1740 and All That

The War of the Spanish Succession: Why do we care?

The generation prior to ours was deeply involved: F1, FW, MT's dad Charles VI, Hans Heinrich von Katte, Grumbkow, Prince Eugene, George I, Louis XIV, etc. Lots of royals died and new ones inherited, leading to tons of exciting political developments. It had as much to do with "Everyone in Europe is unhappy with everyone else" as it did with the actual Spanish Succession. It changed the map of Europe. New wars were started afterward by the people unhappy with the way this one ended.

It intersects in interesting ways with the Great Northern War, which was going on simultaneously, and about which I hope to learn more next.

Finally: all of Europe spent 40 years anticipating this war, making treaties to try to prevent it, and fighting other wars with an eye toward how this one was going to develop.


The Lengthy Lead-up

So when was the war fought? 1701-1714. When did the war "begin", in the sense that people started fighting and negotiating over the Spanish succession? 1660 and 1665.

In 1660, Louis XIV married a Spanish princess, signed a treaty swearing not to use the marriage to claim any territory, argued that he'd found a loophole, and immediately started using his army to occupy Spanish-owned territory.

In 1665, the king of Spain died, leaving as his heir Charles II, a sickly 4-year old child whose claim to be the most inbred royal of history can surely be contested only by certain Egyptian pharaohs. Behold his family tree:



Everyone expected his imminent death without heirs. For 35 years. He didn't die until 1700, just a few days short of his 39th birthday. In the meantime, much war and many treaties happened in Europe.

The Contenders

The whole outbreak, progress, and conclusion of this war can be understood if you understand one thing: balance of power.

The two main contenders to the throne of Spain after Charles II's impending heirless death are France and Austria. No one in Europe except France wants France to suddenly control Spain, its numerous European territories outside Spain, and its numerous colonies. Ditto, no one except Austria wants Austria to control it.

So for many years, European powers keep making treaties to divide up Spanish possessions. They do not consult the Spaniards, who are understandably disgruntled at having their territory given away without reference to them, and who very much want to remain an intact world empire.

There is a major war between France and most of the rest of Europe between 1688 and 1697. Everyone is exhausted at the end. No one wants war.

So briefly in 1697, a number of European powers manage to agree on a compromise candidate, a 6-year-old Austrian kid, but then he dies at the beginning of 1698, leaving everyone back where they started. Everybody knows there's another big war coming, and most of them are hoping against hope to avoid it.

The Will

In 1700, shortly before dying, Charles II signs a will leaving the entire kingdom intact to the younger grandson of Louis XIV, the one not in line for the French throne. His main contender is the younger son of the Holy Roman Emperor, the one not in line for the throne.

The younger grandson of Louis becomes Philip V of Spain when Charles dies. Philip goes immediately to Spain and is generally welcomed there, although not without some friction.

Austria Reacts

The younger son of the Holy Roman Emperor is future Charles VI, future MT's dad. Three days after the HRE gets the news that his French rival is now Philip V of Spain, he sends his number one general, Eugene of Savoy, whom we've met a few times (and whom Fritz met), to Italy, to try to conquer Spanish possessions in Italy.

The European map looks like this at this stage:



Note that Belgium and the area around it is the Spanish Netherlands, which in our period are the Austrian Netherlands. That's because of this war! Note that Spain owns Milan, Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, and some other Mediterranean islands. That will change! Note that Spain owns Gibraltar. That will change too!

Prussia Reacts

Remember back in 1697, when we had a major war end? A lot of important things happened in the treaty that I'm hoping to cover in more detail in another write-up. Of interest to our salon is one thing that didn't happen: future F1 did not get recognition as King of Prussia. He's still only the Elector of Brandenburg, still just can't wait to be king.

But! Now it's 1700, and Leopold needs money and an army to fight for the Spanish throne. He and F1 cut a deal. He recognizes Prussia as a kingdom; F1 agrees to support Leopold in the coming war. This is why Prussians such as FW, Grumbkow, the Old Dessauer, and Hans Heinrich will make an appearance in this war! (Eugene, as you may recall, thinks letting a margrave become king may not be the Best Idea Ever, but he's overridden.) F1 is crowned in January 1701. This means his kingdom is a whole 11 years old when Fritz is born.

