Category: Historical

Prelude to war

At the time the war broke out, Sweden was one of the most powerful countries in Europe. The French writer Voltaire (1694-1778) called it the ‘Famous War of the North.’ From 1560 and 1700, the Swedes had built up a Baltic Empire under great leaders such as Gustavus Adolphus with their small but professional army, including occupying the provinces of Karelia, Ingria, Estonia, and Livonia in the east and Western Pomerania, Wismar, the Duchy of Bremen, and Verden, as well as parts of Denmark and Norway in the west. By the end of 17th century Sweden had an empire which nearly circled the entire Baltic Sea. Charles XII took over throne of Sweden as absolute monarch at the age of fifteen and his neighbours saw weakness and their chance to reclaim some of the lost land. The west-looking Peter I of Russia wanted a port in the Baltic, previously taken over by the Swedes in Treaty of Stolbovo (1617).…

The War of Spanish Succession was fought in Europe and the colonies between 1701 and 1714. The theatre of war in the Americas was known as Queen Anne’s War and involved a series of smaller wars fought by British colonists against the French and their native American allies.

In 1700 King Charles II, the last Spanish King of the House of Habsburg, died with no direct heir to take over the throne of Spain. Before he died, he had named his half sister’s grandson, the Duke of Anjou, Phillip of Bourbon, as his successor to the Spanish crown under the name Felipe V. Felipe was also in the line of succession to the French throne. A Bourbon monarch on the throne of France and Spain would greatly shift the balance of power in Europe and quash the ambitions of Britain and the Dutch Republic.

Although Felipe V’s sovereignty was grudgingly accepted at first, it was when the Bourbon’s cut off England and the Dutch Republic from Spanish trade that war broke out between the two main factions in Europe – the conflict being known as the War of the Spanish Succession.…