John A Lynn, THE FRENCH WARS, 1667-1714 : The Sun King at war
1. How far was Louis responsible for the wars?
P13 : “Even though Louis may have thought that some of these struggles were forced upon him, and he did not technically initiate all the conflicts, nevertheless aggressive French military action brought on, or helped to precipitate each of them. But even in this case, Spain’s declaration of war can be read simply as a reaction to French armed aggression. The wars of the Sun King were, indeed, Louis’s wars …”
2. How far were Louis' wars for his interest rather than for the interests of France?
P15 : “In an age that made a virtue of great pride, Louis pursued his gloire, (glory), with such concentration that it became an even more fundamental theme of French policy. Louis identified himself with the pre-eminence of France, and he would struggle to maintain and assert it… Above all, gloire meant reputation, and men of the 17th century regarded it as priceless. A king must establish his gloire through great accomplishments… In the realm of foreign policy, Louis believed, ‘Reputation is often more effective than the most powerful armies. All conquerors have gained more by reputation than by the sword.’ There was a belligerent corollary for the young king, gloire could not be won without war, for it was essential to the very concept of kingship. In order to demonstrate his right to the throne, Louis must prove himself warrior and conqueror.
The pursuit of his gloire drove Louis’s foreign policy; early in his reign he defined gloire in aggressive terms, while later he saw it as more defensive, as depending more on his capacity to protect than to expand his domains.”
3. The War of Devolution
P 15 : “When Louis XIV … married … Marie-Therese, Louis garnered a strong claim to Spanish lands for his progeny. Marie-Therese abandoned all her rights to Spanish territory in her marriage contract, but this abrogation was contingent upon receipts of a very large dowry to be paid by the Spanish crown. Because this dowry was never paid, the French could later insist that she retained her rights. This gave Louis XIV and his dynasty a good claim to the vast holdings of Spain – a fact that would become important repeatedly during the rest of his life.”
4. The Dutch War
P20 : “[France had long supported the Dutch against the Habsburgs]… When he came to power, Louis assumed this natural affiliation would continue. He concluded a defensive alliance with the Dutch and lived up to its terms by supporting them with troops when the bishop of Munster occupied Dutch territory in 1665-66. Louis expected the Dutch to repay France by standing aside as he sought aggrandisement at the cost of Spain in the War of Devolution; instead, the Dutch blocked him. In retaliation, Louis attacked the United Provinces at the start of the Dutch War.”
P21 : “Although the United Provinces is usually remembered as a naval power in the 17th century, it also fielded a small but impressive army. Some argue that regiment for regiment it was the toughest army in Europe. What few historians have realised to this point is the degree to which Dutch administrative talent and effort fed and supplied the large Allied armies in the Spanish Netherlands… The need to fight on land eventually lost the Dutch their naval competition with the English because the Dutch had to split their resources, while the English could invest above all in the navy and leave the creation of large armies to others.”
P40 : “Initial diplomatic success [DUTCH WAR] in isolating his foe dissolved, and he soon faced a powerful coalition on several fronts. While he finally reaped some important gains, he fell short of being able to dictate a settlement in the Spanish Netherlands.”
5. The War of the Reunions
P17 : “Once he had achieved significant conquests in the Dutch War and was proclaimed ‘Louis the Great’, his gloire was assured, and his focus turned more to protecting his domains than to increasing them. The Sun King obsessed about constructing an impermeable barrier around his territory. In order to rationalize his borders into a stronger defensive line, however, he engaged in a series of limited seizures, the Reunions, which brought him such prizes as Strasbourg and Luxembourg. To his mind these gains were steps toward a defensive goal, but his neighbours regarded them as further evidence of his insatiable lust for conquest.”
P36 : “Louis’s statements [during the War of the Reunions] about protecting his borders have often been dismissed as sheer casuistry designed to cover his naked aggression, but such a criticism does not recognise that the Sun King felt real anxiety. Even the level-headed Vauban counselled the need to add some of the important acquisitions to rationalise the frontier.”