So now it's 1701, and in the space of two months we have a new dynasty in Spain and a brand-new new kingdom in Germany/Poland. But it's going to get even more exciting.

The English and Dutch React

The English and Dutch, both headed by William III, are deeply unhappy, but since they don't want another war so soon after the last one ended, they grudgingly acknowledge Philip V as king of Spain.

But then! Louis XIV, who's been the dominant power in Europe for several decades, shows he's getting old and overconfident. He invades Dutch territory. He starts acting like the power behind the throne of Spain. He makes other unpopular moves.

Now the Dutch and English, again in personal union through William III, are super ready to go to war with Louis and Philip. They sign an alliance with Austria to support future Charles VI's claims. (Remember, he's still the youngest son at this point, no one knows he's future Charles VI. This will be a plot point later.)

What everyone wants

So now the war's started. Everyone wants something different.

Austria: Wants future Charles VI to inherit the Spanish dominions intact.

France & Spain: Want Philip V to hang onto the Spanish dominions intact.

England and the Netherlands: Split up the Spanish dominions. Plus various things that will benefit their individual countries. More details in another post.

Prussia: Predictably, wants France to acknowledge Prussia as a monarchy.

German princes: Want subsidies for fighting.

The War

The war goes on and on for 13 years in the following theaters of war: northern Italy, Low Countries, southwestern Germany, Spain, western Mediterranean, North America. A lot of military history happens. Here's what you need to know:

The three most prominent commanders are: Duke of Marlborough (British), Prince Eugene of Savoy (Austrian), Duke of Berwick (French).

Marlborough, considered one of the greatest British generals and sometimes included in a "greatest of all time" list (likely to make the top 100, not the top 10), does his fighting mostly along the Rhine. He is quite successful there.

Eugene, considered one of the great generals of the late 17th and early 18th century, though not one of the greatest of all times, does his fighting in northern Italy, southern Germany, and occasionally up in the Low Countries. He is quite successful there.

Berwick, illegitimate son of James II by Marlborough's sister, currently in French service because Dad has been kicked off the English throne, is sent by Louis into Spain. He is pretty successful there.

It's worth adding that Philip V does a lot of his campaigning in person too. What's critical is the fact that he enjoys popular support in Spain, whereas his rival Charles really, really doesn't.

The upshot of these respective successes is that the allies gain a lot of Spanish territory but the French candidate, Philip V, stays on the throne of Spain.

Of all the battles, there are two that are really noteworthy. Both are Marlborough+Eugene victories over the French: Blenheim and Malplaquet. Separate posts to come on these.

Outcome of the War

After much back and forth, years of negotiations, and several separate treaties lumped together as the Peace of Utrecht, the following is agreed on in 1712-1714. (There are other terms, which we'll get into in more specific posts.)

1. Philip V remains king of Spain and its overseas colonies.

2. Philip V swears that he and his descendants renounce their claims to the throne of France in perpetuity.

3. Britain gets some overseas colonies from France.

4. Britain gets Minorca and Gibraltar from Spain.

4. Austria gets the Spanish Netherlands, Naples, Sardinia, Milan, and fortresses in Tuscany, from Spain.

5. Savoy gets Sicily from Spain.

6. The Dutch get their fortresses back from France.

7. France recognizes Prussia as a kingdom.

Notice all the "from Spain." Spain was really unhappy with these results! They went to war, largely unsuccessfully, for many years trying to get their territory back. Recall that the British have Gibraltar to this day.

Despite the 7 or so treaties between various countries, Spain and Austria remained at war. They didn't make peace until 1720. They were *that* stubborn.

Here's the map of Europe in 1714. Notice there's more stuff colored "Habsburg Monarchy" and less stuff colored "Spain". In tiny font, down by Gibraltar and Minorca, it says "(To Britain)".




