The Battle of Ramillies, fought on 23 May 1706, was a battle of the War of the Spanish Succession. For the Grand Alliance – Austria, England, and the Dutch Republic – the battle had followed an indecisive campaign against the Bourbon armies of King Louis XIV of France in 1705. Although the Allies had captured Barcelona that year, they had been forced to abandon their campaign on the Moselle, had stalled in the Spanish Netherlands and suffered defeat in northern Italy. Yet despite his opponents' setbacks Louis XIV wanted peace, but on reasonable terms. Because of this, as well as to maintain their momentum, the French and their allies took the offensive in 1706.
Prince Eugene Francis of Savoy-Carignano, better known as Prince Eugene, was a field marshal in the Army of the Holy Roman Empire and of the Austrian Habsburg dynasty during the 17th and 18th centuries. He was one of the most successful military commanders of his time, and rose to the highest offices of state at the Imperial court in Vienna.
The War of the Spanish Succession was a European great power conflict fought between 1701 and 1714. The immediate cause was the death of the childless Charles II of Spain in November 1700, which led to a struggle for control of the Spanish Empire. His nominated heir was Philip of Anjou, a grandson of Louis XIV of France, whose main backers were France and most of Spain. His rival, Archduke Charles of Austria, was supported by the Grand Alliance, whose primary members included the Holy Roman Empire, the Dutch Republic, and Great Britain. Significant related conflicts include the 1700 to 1721 Great Northern War, and Queen Anne's War in North America.
The Battle of Almansa took place on 25 April 1707, during the War of the Spanish Succession. It was fought between an army loyal to Philip V of Spain, Bourbon claimant to the Spanish throne, and one supporting his Habsburg rival, Archduke Charles of Austria. The result was a decisive Bourbon victory that reclaimed most of eastern Spain for Philip.
The Battle of Denain was fought on 24 July 1712 as part of the War of the Spanish Succession. It resulted in a French victory, under Marshal Villars, against Dutch and Austrian forces, under Prince Eugene of Savoy.
The Battle of Malplaquet took place on 11 September 1709 during the War of the Spanish Succession, near Taisnières-sur-Hon in modern France, then part of the Spanish Netherlands. A French army of around 75,000 men, commanded by the Duke of Villars, engaged a Grand Alliance force of 86,000 under the Duke of Marlborough. In one of the bloodiest battles of the 18th century, the Allies won a narrow victory, but suffered heavy casualties.
The Peace of Utrecht was a series of peace treaties signed by the belligerents in the War of the Spanish Succession, in the Dutch city of Utrecht between April 1713 and February 1715. The war involved three contenders for the vacant throne of Spain, and involved much of Europe for over a decade. The main action saw France as the defender of Spain against a multinational coalition. The war was very expensive and bloody, and finally stalemated. Essentially, the treaties allowed Philip V to keep the Spanish throne in return for permanently renouncing his claim to the French throne, along with other necessary guarantees that would ensure that France and Spain should not merge, thus preserving the balance of power in Europe.
James Stanhope, 1st Earl Stanhope was a British Army officer, politician, diplomat and peer who effectively served as Chief Minister between 1717 and 1721. He was also the last Chancellor of the Exchequer to sit in the House of Lords.
The Battle of Oudenarde, also known as the Battle of Oudenaarde, was a major engagement of the War of the Spanish Succession, pitting a Grand Alliance force consisting of eighty thousand men under the command of the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy against a French force of eighty-five thousand men under the command of the Duc de Bourgogne and the Duc de Vendôme, the battle resulting in a great victory for the Grand Alliance. The battle was fought near the city of Oudenaarde, at the time part of the Spanish Netherlands, on 11 July 1708. With this victory, the Grand Alliance ensured the fall of various French territories, giving them a significant strategic and tactical advantage during this stage of the war. The battle was fought in the later years of the war, a conflict that had come about as a result of English, Dutch and Habsburg apprehension at the possibility of a Bourbon succeeding the deceased King of Spain, Charles II, and combining their two nations and empires into one.
The Battle of Brihuega took place on 8 December 1710 in the War of the Spanish Succession, during the Allied retreat from Madrid to Barcelona. A British Army rearguard led by James Stanhope, 1st Earl Stanhope was cut off and trapped within the town of Brihuega before being overwhelmed by a Franco-Spanish army under the command of Louis Joseph, Duke of Vendôme. The battle, along with other events, brought an end to British participation in the war.
