War of the Reunions
Date 26 October 1683 – 15 August 1684 Location Southern Netherlands Result French victory
Belligerents
France	Spain
Commanders
Louis XIV	Charles II

The War of the Reunions (1683–1684) was a short conflict between France and Spain and its allies. It was fueled by the long-running desire of Louis XIV to conquer new lands, many of them comprising part of the Spanish Netherlands, along France's northern and eastern borders. The war was in some sense a continuation of the territorial and dynastic aims of Louis XIV as manifested in the War of Devolution and the Franco-Dutch War.

[edit] Background

Spanish Netherlands

The treaties ending the War of Devolution and the Franco-Dutch War, as well as the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, ceded a number of towns to France. By tradition, when a town changed hands so did the surrounding rural areas, which provided it with food and other such supplies. Often, the borders of these dependent regions were ill-defined. Thus Louis and his court, beginning in 1670, introduced several Chambers of Reunion that would investigate whether France had been granted all the territory it had been owed.

The Chambers of Reunion, loyal to the king, ruled after a review of conflicting medieval documents that a number of outlying areas should be awarded to France. These territories generally consisted of small towns and villages, and for the most part Louis's annexations went unopposed after the arrival of French troops.

[edit] Annexation and war

Principal locations of fighting in the war

The war officially commenced when a beleaguered Spain found itself forced into declaring war to acknowledge and protest the presence of French troops on its territories.^[1] The territory seized mainly came from the Spanish Netherlands and the western parts of the Holy Roman Empire, especially Alsace. However, this left large rural lands under Louis's control that were unprotected by major garrison towns. The two most important of these were Strasbourg and the city of Luxembourg. Strasbourg dominated Louis's newly annexed territories in Alsace, just as the great fortress of Luxembourg dominated the regions Louis had annexed from the Spanish Netherlands. In 1681 Strasbourg was annexed after Louis surrounded the city with overwhelming force.

Luxembourg refused to fall, however, and war broke out between the Spanish forces in the Netherlands, backed by the Holy Roman Empire, and France in the winter of 1683. As a punishment for allowing Spanish troops to use its port, the French bombarded the city of Genoa for 12 days in May 1683.^[1] As in previous wars, the French easily defeated the Spanish forces, seizing a number of towns.

Despite its relative brevity, the War of the Reunions developed a reputation for being an especially bloody conflict. Louis XIV and his military advisors designed a campaign of violent reprisals in an effort to influence public opinion, with the aim of pressuring enemy officials to surrender. During one battle Louvois ordered the comte de Montal to burn twenty villages near Charleroi because the Spanish previously destroyed two barns on the outskirts of two French villages, and he insisted that not a single house should remain standing in the twenty villages.^[2]

However, that same year the Ottoman Empire launched its greatest offensive ever against the eastern flank of the Empire, beginning the War of the Holy League.

[edit] Peace and treaty

While Louis refused to send aid to the Empire and even dispatched envoys to secretly encourage the Ottomans, contemporary accounts indicate that it would be unseemly for him to continue fighting the Empire on its western border. Thus Louis agreed to the Truce of Ratisbon, guaranteeing twenty years of peace between France and the Empire and asking his first cousin, Charles II of England, to arbitrate the disputed border claims.

[edit] Aftermath of war

The War of the Reunions, like its immediate continental predecessors, failed to resolve the festering conflict between the French Bourbon Dynasty and the Spanish and Austrian branches of the Habsburg Dynasty. This brief though brutal conflict was one of the precursors to the lengthier Nine Years' War.

[edit] References

• John A. Lynn: The Wars of Louis XIV 1667-1714, London/ New York 1999. ISBN 0582056292

[edit] Notes