When Charles II dies, Philip V is the Duc d'Anjou, younger son of the Dauphin. He's just about to turn 18, shy, insecure, and pious. There's also evidence that he's already suffering from depressive episodes.

Louis XIV, who does not suffer from shyness or insecurity, sends advisors to Spain with Philip to prevent him from having to make any decisions of his own.

Philip and Spain

Now, the relationship between Philip and Spain upon arrival is complicated.

Pros:

- He's popular with the his subjects.
- He loves bullfights. When he sees his first one, he's like, "Again, again!"

Cons:
- He's incredibly homesick.
- He doesn't speak Spanish. (I'm not sure he ever learns.)
- He has really good intentions about attending council meetings and learning to govern, but depressive episodes make this super hard.
- The Spanish do everything so "wrong" (clothes, food, entertainment) in the eyes of the French, that Philip has to start a separate French court. His first wife will later have to make onion soup in her room because the Spanish cooks refuse to make it, and she refuses to eat Spanish food.
- A lot of Spaniards have resentment against the French because of decades of war.
- The Spanish courtiers and administrators get upset because the French are being preferred for appointments and benefits.

Louis and Spain

Worse, the Spanish don't have a centralized army, bureaucracy, or functional treasury. The army they do have is using equipment and methods that are now outdated. It's quite a bit like MT at the beginning of the War of the Austrian Succession, with the difference that Philip has never been to Spain, wasn't the candidate until a year or two ago, and is a few years younger than MT. 

Now, Louis knows he's going to have to fight for Philip's throne. This means, one, Louis has to send troops and money to Spain to do the heavy lifting of the fighting. And two, via his advisors and Philip (who gradually takes more of a role in governing over time), Louis starts trying to make Spain more efficient, like France. (Which is not centralized in the way we would expect today, but is still more so than Spain.)

This intervention causes some problems.

One, Spain at this point is very decentralized, and the different provinces (Castile, Aragon, Catalonia, etc.) were only united under a king on the condition of being able to keep their traditional laws, government, etc. They're not happy about Madrid taking all that away and telling them what to do. So there's some resistance there.

Two, Louis acting like Spain is a province of France now is exactly what everyone else in Europe was trying to avoid by having Spain go to a younger grandson. This makes everyone nervous, which helps trigger the War of the Spanish Succession.

Marie Louise

Meanwhile, Philip is homesick, stressed, and extra depressed. But! Young wife to the rescue. Less than a year after Philip becomes king, Grandpa Louis XIV arranges a marriage for him, with the daughter of the Duke of Savoy.

This will be tragicomic. Why? Well, the Duke of Savoy, Victor Amadeus II, has a daughter married to the King of Spain and also a daughter married to Louis' oldest grandson, who is likely to become king of France (in actual fact, their son will inherit as Louis XV, but no one knows that). So you'd THINK he'd stick to an alliance with France+Spain.

You'd be wrong.

This is the guy who I was first introduced to by Horowski as "guaranteed to come out of any war on the opposite side from which he started, unless by chance he changed sides an even number of times."

The Duke of Savoy marries his daughter to Philip of Spain, and then, shortly thereafter, switches sides and starts supporting the cause that's trying to kick Philip off the throne.

Marie Louise writes letters going, "DAD! WTF!" and trying to bribe him back with territory. These letters have no effect.

[One of them contains the line "How long, dear papa, are you going to persecute your children?" selenak, are you also reminded of the famous opening line of Cicero's "Ad Catilinam"?]

Anyway, new queen Marie Louise is just shy of her 13th birthday when she marries. She and Philip meet in Barcelona, because he's on his way to inspect his territories in Italy, and she's on her way to Spain to be queen. After a few days of arguing, they fall desperately in love (or at least Philip clearly does, and her affection seems to have been sincere as well).

Philip continues on to Italy, leaving her to be regent. Now, she's only 13 on the one hand, but is strong-willed and politically opinionated on the other. And she does not suffer from depression. She attends meetings, rides out to show herself to the people and make herself popular, and does her best to actually govern. 