The Battle of Villaviciosa was a battle between a Franco-Spanish army led by Louis Joseph, Duke of Vendôme and Philip V of Spain and a Habsburg-allied army commanded by Austrian Guido Starhemberg. The battle took place during the War of the Spanish Succession, one day after a Franco-Spanish victory at Brihuega against a British army under James Stanhope, 1st Earl Stanhope. Both Philip V of Spain and the Archduke Charles of Austria claimed victory, but the number of dead and wounded, the number of artillery and other weapons abandoned by the Allied army and the battle's strategic consequences for the war confirmed victory for Philip.
Francisco Castillo Fajardo, 2nd Marquis of Villadarias, was a Spanish general.
The Battle of Saragossa, also known as the Battle of Zaragoza, took place on 20 August 1710 during the War of the Spanish Succession. A Spanish Bourbon army loyal to Philip V of Spain and commanded by the Marquis de Bay was defeated by a Grand Alliance force under Guido Starhemberg. Despite this victory, which allowed Philip's rival Archduke Charles to enter the Spanish capital of Madrid, the allies were unable to consolidate their gains. Forced to retreat, they suffered successive defeats at Brihuega in November and Villaviciosa in December, which effectively ended their chances of installing Archduke Charles on the Spanish throne.
Alexandre Maître, Marquis de Bay was a French military officer in the service of Spain during the War of the Spanish Succession.
Jorge Próspero de Verboom, 1st Marquess of Verboom, was a Flemish-born military engineer in the service of the King of Spain. On 9 January 1727, King Philip V granted him the title of Marquess of Verboom.
The French Royal Army was the principal land force of the Kingdom of France. It served the Bourbon dynasty from the reign of Louis XIV in the mid-17th century to that of Charles X in the 19th, with an interlude from 1792 to 1814 and another during the Hundred Days in 1815. It was permanently dissolved following the July Revolution in 1830. The French Royal Army became a model for the new regimental system that was to be imitated throughout Europe from the mid-17th century onward. It was regarded as Europe's greatest military force and the most powerful armies in the world for much of its existence.
The Battle of La Gudiña, Battle of Val Gudina, or Battle of Campo Maior, was fought on 7 May 1709 near Arronches between the Spanish Bourbon army of Extremadura, under the Marquis de Bay, and the Portuguese and British, under the Huguenot Earl of Galway and the Marquis of Fronteira. This battle resulted in a crushing defeat for the Anglo-Portuguese army, 4,000-5,000 soldiers were killed, wounded or captured, while the Spanish had only 400 soldiers dead or wounded.
The twelfth siege of Gibraltar was fought between September 1704 and May 1705 during the War of the Spanish Succession. It followed the capture in August 1704 of the fortified town of Gibraltar, at the southern tip of Spain, by an Anglo–Dutch naval force led by Sir George Rooke and Prince George of Hesse-Darmstadt. The members of the Grand Alliance, the Holy Roman Empire, England, the Netherlands, Pro-Habsburg Spain, Portugal and Savoy, had allied to prevent the unification of the French and Spanish thrones by supporting the claim of the Habsburg pretender Archduke Charles VI of Austria as Charles III of Spain. They were opposed by the rival claimant, the Bourbon Philip, Duke of Anjou, ruling as Philip V of Spain, and his patron and ally, Louis XIV of France. The war began in northern Europe and was largely contained there until 1703, when Portugal joined the confederate powers. From then, English naval attentions were focused on mounting a campaign in the Mediterranean to distract the French navy and disrupt French and Bourbon Spanish shipping or capture a port for use as a naval base. The capture of Gibraltar was the outcome of that initial stage of the Mediterranean campaign.
Having been forced to sue for peace with Sweden in 1700, the Danish army was much larger than the kingdom could support. The King decided to put almost half of the army under Allied command during the War of the Spanish Succession. Twelve thousand soldiers were in 1701 made available to the Allied powers in Flanders through a treaty with the Dutch Republic and England. The Danish corps fought under Marlborough at the battles of Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet suffering heavy losses. It returned to Denmark in 1713 and 1714.
No Peace Without Spain was a popular British political slogan of the early eighteenth century. It referred to the ongoing War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) in which Britain was a leading participant. It implied that no peace treaty could be agreed with Britain's principal enemy Louis XIV of France that allowed Philip, the French candidate, to retain the Spanish crown. The term became a rallying cry for opposition to the Tory government of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford and the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht.
Bourbon Spain 
Habsburg Austria 
Kingdom of Portugal 
Great Britain 
United Provinces 
