| rdfs:comment
| - The War began in 1688 when King Louis XIV of France invaded the Rhineland in support of his sister-in-law, Elzabeth Charlotte, to succeed her dead nephew, the Palatine Elector Charles, instead of the Neuburg line. This is despite the Palatinate having whereby women were barred from inheritance. Immediately the League of Augsburg, formed in 1686 between the most powerful princes of the empire to defend Germany from French aggression, declared war.
|
| abstract
| - The War began in 1688 when King Louis XIV of France invaded the Rhineland in support of his sister-in-law, Elzabeth Charlotte, to succeed her dead nephew, the Palatine Elector Charles, instead of the Neuburg line. This is despite the Palatinate having whereby women were barred from inheritance. Immediately the League of Augsburg, formed in 1686 between the most powerful princes of the empire to defend Germany from French aggression, declared war. Louis XIV sent his troops into Germany in the autumn of 1688. His soldiers plundered the country as far as Augsburg, and he conquered neutral German states along the Lower Rhine including the Archbishoprics of Cologne and Mainz. In January and February of 1689, the French General Louvois with six armies in Germany carried out the systematic devastation of the Palatinate around Mannheim, Heidelberg, and Oppenheim, and neighbouring states such as Worms and Speyer. Although there had been devastations in previous wars to terrify the population of local princes, the devastation caused by the French in the Nine Years' War was purely a military tactic to delay the advance of the enemy. This destruction of both the Palatinate and neighbouring states which had no interest of the quarrel succeeded in uniting almost the entirety of Germany behind the Holy Roman Emperor, who was busy fighting a war against the Turks in Hungary. During April and May of 1689, England, Portugal, Savoy, Spain, Sweden, the United Provinces, and several Italian states also joined the alliance against France by the Treaty of Vienna. As a military measure, however, the move proved an unprofitable disaster. It was impossible for Marshal Duras of the French to hold out on the eastern bank of the Middle Rhine, so he ordered the destruction of southern German lands such as Baden and the Breisgau. These measures left the allied advance in the north practically unopposed. Duke Charles IV of Lorraine and Duke Maximilian II of Bavaria besieged Mainz, while the Brandenburg elector Frederick III besieged Bonn. Mainz was forced to surrender on 9 September, but the governor of Bonn refused to surrender, leaving the Brandenburg elector to mercilessly shell the city until the armies from Mainz reinforced him. Of the French army of 6000 stationed in Bonn, only 850 were alive to surrender on the 16th, and the Duke of Lorraine escorted them to Thionville. Marshal Boufflers, with another French army stationed in Luxembourg, was unable to assist the French in Mainz or Bonn despite a minor victory at Cochem.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)