She will, for the rest of her life, be the dominant influence over Philip. Once she dies, the next, equally strong-willed, wife will be equally dominant over him.

Now, here's where it gets interesting. Philip was the kind of guy who did two things that we've pointed out were highly unusual when FW and FS respectively did them:

1) Not take mistresses.
2) Sleep in the same room with his wife.

Contemporaries drew the conclusion that he had outrageous sexual needs that, because of his piety, could only be met by his wives, and that this explained their dominance over him. Modern historians (including Blanning!) have echoed this verdict.

The modern biographer of Philip V I read argues that his sexual needs were normal, that he was clinically depressed, and that what he most needed from his wives was emotional/psychological support. And since early 18th century men both couldn't understand his clinical needs and they looked askance at the woman calling the shots, they went, "MUST BE SEX." And everyone since then has repeated what previous historians have said.

Without having investigated the primary sources, I think it makes sense. (It's not like we haven't seen the "repeating previous historians" effect at work in places where we have investigated the primary sources!)

Philip V at War

While inspecting his domains in Italy, which remember is at war (Eugene doing his thing for Leopold), Philip V discovers two things. One, he's not terribly popular here, where everyone would kind of rather not be ruled by Spain. Two, war is awesome! War snaps him out of his depression and into something that might be mania but at the very least is getting out of bed and DOING STUFF! MANLY STUFF!

So initially in Italy, and then after he comes back to Spain, he spends a lot of time doing a third thing that is fairly unusual for crowned monarchs, namely risking his life in battle over and over and over again. His advisors don't think this is the best idea ever, but his subjects and the soldiers *love* it. He gets nicknamed "El Animoso" ("The Valiant"). Philip is quoted as saying, "All are risking their lives for me, reason enough that mine should not be counted of any greater importance than theirs."

Meanwhile, things generally go well for him in Spain. The Allies (Austria, England, Netherlands, Portugal, mostly) manage to land future Charles VI with an army in Spain, but they get bad PR. Like, the first thing an Allied army does when it sets foot in Spain is get drunk and start looting. Though that's not the norm, it does get them off to a bad start, and they don't really make up for it afterwards.

The Duke of Berwick is the main commander on the French/Spanish side, and he has a lot of military success. Whenever the Allies conquer part of Spain, Philip and Berwick manage to get it back.

The Allies briefly occupy Madrid twice, once for about a month in 1706 and once for a month or two in 1710. The second time, Charles enters the city and proclaims himself king. Some people swear allegiance to him, but the reaction is very "meh". Philip is quoted as saying, "I am very pleased that the English have brought the archduke to Madrid; he will have occasion to see the disposition of people in my capital."

That's...about how it goes, and Charles leaves again soon and is never to return.

As we know, he gets elected Holy Roman Emperor the following year, making him suddenly not a great candidate for King of Spain, and he leaves Spain altogether, but insists that he's still king.

But, Philip is the one calling the shots.

Spain and France

Rewind a bit to 1709 (more on this in another post, it's a big year), France is exhausted and ready to talk peace. Louis pulls his troops out of Spain as a gesture of goodwill to help the peace talks along. Philip, now 25 years old and an experienced warrior, is acting more and more independently. He tells Louis that it's God's will that he be King of Spain and he will keep fighting as long as there's a drop of blood in his body. 

Louis clearly respects him for his determination, but doesn't think it's the greatest political move. Grandfather and grandson write each other mutually polite-but-tense letters with an undercurrent of "I'm not criticizing you, but I think you're wrong, and I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing."

As a gesture of independence, Philip sends messengers to the Hague to see about a separate peace, negotiated without reference to France. This is a first: Spain and France have been pretty much hand-in-glove so far, with France as the dominant party.

Buuut, the allies are like, "Nah, Louis, you gotta kick your grandson off the throne if you want peace since, um, we obviously can't do it," and Louis can't bring himself to do this, so the war continues. Louis sends troops back to Spain the following year.

