Vossem contract
The Treaty of Vossem ( French Traité de Vossem ) was concluded on June 6, 1673 between the King of France and the Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia . As a separate peace , he ended the Brandenburg support of the Netherlands in the Dutch War . The contract is named after the small town of Vossem, near Tervuren in Flanders .
prehistory
The triple alliance between England, Sweden and the Netherlands, concluded against France in 1668 , was soon dissolved again by French influence ( Treaty of Dover 1670). England and Sweden switched sides. Several German princes, in particular Kurköln under Prince-Bishop Maximilian Heinrich von Bayern and the Prince-Bishopric of Munster under Prince-Bishop Christoph Bernhard von Galen , who were allied with France by secret treaties, also supported France; others did not dare to challenge its claims to parts of the empire . The Netherlands found support only from Elector Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg . On April 26, 1672, the Netherlands and Brandenburg formed an alliance. Johann Moritz von Nassau-Siegen , who was both Prussian governor in Kleve and Dutch general, had worked in the background . The elector promised to support the Netherlands - against the payment of subsidies - with 20,000 men. At the same time he won Emperor Leopold I for his plans. But Leopold wavered, especially since the president of his councilor, Wenzel Eusebius von Lobkowicz , tried to pull him over to the French side.
France, which had already illegally occupied the Duchy of Lorraine in 1670 , now saw the opportunity to attack the Netherlands ( Dutch War ). The provinces of Utrecht , Gelderland and Overijssel were occupied, even Amsterdam was threatened.
The campaign in 1672
In the meantime, Elector Wilhelm stood ready for action at Halberstadt and waited for the imperial troops, which, under the command of Raimondo Montecuccoli , only advanced slowly with only 17,000 men. Despite these few armed forces, the elector was convinced that he would be able to drive out the French plundering in Westphalia. But the imperial general demanded that the army be led to the Moselle in order to cut off supplies from the French. The elector had to give in. Then Kurmainz , Kurtrier and the Electoral Palatinate refused to march through for fear of France. The imperial troops only reached the Rhine by long detours, where Montecuccoli halted the advance for fear that they would not be able to cope with the forces of Turenne and Conde . The army was returned to its winter quarters without having done anything.
The peace treaty in 1673
The elector found his Westphalian provinces occupied by the enemy. He found himself abandoned by Austria, and the Netherlands refused the subsidies because they had received no effective help from the Brandenburg troops. Elector Wilhelm then decided, out of necessity, to sign the Treaty of Vossem with France. In it he undertook not to continue to assist the Netherlands, but he reserved the right to defend the empire should it be attacked by France. With the exception of the fortress Wesel and the forts of Lippstadt and Rees , France had to release all occupied places in the Duchy of Kleve , in the Principality of Minden and in the Counties of Mark and Ravensberg . In addition, France promised Brandenburg 800,000 livres (which, however, were never paid).
Continuation of the war 1674
In the summer of 1674 Marshal Turenne devastated the Electoral Palatinate as planned, forcing the Reichstag to declare France an enemy of the Reich. On August 23, 1674, a 20,000-strong Brandenburg contingent of the Imperial Army marched. This led France to encourage the Swedes to invade Brandenburg on December 25, 1674.
literature
- General world history , part 2, p. 25, digitized
- Alexander Koller: The mediation of the Peace of Vossem (1673) by the Jülich-Bergisch Vice Chancellor Stratmann. Pfalz-Neuburg, France and Brandenburg between the Peace of Aachen and the declaration of imperial war on Ludwig XIV. (1668—1674) (= series of publications of the Association for the Study of Modern History, Vol. 22). Aschendorff, Münster 1995. ISBN 3-402-05673-9 .
- Hans Eggert Willibald von der Lühe, Militair-Conversations-Lexikon , Volume 8, p. 572, digitized
- Adolf Schultz, History of the Vossem Treaty , 1902, p. 30, pdf