6. The Nine Years War
P18 : “The Nine Years’ War came because he demanded that his neighbours recognise his rights to his new frontiers and because he wanted to close off one final route across the Rhine that left Alsace vulnerable. This conflict, his most critical miscalculation, resulted from a desire for defence that almost reached paranoia and an arrogance that tempted him to believe that he could bully Europe with impunity.”
P19 : “Catalonia presented the possibility of carrying the war to Spain. Louis had reason to doubt Catalonian loyalty to their Habsburg king because this province had revolted against Philip IV from 1640 to 1652. During the Dutch War and the Nine Years’ War, Louis committed small armies to play the Catalonian card.”
7.
The War of the Spanish Succession
P19 : “In fact, Spain [During the War of the Spanish Succession] proved to be a burden for France because Louis now had to dispatch his troops and generals to campaign in the interior of Spain, from the Portuguese border to Barcelona. While ascending the Spanish throne marked a triumph for the Bourbon dynasty, it provided little benefit for the French state.”
8. Louis' relationship with William III
P23 : “Louis misplayed his hand during the Glorious Revolution… Concerned with a futile attempt to force the emperor into accepting French gains in the Reunions in perpetuity, Louis’s forces were concentrated in the Upper Rhineland and were unable to oppose the bold move by William III to take the English throne.”
9.
Louis' command of his army
P30 : “The state asserted its control over its armed forces as never before. Previous to the personal reign of Louis XIV, generals often operated as if they were independent princes. However, the Sun King imposed greater order on his generals, particularly after Turenne’s death; seniority became the principle for precedence among high-level commanders, and obedience was expected and enforced at all levels.”
P30 : “Changes in administration and command accompanied this transformation of army size, composition, and control. To manage these larger, more regular, and more expensive armies, governments created or vastly expanded the military ministries. LeTellier and Louvois multiplied their staffs and their workload. Through elaborate and costly logistical arrangements, the government fed its troops instead of letting them fend for themselves and royal inspectors strived to ensure proper clothing and equipment for the troops … As much as possible, French military administration strove to take care of the troops because authorities feared that ill-clothed and starving soldiers would desert, or at least turn to marauding and thus dissolve discipline and unit integrity.”
10. The French navy
P32 : “The French navy boasted few ships under Richelieu and Mazarin, but Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis’s naval minister, sharply expanded it. By 1672 the navy had 120 major vessels, at a time when Dutch numbers were declining, from 129 in 1670 to 93 a decade later. The French could handle a naval war with the United Provinces, but the alliance of the two maritime powers overwhelmed Louis. During the Nine Years’ War, the French battle fleet numbered 119 vessels in 1695, while the combined English and Dutch fleets already counted 189. From 1694 to 1697, the French built 19 first- to fifth-rate ships, totalling 15,410 tons, while the English constructed 58 such vessels, totalling 41,844 tons and the Dutch added another 22. By 1700 the French navy had only 108 major ships to the English and Dutch count of 210.”
P33 : “Ultimately the French suffered from multiple disadvantages in a naval contest with the English and the Dutch. Without as large a maritime commerce as benefited the Allies, the French were perpetually short of skilled sailors. Despite its extensive coastline, France lacked large deep-water ports to house a fleet. Only Brest on the Atlantic and Toulon on the Mediterranean sufficed. The very placement of the ports also posed a problem; they were too far from Paris, so it took too long for correspondence and orders to go back and forth. But above all these very real problems, the paramount and insurmountable obstacle to French naval pre-eminence was the monarchy’s need to concentrate its resources on land rather than at sea.
Louis eventually made a very conscious decision to cast his navy adrift. During the Nine Years’ War, as the army grew immensely, Louis determined that he could not increase both his army and his navy, and after 1695 he sacrificed the latter.”