Isabella Farnese

So, remember Queen Marie Louise, she who was regent at 13 and dominated Philip as long as she lived? (Yes, I'm foreshadowing her death here.)

Well, the person who was supposed to have influenced her the most was the Princess d'Ursins ("Ursins" being the French version of the name of her husband's family, the famous Orsini family). She was a lady-in-waiting to Marie Louise, and was highly resented in the same way that royal mistresses were resented: for being women with unofficial power through influence. How far her influence extended in reality is up for debate. Horowski makes the case that in France, the royal mistress was a convenient scapegoat for unpopular decisions, and that doesn't mean the mistress actually was responsible for the decision. The same dynamic, according to the Philip V biographer I read, may have been at work with d'Ursins.

At any rate. She clearly had some influence, and she was strong-willed and outspoken.

So, when Marie Louise died in 1714, age 25, from tuberculosis (she had been in a decline for many years), the now 72-year-old d'Ursins wanted to stay in power.

Philip V wanted to remarry immediately. His advisors saw this as an expression of his sexual needs; as we've seen, it may have been his clinical depression at work. Marie Louise died in February; he was married again in September. If you consider the travel time between Spain and Italy, that's some rapid marriage-making.

One candidate for the queen was Isabella Farnese, niece of the Duke of Parma. The Parmese envoy to Madrid says she'll make the perfect wife: quiet, docile, not a clue about politics, only accustomed to talk about sewing and embroidery.

Well, d'Ursins likes the sound of that. She doesn't want some rival showing up. So she helps make this marriage happen.

Then she meets the 22-year-old Isabella the day before Philip does, starts telling the new queen what's what, and is shocked to discover that the ambassador LIED. This young woman is as strong-willed as herself! Queen Isabella has d'Ursins arrested and banished from Spain on day one!

Philip doesn't hold this against her and falls in love with her at first sight. She picks up where Marie Louise left off in telling Philip what to do. She's the one who, after thirty years of being nocturnal in order to match Philip's depressive sleep schedule, was unable to adjust to daytime life and lost her influence at court when Philip died and his son inherited.

Now, I know less about Isabella, because I stopped reading the Philip V bio at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, but he still has 30+ years left to reign. 

What I remember from Horowski is that Isabella spends a lot of time machinating to get her sons territory, because Marie Louise's sons are due to inherit in Spain, that Philip abdicates in favor of his son (strongly against Isabella's wishes) because he's convinced that Spain's misfortunes are a sign of God's displeasure at his taking the throne (the one that in 1709 he was convinced it was God's will that he fight for to his last drop of blood), that his son promptly dies after only a few months as king, and that Philip reluctantly takes that as a sign from God and re-ascends the throne. That's why his bio is subtitled "The King Who Reigned Twice." And of course, selenak has told us all about Farinelli as Philip's musical therapist!


Most of this won't be new to selenak, but will be to cahn at least, and in any case, I found it useful to link all the causes and effects together with the War of the Spanish Succession.

1688: Increasingly unpopular Catholic James II loses his throne in England. His daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange become Mary II and William III, or "William and Mary." James goes to France. His supporters are called Jacobites, from the Latin "Jacobus" for "James".

1692: The Hanovers get HRE Leopold I (MT's grandfather) to agree to let them be Electors. But curses! The other Electors are holding tight to their exclusive club and won't acknowledge a new member.

1697: The Peace of Ryswick ends the Nine Years' War between France and the rest of Europe. Everyone knows this is only a bit of breathing room before Charles II dies and the next war starts. Of interest to us here is the fact that Louis is forced to acknowledge the Protestant succession in Britain. This means William, Anne, and the Hanovers. No Stuarts!

1701: James II dies. Louis is present at his bedside. Where everyone can hear him, he announces loudly, crying, that he will recognize James's son James III as king and support his claim forever. 

William: WTF, Louis? You just signed a treaty saying you wouldn't do this.

Louis: If you'd been paying attention for the last 40 years, you would have noticed that it's been one long string of broken treaties. Get with the program!

