The Russian and Swedish Empires 281France fought with Bavaria and Spain as allies. The English commander,
the duke of Marlborough (1650-1722), raised an army of English, Dutch,
and mercenary troops. In 1704, at Blenheim in southern Germany, the
allied armies, aided by Habsburg Austrian troops, crushed a combined
French and Bavarian force. Louis XIV’s armies retreated behind the Rhine
River. Winning victories in the Spanish Netherlands in 1708 and 1709,
the allied armies also drove the French from the Spanish Netherlands and
out of the Italian peninsula. The English fleet captured Gibraltar (1704),
which guards the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. During the terrible
winter of 1709-1710, France suffered military defeat and famine. The
great kingdom of Louis XIV seemed on the verge of collapse.
But the French and Spanish armies revived their fortunes. Dynastic
changes, too, helped Louis XIV’s cause. In 1711, Archduke Charles of Aus
tria became Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI (ruled 171 1 — 1740). Should
France and Philip V of Spain be defeated, the British and Dutch now con
fronted the possibility that Charles might one day become king of Spain,
reviving the dynastic union that had made the Habsburg dynasty Europe’s
strongest power during the first half of the seventeenth century. It was now
in the interests of Great Britain and the Dutch Republic to bring the war to
an honorable conclusion. Louis XIV, weakened by age and illness and suffer
ing the financial burdens of the war, agreed to negotiate.
Under the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht (confirmed by the Treaty of Rastatt in
1714, when Emperor Charles VI accepted peace), Habsburg Austria received
the Southern Netherlands as security against future French ambitions and
annexed Lombardy and Naples, replacing Spain as the paramount power on
the Italian peninsula (see Map 7.5). The decline of Spain, which had now
lost all of its European possessions beyond the Pyrenees Mountains, contin
ued unabated. In North America, France ceded Newfoundland, Nova Scotia,
and Hudson Bay to Great Britain.
Louis XIV had reigned so long that on his death in 1715 the throne passed
to his great-grandson, young Louis XV (ruled 1715-1774), with affairs of
state in the hands of a regent. Philip V kept the throne of Spain, but the
monarchies of Spain and France would remain separate. Louis XIV was
defeated by more than powerful alliances mounted against him. Britain had
proved better able to sustain long wars; its more developed commerce and
manufactures provided greater tax revenues. The non-absolutist British state
collected taxes more efficiently than the absolute monarchy of France,
where tax farmers kept part of the take. Britain’s interests remained over
seas, dominated by lucrative commercial concerns that were protected
by the Royal Navy. France’s foreign policy had led to costly wars on the
continent.
France had been the preeminent power in Europe at the time of the acces
sion of Louis XIV; this was no longer true at his death. The king’s reputation
had fallen victim to unrestrained ambition. Perhaps a lingering sense of fail
ure explains why Louis XIV tried to burn his memoirs shortly before his