The volume starts in an age of intolerance: the Protestant tragedy in France and the Irish tragedy. Tens of thousands of Protestants fled France. Various military and political events of the later 1680s, notably the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that chased out King James II and installed William of Orange as King William III of Great Britain led to hostilities in 1689-1691 with Ireland being secured by William. Both had considerable impact on the armies of western Europe. Tens of thousands of officers and soldiers fled France for other nations and also left Ireland for France and later Spain. Much has been said about the loss of Protestant soldiers to the French army, but less known is that the Irish Catholic military refugees certainly compensated losses in the French army and later also boosted the Spanish army. William’s accession to the British throne also meant that Great Britain resolutely now joined the Holy Roman Empire, the Netherlands, Brandenburg-Prussia and other nations opposed to Louis XIV’s France that formed the League of Augsburg. In effect, Britain joined Europe in a large military alliance and all-out war broke out in 1689. This was not good news for Louis XIV; although the British army was not formidable, it was an efficient force and a large part of it would, for the first time, join its allies on the continent. The other main European armies had also learned a lot from the French army and had adopted many of its features; the Blitzkrieg campaigns were over. In the successive battles and sieges of the war, the allied armies could equal the French in combat, but the Sun King’s commanders, on the whole, were still the finest. Cohesion in command plagued the allies, but good commanders were rising there too, notably Prince Eugene of the imperial army. Several chapters will go through the campaigns on the two main fronts: Flanders and western Germany, and Catalonia in Spain. On the whole, the early battles such as Fleurus, Leuze, Steenkirk and Neerwinden were hard-won successes for the French armies; there were many sieges and the two of Namur (1692 captured by the French, retaken by the allies in 1695) stand out. By 1697, all belligerents were nearly exhausted, but the French army prevailed in Catalonia and took Barcelona.
AUTHOR: Rene Chartrand was born in Montreal and educated in Canada, the United States and the Bahamas. A senior curator with Canada’s National Historic Sites of Parks Canada for nearly three decades and he was also attached to Canada’s Department of National Defence as an historian. He went on as a free lance writer and historical consultant for media productions and historical restorations of military sites in North America and the West Indies. As a curator, he initially specialized in military material culture and later researched organization, tactics, policy and geo-strategy. He has authored some 50 books and hundreds of articles and research notes published in England, France, the United States and Canada. He lives in Gatineau (Quebec).
42 colour and 200 b/w illustrationss