1702: William dies. His sister-in-law Anne, younger daughter of James II, succeeds him as Queen Anne. Anne hastens to assure the nervous Allies that she is just as committed to fighting this war as the lifelong hater of France William was. She sends Marlborough, husband of her maybe lover Sarah Churchill, to be supreme commander.

Some Whigs want George of Hanover to get the command, but Anne is like "NO. No Hanovers."

1707: Marlborough is in the Low Countries. Eugene is off in Italy. There's a crisis in southern Germany and the Allies need a good commander. George of Hanover says, "Fine, I'll do it, but only if Hanover gets to be an electorate!"

1708: The Imperial Diet obligingly ratifies the status of Hanover as an electorate. I'm honestly so used to thinking of them as electors I hadn't realized it was this late a development! This is like Leopold recognizing F1 as king in 1700 and the French not until 1714.

1708: Louis decides he needs to distract the English, hopefully get them to pull some troops off the Continent. He sends some ships with the would-be James III, but the English have a much better navy. The French barely make it to Scotland, it's not safe for them to land, there's no ground support, and they turn around and come back, without James ever setting foot on the British Isles. Louis never tries that again.

1714: Due to adventures like 1708, a very important condition of the Peace of Utrecht is that France has to recognize the Hanover succession.

1714 is also when Anne dies and G1 ascends. Naturally, this means another Jacobite rebellion.

1715: The famous Jacobite rising of 1715, known as the '15 or the Fifteen. (In contrast to the '45/Forty-five.) This one not sponsored by Louis, who is in fact dead by the time most of the action happens.

1716: The French and English sign a treaty requiring James to be kicked out of France. James goes to Rome, which is why future Bonnie Prince Charlie will be born (and die) there, and all future adventures of this family will be based out of Rome. The Pope is their last powerful supporter, and even the popes become increasingly "meh" about the obvious lost cause.

1719: Remember when Spain lost a bunch of territory in the War of the Spanish Succession, was really unhappy about it, and waged wars trying to get it back? The big one was 1718-1720. This is why there's a Spain-sponsored Jacobite rebellion in 1719. It's not as big as the 1715 one but bigger than the 1708 one. Like all of them, it fails quickly. But having known about the 1719 since my Jacobite fandom days, I'm now very pleased to have the Spanish context for it. 

Finally, an anecdote that I don't have a date for: my Invincible Generals book tells me that Elector George/G1 did not like Eugene of Savoy at all, and that his son the Crown Prince/future G2 served with Eugene for a while solely to annoy his father! Then there's a footnote by the author to the effect of, "Well, at least one of my sources interprets the evidence that way." 

I choose to believe.


A little backstory for the Spanish Netherlands here (sorry for the lack of gossipy sensationalism, this is not my period :P).

Late Middle Ages
Large chunks of the Low Countries belong to the Dukes of Burgundy.

Right around the time of Ash
The Burgundian male line dies out. The female line has marged with the Habsburgs via their "You, happy Austria, marry" policy. But the French want to invoke Salic Law and absorb Burgundian possessions into France.

At the end of the ensuing war, the French end up with Burgundy, and the Austrians the Habsburg Netherlands, aka territory that includes parts of what today are the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Germany.

Early Renaissance
Through further fortunate marriages, the Habsburgs end up with Charles V in control of Austria, the Habsburg Netherlands, and Spain, among other places.

Mid sixteenth century
The Habsburgs split into German and Spanish lines. Your Philip gets Spain and the now Spanish Netherlands.

But the Reformation is in full swing now! Many people in the Netherlands are prepared to kill and be killed to remain Protestants. For eighty years. Because Philip is not prepared to geben Gedankenfreiheit. :P 

The Eighty Years' War between the Netherlands and Spain happens. The northern Spanish Netherlands manage to secede and form the Dutch Republic (today's Netherlands), extremely Protestant. (Until WWI, Wikipedia tells me, when Catholicism experienced a resurgence.) The southern Spanish Netherlands, today's Belgium and Luxembourg, mostly, remain Spanish and predominantly Catholic.

