Reunion War (1683–1684)
Capture of Luxembourg in June 1684
| date | October 26, 1683 - August 15, 1684 |
|---|---|
| place | Pyrenees , Spanish Netherlands , Trier Archbishopric , Mediterranean |
| output | French victory |
| Peace treaty | bilateral agreements and Regensburg standstill |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
The Reunion War from 1683 to 1684 was part of the Reunion policy of Louis XIV. The largely forgotten conflict is sometimes referred to as the shortest and most successful war of Louis XIV. France on the one hand and Spain, supported by the Netherlands on the other , were directly involved . The Holy Roman Empire was indirectly involved . The most important event was the siege and conquest of Luxembourg . The war ended with the Regensburg standstill . In this, the French king's acquisitions of the last decades were recognized by the emperor and empire for a period of twenty years .
prehistory
With the reunification policy, Louis XIV pursued a policy of expansion that not least aimed at gaining imperial territories. Without major resistance, France was able to take possession of important areas and strategically important cities. The capture of Strasbourg in 1681 played a particularly important role. To secure the acquired areas, Louis XIV had the Saarlouis fortress built. In addition, were Landau , Pfalz Castle and Hüningen attached.
Another main goal was to win Luxembourg, which was administered by Spain, but officially still belonged to the empire. The city of Luxembourg appeared to Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban as a fortress to defend France as strategically central. The city was besieged from 1681 before the French lifted the siege in March 1682. However, Louis XIV stuck to the goal of winning the city.
After unsuccessful negotiations between France and the Reich, which lasted until the end of 1682, Emperor Leopold I prevailed against the Brandenburgers allied with the French and their Rhenish allies to reverse the reunions militarily if necessary in order to avoid the Peace of Westphalia and the Peace of Nijmegen to regain defined vested rights. An alliance was formed in The Hague in 1683 between the emperor, the Netherlands, Sweden and Spain . In the empire there were further alliances of imperial circles and imperial estates in the Laxenburg alliance . The plans for a war against France were well advanced when the Great Turkish War broke out and Vienna was besieged in the course of it. This tied the powers of the emperor and empire in the east.
The imperial victory at the siege of Vienna in September 1683 threatened to shift the balance of power in favor of the emperor. Ludwig responded by putting pressure on Spain, which is now the weakest neighboring state.
course
Campaign 1683
In the autumn of 1683, Louis XIV threatened that the Spanish Netherlands would have to maintain a French army of 35,000 men, and had the population collect high contributions . This led Spain and the Netherlands to form an alliance. On October 26, Spain officially declared war on France.
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France tried in vain to make various concessions to prevent the Netherlands from participating in the war. The Netherlands did not respond and sent a small army of 10,000 men to support the Spaniards. However, Wilhelm III wanted . take much more energetic action against Louis XIV, but met with resistance from the rich city of Amsterdam .
Aid from the Holy Roman Empire or the Austrian countries did not come because the war against the Turks tied up all forces.
Louis XIV sent strong forces under Louis de Crévant, duc d'Humières to Flanders as the main theater of war, while the French involvement in the Pyrenees was significantly less. The war in the northern theater of war was brutal. It was accompanied by destruction, the burning of fields, the collection of high contributions and other devastation. The brutality was intended to influence public opinion, and the people were to be induced to put pressure on the Spanish masters in order to hasten the war. Louis XIV ordered his Marshal de Humières: "I give you orders to set fifty houses or villages on fire, for only one, if it should happen to him in my lands." Mortars were used as a kind of terrorist weapon , as in the bombardment of Mons used. Its own troops remained safe, while the bombing, against which there was no defense, wreaked havoc in the cities.
The Spanish armed forces under the governor Otto de Grana were weak and could be kept in check by the French army with little difficulty. In 1683 the French successfully besieged Courtrai and Dixmude . Oudenarde was bombed and the city was set on fire.
However, Louis XIV strove to limit the war. He had already offered an agreement on November 5 when Luxembourg and other areas were surrendered to Spain, in return he would waive all claims in Flanders. On February 17, he offered Spain a twenty-year truce. He had already made the same offer to the emperor in July 1683. Neither Spain nor the Netherlands accepted this offer, so the war continued.
In December 1683, Luxembourg was bombed and besieged by Vauban in vain. The area around Bruges was looted. A suburb of Brussels was also set on fire.
Campaign 1684
During the campaign of 1684, two French armies marched into Navarre, Spain, and Catalonia . The Spanish troops were not mobilized and the French fought against armed peasants. The French tried in vain to conquer the Catalan Girona . Previously, Bernardin Gigault, marquis de Bellefonds , defeated the Spaniards on the Ter in May 1684 .
In the northern theater of war, Ludwig XIV. And Friedrich von Schomberg covered the new siege of Luxembourg. The city was conquered by François de Créquy on June 3, 1684 after a month-long siege .
A secondary theater of war was Genoa , which France rated as friendly to Spain. The city had built galleys for Spain, for which it was bombed by the French fleet under Abraham Duquesne . Large parts of the city, including the Doge's Palace, were destroyed by 14,000 shells. Then Genoa was sacked and looted.
After the conquest of Luxembourg, the French marched on Trier and took the city. The fortifications were destroyed. With the approval of the Elector of Cologne, French troops also entered Kurköln .
