William III & Mary II
By the Grace of God
King and Queen of England, Scotland, France and Ireland,
Stadtholder of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands,
Prince of Orange, Count of Nassau, Defenders of the Faith, etc.
JE MAINTIENDRAI
By the Grace of God
King and Queen of England, Scotland, France and Ireland,
Stadtholder of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands,
Prince of Orange, Count of Nassau, Defenders of the Faith, etc.
JE MAINTIENDRAI
Chapter III: A War Abroad
Unfortunately for the monarchs, events on the continent did not hold still while they fought to secure the throne in Scotland and Ireland. By the time William turned his attentions to Europe in 1692, after an embarrassing peace with the Irish Catholics, things had gone fairly sour for the League of Augsburg in their war against Louis XIV.
The war had started with a French lightning assault into Germany in September 1688. A French army quickly seized Mannheim, Frankenthal, Oppenheim, Worms, Bingen-on-Rhine, Kaiserslautern, Spires and Mainz, taking effective control of the whole of the Rhineland. However, Louis’ hopes to secure a quick victory were dashed when the Hapsburg Emperor, Leopold, kept his obligations and went to war with France, despite still being mired in a war against the Ottoman Empire. Under the 1st Magdeburg Agreement, Brandenburg, Saxony, Hanover and Hesse-Cassel united their forces under the nominal authority of the Emperor to defend northern Germany from French advances. At the same time, the Emperor redeployed Bavarian, Swabian and Franconian troops from the eastern front to defend southern Germany from the French forces. The Germans had organized far more quickly - and with far more unity of purpose - than the French had expected, or, indeed, had thought possible in even the best of circumstances, much less in the midst of a two-front war. France initiated a scorched earth policy when the Germans forced them to pull back from the Rhine in early 1689, denying the Rhineland’s resources to the Germans, but this did not prevent an incursion into French territory in late 1689 by German armies under Charles V, Duke of Lorraine. These maneuvers had distracted Louis from paying any significant attention to the British front, where William had quickly gained the upper hand.
When William had invaded England just as the war was starting, Louis had been relieved. Louis saw William’s invasion as an unnecessary distraction for the United Provinces, expecting that a protracted succession war in England would permanently take the Dutch out of the continental war and, ultimately, bring James II firmly into the war on France’s side. Louis was blindsided, however, by the sudden, total collapse of James’ government, and his flight to France, with England’s political situation stabilizing in weeks instead of years. In an attempt to galvanize Jacobites in England, a token French force under the command of the former king was sent to Ireland, which only worsened the situation. It was considered a foreign provocation in London, and the English Parliament approved William & Mary’s declaration of war on France in May 1689. Though France initially retained control of the English Channel, the English fleet forced them to fight there, preventing them from restricting access to Ireland, allowing William’s deployment there in 1690. Louis sent what resources he could into Ireland, mostly moneys, and forced the Two Kings’ War into being a major rebellion against the new monarchs, one which occupied all of England’s attentions for years. The absence of the English and William’s Dutch forces on the continent was keenly felt by their allies on the continent.
Ultimately, the League of Augsburg coalesced as an alliance between England, Scotland, the United Provinces, the Hapsburg Empires and the various German states. There were three major fronts - the Netherlands, the Rhineland and Italy - as well as several other areas of contention, including conflicts in the Americas, Catalonia, and, of course, Ireland. Despite the League’s initial success in the Rhineland, in 1690, the French launched attacks into the Netherlands and Italy, with reasonable success. In the Spanish Netherlands, the Duke of Luxembourg (the greatest French general of this period) won the Battle of Fleurus , but was forced to pull back and redeploy to the Rhineland for political reasons; some have proposed that, had he pressed at the United Provinces at this time, William may have abandoned Ireland to defend his steadhold. At the same time, a French campaign in Italy had led to an incredible victory against a superior force at the Battle of Staffarda, though, again, the French failed to capitalize on their gains, falling back across the Alps for the winter. At the same time, an invasion of Catalonia was countered, with a French army forced back across the border into Roussillon. At the same time, war in the east turned sour. The Hapsburgs was forced to pull troops from the west to fight the Ottomans after severe losses in their eastern campaigns in Transylvania and Serbia. Russia and Poland-Lithuania began to put pressure on the Austrians to treat with the French in the west and fully commit to the war with Turkey, though Leopold held to the course of both wars.
As 1690 turned into 1691, things continued their downward trend for the League. As William’s forces continued their long slogging fight in Ireland throughout the year, France managed to push their advantage in the Netherlands, seizing the Spanish city of Mons early in the year. A virulent campaign season ensued there, one which William was desperate, but unable to join, though Mary was able to secure a commitment of English soldiers there under Marlborough, and the arrival of a Scottish contingent under Kinross. By the end of the campaign season, France was in effective control over much of the Spanish territories, though their sole incursion into the Dutch Republic had been brilliantly repulsed in the Battle of Eersel by the Anglo-Scottish force, which had been isolated from the League forces at the time. Nevertheless, the French were in a position to directly threaten the Dutch come 1692. Meanwhile, though not nearly as successful as in the Netherlands, the French managed to take control of Nice and Villefranche in Italy, taking hold of several strongholds on the far side of the Alps. Though forced to ultimately abandon their siege of the city of Cuneo, the Savoyard forces were exhausted by the campaign, left weakened to face the French in 1692. Though there were further incursions in the Rhineland and Catalonia, these produced few battles, and few serious advantages for either side. An Imperial victory over the Ottomans in 1691 in Serbia, scholars think, ended any real Ottoman threat to the Empire, but, at the time, it was seen as a stalling measure at best, and the Empire was beginning to buckle under the pressure of the two-front war.
