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
Chapter VIII: Seeming Wiser
By the year 1665, the Spanish Empire was already in decline. It had, at that time, been ruled for over forty years by Philip IV, a serious but generally gracious monarch. He lost the Kingdom of Portugal during his reign, but otherwise, outwardly, Spain still seemed fairly strong, expanding its colonies to new and greater heights, and he had seen the kingdom through the trying times of the early 17th century and Thirty Years’ War. Spain, whatever its weaknesses, still stood proudly in the community of nations in his time. However, there was, as there always is, the problem of the succession. Though King Philip had a son in his first marriage, the young man long predeceased his father, and Philip was forced to remarry to try for an heir. He managed to have another legitimate son in his old age, in 1661, but died not long after in 1665.
The new four-year old king, Charles II, was unfortunately the very model of inbreeding, even cited in modern gemmulic studies as what can happen in such circumstances. He failed to speak until the age of four; walk, until age eight. He was physically and mentally disabled in any number of ways, yet somehow continued, against all odds, to live and rule - or, at least, have a court which ruled in his name - for several decades. Even more damning, Charles, despite two marriages, had utterly failed to sire heirs - not even bastards. An incapable king is destabilizing in even the most diminished of constitutional monarchies, and the lack of a clear succession in an absolute state even more so. Spain had the unlucky coincidence of both simultaneously. The King was a ticking time bomb. His death would doubtless bring war and misery to Spain - though precisely how far that might lead was in question.
By the end of the Nine Years’ War, the closest legal heir to the throne was Charles’ nephew, the Dauphin Louis, the son of his late eldest sister, Maria Theresa. Louis, however, was also heir to the French throne through his own father, and, though the Sun King would certainly have welcomed the unification of France and Spain, even in his wildest dreams he did not imagine it coming to pass. Such a union of crowns was completely unacceptable to the rest of Europe. William & Mary were far from his only concern, though they were among them, to be sure, along with the Hapsburg Emperor himself. After all, as far as Leopold was concerned, there was always the alternative.
There was only one other reasonably legitimate option for the inheritance: Charles’ niece, the Electress Maria Antonia, child of another late sister, Margaret Theresa. Maria Antonia was a Hapsburg, and daughter of the Emperor Leopold, and would preserve Hapsburg rule during her reign. Further, making her more appealing to William, she was married to Maximilian II Emanuel, the Prince-Elector of Bavaria, which meant that Spain would ultimately fall out of the influence of both France and Austria in the long run, save for one problem: they had no heirs. In nearly fifteen years of marriage, she and her husband had had naught but a string of miscarriages and stillbirths. She seemed a dead end, and many believed her succession could only lead to another war down the road.
Louis, realizing that England would never let him rule over all of the Spanish dominions, threw William a bone in 1699 by renouncing his own rights to succeed, naming them instead to his thirteen year old younger son, Philip, the Duke of Anjou. This lessened William’s outright dismissal of a Bourbon taking the Spanish throne, and pressure in Parliament led him to seek a peaceful solution that might, at least, keep England out of such a war. A year later, a treaty was formally signed at London between William & Mary and representatives of Louis XIV, agreeing that Philip could succeed to the Spanish throne itself, as well as the Spanish colonies, but that Spain’s other European possessions would remain Hapsburg, descending onto Maria Antonia. In exchange, Spanish and French territorial disputes with the English in the New World would be surrendered almost wholly to England, along with certain concessions in traditionally Spanish territories, particularly at the Plate River.
The Emperor and the Spanish were livid. Leopold saw the treaty as a fundamental betrayal by the English monarchs, and swore that his daughter would succeed to her entire Spanish dominions. No compromise was necessary or acceptable; they had been Hapsburg lands before, and they would continue to be Hapsburg lands. The end of the war with the Ottomans in the same year allowed him to shift his entire focus toward the Italies and Spain. There was now no doubt - there was no longer even the slightest question of whether there would be war, merely one of when it would come. Meanwhile England began to stand down, and turned to solidifying its alliances with the Protestant states, planning to leave fighting over Spain to the others.
Despite the Emperor’s reaction, as far as William was concerned, it was a win-win situation. The Germanies would certainly not be nearly so willing to fight for Leopold’s or even Bavaria’s territorial aggrandisement as they were to fight against France’s own moves into Germany. Austria and France would fight, and Louis would likely get a bloody nose, even if he won in the end. Even if the Emperor turned on William militarily, he was sure that Leopold would be unable to get far into the Netherlands, and certainly had no capacity to strike at his other realms. This taken care of, he turned back to his wife’s priority: marriage.
