. The war was chiefly a war of sieges. William as a soldier was painstaking but mediocre; his opponent, Luxembourg, was brilliant but indolent Consequently William generally lost the battles; but Luxembourg took no advantage of his victories. William's designs were excellent. Thus he tried to surprise Luxembourg at Steinkirk in 1692; but he wasted time by a preliminary cannonade of artillery which lasted one hour and a half, and by an elaborate deployment of infantry which was already late in arriving. Luxembourg, though genuinely surprised, marshalled his troops with great rapidity and won a victory. In the next year (1693) William was beaten at Neerwinden. But by sheer tenacity and strength of purpose he clung on, and two years later he won his first great success by recapturing the strong fortress of Namur.Finally, by 1697, France was exhausted, and at the Treaty of Ryswick she recognized William as King of England, and gave up all her conquests since 1678 except Strasbourg. The war had been an uninteresting one. The English had, however, done well. They had secured the supremacy at sea. They had learnt some valuable lessons under William's leadership, lessons whose effect was to be shown in the subsequent wars under Marlborough. They had secured an honourable treaty, and, above all, had helped to inflict the first decided check on the ambitions of Louis XIV. We turn now to the causes of the next war-the War of the Spanish Succession. That two monarchs should arrange for the distribution of the territories belonging to a third monarch in anticipation of his death and without consulting either him or his ministers seems an indefensible proceeding. Yet this is what happened in 1698. The circumstances were, it is true, peculiar. The Spanish dominions included not only Spain, but the Spanish Netherlands, Milan and Naples, Sicily and Sardinia, besides vast possessions in the West Indies and South America. Charles II, the King of Spain, had no children or brothers, but he had two sisters and two aunts. Of the two aunts, the elder had married the French king, and the younger the emperor. They were all dead, but their respective sons, Louis XIV and the Emperor Leopold, had married, the one the elder and the other the younger of the two sisters of the Spanish king. Here was a difficult situation. It was quite obvious that neither Louis XIV nor Leopold nor their eldest sons could be allowed to add the enormous territories of Spain to those either of France or Austria. It was hopeless to deal with Charles II, who was sickly and half-witted, and consequently Louis XIV and William III proceeded to draw up Partition Treaties by which a baby, the grandson of Leopold and the heir to the Electorate of Bavaria, was to succeed to the greater part of the Spanish dominions (1698). |
Chronology |
| copyright by uuo-ununoctium.info |