1714
At the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, the Spanish Netherlands become the Austrian Netherlands. Not to be confused with what we call the Netherlands, which are the United Provinces of the Netherlands in our period.


Remember when the French royal family fell like dominoes between 1711 and 1715? They weren't the only ones! During those years, the royal families of Europe lose:

1711 Holy Roman Emperor, Prussian Crown Prince, French Dauphin
1712 New French Dauphin and his wife, New French Dauphin
1713 King of Prussia
1714 Queen Regnant of Great Britain, Queen Consort of Spain, Duke second in line to a suddenly shaky French throne
1715 King of France

That's 4 heads of state (Austria, France, GB, and Prussia), 4 heirs to the throne, the person who was doing most of the ruling in Spain, and a 2nd in line whose death nearly contributed to another war of succession.

Austria
In 1705, MT's grandfather, Emperor Leopold, who had been trying to make himself king of Spain for decades, finally dies. His oldest son, Joseph, becomes emperor. He carries on the war until he dies in 1711. 

In 1711, he dies without a surviving male child (his daughters' marriages will help trigger the War of the Austrian Succession 30 years later), so his brother becomes Charles VI.

Now that he's Holy Roman Emperor, Charles' desirability in the eyes of the rest of Europe as an alternate King of Spain hits rock bottom. Suddenly, the English and Dutch are now okay with Philip V, since there's nothing they can do about it anyway, and nobody wants to revive the empire of Charles V. Except Charles VI, of course, who fights on alone, but then eventually has to give in.

Prussia
In 1711, the second son of FW & SD, named Friedrich Wilhelm, dies as a baby.

In 1713, F1 dies and FW becomes king. This is less relevant to the Spanish succession but extremely relevant to salon.

Fortunately for the F1 male line, Fritz was just born in 1712.

England
Anne dies without an heir in 1714, which means the Hanover dynasty accedes to the throne. There are some riots followed by a Jacobite rising, but the handover proceeds mostly smoothly.

Brits: We may not be huge G1 fans, but at least he's not a CATHOLIC.

France
At the start of 1711, Louis has a son, three grandsons, and two great-grandsons. The succession seems assured, and the chances that Philip V, over in Spain, would try to advance his sort-of renounced claim to the throne, are remote. 

Then everyone except Philip V and future Louis XV dies by early 1714. So in 1714 all that's standing between Philip V and the French throne is: 
- A 76-year-old man: Louis XIV.
- A 4-year-old kid (future Louis XV) who nearly died of measles a couple years ago and only survived because his nurse locked out the doctors.
- A treaty that Philip V just signed saying, "I pinky swear not to claim the French throne."

I say "pinky swear" because we know from the War of the Austrian Succession what a piece of paper like that is worth, and even contemporaries, who hadn't lived through that yet, were very very nervous. There could easily have been a war. There was no enforcement mechanism to make Philip V keep his word, and due to the weight of primogeniture tradition, he would have had solid support to go with his solid opposition.

Then the 76-year-old man dies. 

Now it's 1715, and there's a 5-year-old kid and a piece of paper standing between Philip V and the French throne.

Would Philip have made a move if little Louis had died? I don't know, but war brought him out of his depression, and even with Louis XV on the throne and Philippe d'Orleans as regent, there was a conspiracy in France and Spain to make Philip V the regent.

You can consider it a small miracle that Louis XV survived and possibly averted the early 18th century War of the French Succession.

Spain
Poor Marie Louise of Savoy. She who was married at 12 and regent at 13-14 dies at age 25, after years of increasing illness.

Philip remarries 7 months later, as we saw.


Political Background
As we've seen, the turn of the eighteenth century is when the larger German principalities are doing their level best to move up in the world. August of Saxony becomes king of Poland in 1694. Hanover becomes an electorate in 1708, and the elector becomes king of Great Britain in 1714. Brandenburg becomes the kingdom of Prussia in 1701 (with French recognition in 1714).