In the case of his son, something fortuitous had occurred: he had become enamored of a young lady. More importantly, she was an excellent choice from a political perspective. Henriette Albertine of Nassau-Dietz was the fifteen year old eldest daughter of one of William’s relatives, Henry Casimir II, who was not only a hereditary prince in his own right, but was also a stadtholder in his own right. While William was stadtholder in five of the seven provinces of the Netherlands, there was not yet a unified office; Henry Casimir was the stadtholder of the other two provinces. Even more interesting, though it still had a chance of changing, he had no sons, making the hand of his eldest daughter even more tempting.
Though William had married his own wife when she was only fifteen, such a match didn’t seem quite proper. However, after the monarchs traveled personally to the Netherlands and worked out a political arrangement with her father, a formal betrothal was announced: the Prince of Wales would marry Henriette Albertine in due course and, it was all but said outright, be made as effectively as possible his father-in-law’s heir. William was ecstatic: no more would the Netherlands be divided and weak in the face of French or Hapsburg aggression. Now they not only would have the true force of England, Scotland and Ireland, but the seven Netherlands truly united under a single lord.
Parliament was less sure of the union. More ties to the Netherlands were not especially welcome; no small number of lords had hoped that the Prince of Wales, as intolerable a man as he might be, would marry one of their own daughters or, failing that, a Scottish lady of some standing, strengthening ties between the new dynasty and its British realms. Reinforcing the ties to the Netherlands was not their preference. However, in the end Parliament became, if not enthusiastic, then at least resigned to the choice: after all, a stronger, more secure Netherlands would at least mean less chance of England being forced to intervene on its behalf. It would, if nothing else, not be a burden. And, at the least, as one member of the Commons is purported to have said, though the Dutch might be accused of many things, popery was not among them.
Normally, such marriage alliances would not be made so quickly or at such a young age, but England was nearly bereft of foreign alliances, due to the Stuarts’ near-constant deference to their French relations. They lost yet another when Princess Anne, the Queen’s sister, died due to complications from childbirth, if indeed one could call what it had brought an “alliance:” Denmark, whatever its religion, had no love of the Netherlands and even less for William. Denmark was firmly aligned with France and, since the Glorious Revolution had brought William & Mary to power, had proved nearly worthless to the country. Remarkably, Prince George, Anne’s husband, made no moves to return to Denmark; despite his relative alienation from the corridors of power since his in-laws’ succession, he not only kept his small family in England, but continued to sit in the House of Lords by right of his English peerage, the Duchy of Cumberland. He allowed his sister-in-law to fully take charge of his children’s education - though they continued to be raised in the Lutheran tradition - and remained a Crown loyalist in Parliament.
Any influence George still had in Copenhagen evaporated when he stayed in London after his wife’s death, so what few concessions Denmark had made in the past disappeared entirely. It wasn’t long after Anne’s death that the next match was announced: Mary was now betrothed to a young man in her father’s service. Charles of Hesse-Kassel was the second surviving son Charles I, the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, a small but quite prosperous state in the Holy Roman Empire, with a very outsized army. Though small, its military forces could easily turn the tide if worst came to worst, and war renewed with France - and, after all, the fee for their hire would be lower for relatives.
The younger Charles himself was a handsome and ambitious young man, and had been noted as having a keen mind. He had entered into Dutch service at the age of fifteen, serving in the last, relatively uneventful years of the Nine Years War on the Dutch front under William’s command. William had been impressed with his abilities, even then, and his wife was quite enamored of the young man on meeting him in the Netherlands. His family ties made him an excellent option, and, as William wrote, his demonstrable intelligence would make him the younger Mary’s perfect match. Again, Parliament was not thrilled with further ties in Europe, but the pressing need for allies had been made quite apparent in the war.
It was the last marriage, in 1701, that would figure the most into the course of the next few years. After less than a year’s preparation and negotiation, almost instantaneous by historical terms, Amelia underwent a proxy wedding, drawing an unknowing England, despite all its treaties, and even before Spain itself, into the greatest war in a generation. For she had married Charles XII, the young King of Sweden. And, as she said her vows with his ambassador, they had no idea that he had, that very day, marched from Stockholm to face the encroaching Danes.
And, though even on that cool Spring day in Sudermania they did not know it, the War of the Spanish Succession had begun.