The negotiated end of the war in Ireland, at the very beginning of 1692’s campaign season, allowed William to finally recommit his Dutch and English forces from Ireland back to the Dutch Republic before any serious fighting began on the continent. William, as the now highest ranking person in the Netherlands, took command of League forces in the Netherlansd. Acting much on the advice of his advisers, he took the initiative, attacking the Spanish Netherlands and managing to seize several Flemish towns by the beginning of the summer, taking advantage of severe French supply issues. William embarrassed the French at the Battle of Halle in June, but was quickly stalled by Luxembourg’s army, the rest of the campaign season left with no serious engagements, and the French remaining in possession of most of the Spanish territories. Though the Rhineland turned out to be just as pointless as the year before, and the French did not even bother to engage in Catalonia again, the French continued to win victories in Italy, nearly capturing Turin in September.
In America, the war had gone without much fanfare. English forces, which were almost exclusively made up of colonial militias from New England and New York, along with their native allies in the Iroquois Confederation, launched several offensive operations against the French in Canada, which were repulsed. At the same time, the French and their own native allies launched attacks against the Iroquois and English colonists, with much the same result. Though fighting would continue throughout the war, there were no effective operations even until the end of the war.
Something far more important than any fighting happened in 1692, however. In the past decade, there had been a feud between Louis XIV and three successive popes, Innocent XI (who had partly funded William’s expedition to England and Ireland), Alexander VIII and Innocent XII over the question of Gallicanism. Under the principles of Gallicanism, as established by a Declaration of the Clergy of France in 1682, sovereigns were not beholden to the Holy See, and could not be held responsible for temporal acts in service of the state. Under the same principles, subjects could also not be held responsible spiritually by the Pope for actions taken in the service of their sovereigns and, further, the Pope held no authority to absolve oaths taken to the sovereign. The ultimate effect of this, and other, principles, was that the Church in France effectively rejected the authority of the Pope over their king, and they, and France’s civil servants, were ultimately responsible to Paris, not to Rome.
Obviously, the Papacy had seen this as heretical. Innocent XII, a papal reformer among whose first acts was to prohibit nepotism in the Church, saw Louis’ intransigence on this issue as an attack on God himself. Though he had been supported by the French in his election, Innocent saw France’s acts as egregiously anti-Christian, as they were distracting and dividing Christendom by prosecuting a war against the Holy Roman Empire. This even as they fought for Christ against the Ottomans in the Balkans. Though Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Christians across Europe had been united in their war against the Turks, France pursued division. Louis, meanwhile felt his victories in the Netherlands had proven the correctness of his doctrine, with God granting him continued victory despite his feud with the Pope.
Though he was not willing to take the ultimate step, Innocent was willing to act against the French in other ways. From 1689, James II had written to Rome seeking religious support for his war in Ireland, to support a Roman Catholic monarch over the Protestants who had usurped his throne. Innocent XI had ignored them, responding halfheartedly due to his financial support of William & Mary’s forces. Alexander VIII had also refused to commit on the issue, but Innocent XII had begun writing back and forth. Though he seems to have had no real intention to do so, Innocent XII promised to see what he could do about it. However, Innocent had insisted that, before supporting him, that James formally reject the doctrine of Gallicanism, though it was expressed more vaguely. Though it was inadvertent, James saw this as a direct attack on his authority in pretence, given his theoretical position as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. However, Innocent interpreted James’ intransigence on this question as support for Louis’ Gallican doctrines. Therefore, after being particularly angered by a letter sent by James asserting his own authority over the Church of England (which Innocent, it seems, interpreted as meaning the Catholic Church in England, rather than the Protestant Church) as well as his support of Louis in the war, Innocent XII, in June 1692, issued a Papal bull excommunicating James II. He, as he point by point rejected the Gallican doctrines, absolved Catholic subjects of their oaths to him, though he stopped short of recognizing William & Mary.
Louis saw it, correctly, as a direct attack against him and his Gallican doctrine, though he stood steadfastly against the Pope’s issue, continuing to recognize James II as King. More importantly, however, was its effect on Jacobitism. In the aftermath of the bull’s issue, Jacobites drastically lost influence in both Scotland and Ireland. Though Protestant Jacobitism in Scotland continued unabated, and some small groups continued in Ireland, Catholics in both countries generally settled down. In Ireland, especially, the uncertainty of their position - with the Pope himself apparently supporting the new monarchs - led all but the most intransigent Irish to lay down arms. Though they certainly did not become Orangists, Ireland would now remain quiet for the remainder of the war.
