IV.

Louis XIV’s Foreign Policy

In foreign affairs, Louis's consistent aim was to glorify France, to gird its fortress defences on the northern and eastern frontiers, and to prevent any resurgence of the power of the Habsburg dynasty, which had formerly threatened France on two sides by means of its control over Spain and Germany.

In four major, but expensive, wars Louis displayed before all of Europe his prowess as a military leader. In 1667, claiming his wife's right of inheritance (jus devolutionis), Louis invaded the Spanish Netherlands in the War of the Devolution. His quick victories, including the capture of Lille in August 1667, prompted England, the United Provinces, and Sweden to check France and force the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1668. By this, Louis gained 12 fortresses in Flanders.

In 1672, having isolated the Dutch by negotiating English and Swedish neutrality, Louis launched the War of Holland against the United Provinces, whose maritime and trading power threatened France directly. For six years the United Provinces, aided by Spain and Austria, strongly resisted attacks by the French armies led by Louis II, Prince de Condé, and Henri, Vicomte de Turenne. The French navy, under Vivonne and Abraham Duquesne, was also unable to defeat the United Provinces’ navy, led by Admiral Michiel Adriaanszoon de Ruyter. The war of attrition ended with the Treaty of Nijmegen in 1678. This did not dismantle the United Provinces but gave Louis the Franche-Comté region and more forts in Flanders. It also marked the apogee of the reign of Louis XIV, with his power recognized not just in Europe but across a commercial empire that touched North America, the West Indies, West Africa, India, and South East Asia.

However, overconfident and ill-advised, in 1688 Louis sent an army into the Rhineland to claim the Palatinate for his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Charlotte of Bavaria. Although the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 was applauded by his Catholic subjects, it stiffened resistance to Louis in Protestant Europe, and the Nine Years’ War, also known as the War of the League of Augsburg, revealed serious deficiencies in Louis’s army. Despite the devastation of the Rhineland, and French successes at Staffarda (1690), Fleurus (1690), Marsaglia (1693), and Neerwinden (1693), there was no decisive victory for either side. Although the Peace of Ryswick in 1697 saw Spain cede to France the western part of Santo Domingo (now Haiti), and France retain the whole of Alsace and Strasbourg, it did not improve French defences or add to the glory of the monarchy. It did demonstrate, however, that an alliance of England, the United Provinces, and Austria was capable of checking Louis’s expansionist ambitions. The war had also exhausted France, coinciding as it did with catastrophic harvests and famine.

Louis’s last military venture, the War of the Spanish Succession, stemmed from the will of Charles II, the last Habsburg king of Spain, who died in November 1700 leaving his entire realm—Spain, its overseas dominions, the Spanish Netherlands, and lands in Italy—to Louis’s grandson, Philip, Duke of Anjou. The immediate cause of the war, in which France was opposed by an alliance of the European powers, was Louis’s acceptance of the Spanish throne on behalf of Philip. Beginning at a time of great economic difficulty for France, it proved to be a long and ruinous war. Early victories at Friedlingen (1702) and Ekeren (1703) were followed by heavy defeats at Blenheim (1704), Ramillies (1706), and Oudenaarde (1706), shattering the myth of French invincibility. France’s “half-victory” at Malplaquet (1709) and the triumph of Denain (1712) recovered some territory and lost pride and hastened the treaties of the Peace of Utrecht that ended the war for France between 1713 and 1714. Although France won control of Spain, and Philip was recognized as its king, it lost its North American territories of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and the Hudson Bay Territory to Great Britain, but kept Strasbourg. The treaties marked an end to the French hegemonic threat to Europe, while simultaneously strengthening its opponents. Louis’s final war had succeeded only in creating something approaching a genuine balance of power.