Leopold I was tempted at times to use force against the French approach and let troops march towards the Rhine. Ultimately, he decided against it because the war against the Ottomans seemed more important. He also tried in vain to dissuade Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg from his alliance with France. Without the help of other powers for Spain, the French could not be driven out of Luxembourg.
End of war and consequences
With the conquest of Luxembourg, Louis XIV had achieved his most important war goal and tried to achieve peace. He succeeded in moving the Netherlands to a separate peace. Against the will of Wilhelm III. On June 23, the Netherlands made a twenty-year peace.
The final end of the war was sealed with the Peace of Regensburg, also the Regensburg standstill, on August 15, 1684. Spain had to do without Luxembourg, Bovines , Chimay and Beaumont . After the destruction of their fortifications, Courtrai and Dixmunde came back to Spain. After that, Louis XIV was granted all acquisitions made up to 1681 as part of the reunification policy and the possession of Strasbourg and Kehl for twenty years. France had thus gained time to permanently integrate the acquired territories. However, Louis XIV turned the European powers against him through his expansionist policy. Conversely, with the peace treaty, the emperor had his back free to take offensive action against the Ottomans and to drive them out of Hungary. This gave the emperor more leeway in the west. The Peace of Regensburg lasted only four years before a major global war broke out with the Palatinate War of Succession .
literature
- Cathal J. Nolan: Wars of the age of Louis XIV, 1650-1715. An encyclopedia of global warfare and civilization. Greenwood Press, Westport CT et al. 2008, ISBN 978-0-313-33046-9 , pp. 516 f.
- John A. Lynn : The Wars of Louis XIV. 1667-1714. Longman, London et al. 1999, ISBN 0-582-05629-2 .
- John A. Lynn: The French Wars 1667-1714. The Sun king at war (= Essential Histories. 34). Osprey, Oxford 2002, ISBN 1-84176-361-6 , p. 47 f.
- Martin Wrede : Louis XIV. The warlord from Versailles. Theiss, Darmstadt 2015, ISBN 978-3-8062-3160-1 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ John A. Lynn: The wars of Louis XIV. 1667-1714. London 1999, p. 166.
- ^ William Young: International Politics and Warfare in the Age of Louis XIV and Peter the Great. A Guide to the historical Literature. Universe, New York NY et al. 2004, ISBN 0-595-32992-6 , p. 220.
- ↑ John A. Lynn: The grand strategy of the grand siecle. Learning from the wars of Louis XIV. In: Williamson Murray , Richard Hart Sinnreich, James Lacey (eds.): The Shaping of grand strategy. Policy, Diplomacy, and War. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 2011, ISBN 978-0-521-76126-0 , pp. 34-62, here p. 38.
- ^ Michael Kotulla : German constitutional history. From the Old Reich to Weimar (1495–1934). Springer, Berlin et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-540-48705-0 , p. 127 f.
- ↑ a b c Volker Press : Wars and crises. Germany 1600–1715 (= New German History. 5). Beck, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-406-30817-1 , p. 428.
- ↑ Especially in older literature, December 11th is often mentioned as the day of the official Spanish declaration of war. z. B. Heinrich Leo : Twelve books of Dutch stories. Part 2: Containing the last six books or The history of the Netherlands from the beginning of the rule of the House of Burgundy until 1830. Eduard Anton, Halle 1835, p. 865 .
- ↑ Horst Lademacher : Freedom - Religion - Conscience. The limits of religious tolerance in the republic. In: Horst Lademacher, Simon Groenveld (ed.): War and culture. The reception of war and peace in the Dutch Republic and in the German Empire 1568–1646. Waxmann, Münster et al. 1998, ISBN 3-89325-575-3 , p. 500.
- ↑ John A. Lynn: A brutal necessity? The Devastion of the Palatinate, 1688-1689. In: Mark Grimsley, Clifford J. Rogers (Eds.): Civilians in the path of war. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln NE et al. 2002, ISBN 0-8032-2182-7 , pp. 79–110, here p. 101.
- ↑ Uwe Schultz : The ruler of Versailles. Louis XIV and his time. Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-54989-6 , p. 223.
- ^ John A. Lynn: Giant of the grand siècle. The French Army, 1610-1715. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1997, ISBN 0-521-57273-8 , p. 507.
- ^ Wout Troost: William III, the Stadholder-King. A Political Biography. Ashgate, Aldershot et al. 2005, ISBN 0-7546-5071-5 , p. 170.
- ^ A b Martin Andrew Sharp Hume: Spain. Its greatness and decay (1479-1788). 3rd edition, reprinted. Revised by Edward Armstrong. University Press, Cambridge 1931, p. 306.
- ↑ Uwe Schultz: The ruler of Versailles. Louis XIV and his time. Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-54989-6 , p. 222.
- ^ Ekkehard Eickhoff : Venice, Vienna and the Ottomans. Change in Southeast Europe 1645–1700. Improved new edition with a foreword. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-608-93138-4 , p. 376.
- ↑ Klaus Malettke : The Bourbons. Volume 1: From Heinrich IV. To Louis XIV. 1589–1715. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-17-020581-9 , p. 218.
- ^ Karl Otmar von Aretin : The old empire. 1648-1806. Volume 1: Federal or hierarchical order. 1648-1684. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-608-91488-9 , p. 15.