Naturally, the Elector of Bavaria doesn't want to be left behind! He wants to be Holy Roman Emperor.

Maximilian II Emmanuel, of the Wittelsbach family: Hey, Leopold, how about it? Me as the next emperor? You're 60, I'm 38, we can make this work.

Leopold: Are you a Habsburg? The word you are looking for here is 'no'.

Max Emmanuel: Louis XIV?

Louis: Depends. Will you help me fight the Habsburgs?

Max Emmanuel: Did you say 'fight the guy who just said he wouldn't support me as emperor'? You're on!

Louis: Deal! Let's see what we can do about making you emperor with French backing.

So now it's 1704. Bavaria is allied with France, supporting Philip V (Bourbon, grandson of Louis XIV), against Austria and much of the HRE, supporting archduke Charles (Habsburg, son of Leopold, future father of MT).

Strategery
The problem with Bavaria, if you're on the Allied side, is that it's frighteningly close to Austria. The French and Bavarians are now making an advance in the general direction of Vienna.

Leopold: SOS! SOS!

Eugene: Shit, I'm in Italy. Also, my army is smaller than theirs.

Marlborough: I'm in the Low Countries! Like, hundreds of miles away. 

Leopold: SOMEONE DO SOMETHING.

Marlborough: Your Majesty, Queen Anne. Permission to march the army 250 miles/400 km south to rescue our claimant to the Spanish throne.

Anne: Do it!

Dutch: What about us?? You're leaving?! The French will invade!

Marlborough: But if I leave, with my giant army, the French will have to divert troops south too. Don't worry, you'll be fine.

Dutch: *mutter mutter okay fine*

Marlborough: Attention France! I am invading your country this summer!

France: *tries to stop the invasion*

Marlborough: *marches southeast into Bavaria while the French are busy trying to prevent him from marching southwest into France*

Marlborough: *arrives on the Danube* Fooled you!

At the same time, Eugene: *is hurrying north from Italy*

On the Spot
The march down the Rhine and east along the first part of the Danube was, I'm told, a strategic and logistical masterpiece, in which Marlborough deceived the French and avoided French attack, supplied his army very efficiently along the route, and arrived with his forces intact in just 5 weeks.

The best map of the march, from The War of the Spanish Succession:



(Sorry about the quality, but it's still more readable than the map in Invincible Generals, which goes for detail over clarity.)

Eugene: *is now also in the vicinity with his troops*

Marlborough and Eugene: *unite*

According to my Invincible Generals book:

So harmonious and unselfish was their [Eugene and Marlborough's] co-operation that popular medals were struck depicting them as Castor and Pollux.

So now the job of Eugene and Marlborough is to interpose their army between Franco-Bavarian forces and Vienna, and either maneuver them away or crush them so that they don't have the resources to assault Vienna.

This they do. Blenheim is the second major battle fought between these two armies in this region within a few weeks. The first one was a Marlborough victory at high cost. (And highly criticized by many people. Including Sophia of Hanover, due to high Hanoverian losses during the battle.)

The second one is the battle of...well. Selena talked about this. Höchstädt to Germans, Blenheim to English speakers.

Getting Ready to Fight
Here's the map of the battle, taken from my Invincible Generals book (source of the best map of this battle of all my sources):



In the lower right is the river Danube. Near it, is a hamlet called Blenheim (Blindheim). This is a fortified location. The French had positioned their right wing next to Blenheim, and stationed some reserve troops inside. Then they spread out to the left, across what is called the plain of Höchstädt. The actual town of Höchstädt is off to the southwest along the river; Sir Not Appearing on This Map. (You can see the "To Höchstädt" annotation near the legend on the map, with an arrow pointing southwest.)

So the French have a superior position and slightly superior numbers (10% more troops and 50% more cannon).

What this means is that the French aren't expecting a battle. They're expecting a normal 17th/18th century campaign of chessboard-style maneuvering. But Marlborough is a more aggressive general than most of his contemporaries. Like Fritz, he will try to force a battle, and like Fritz, he will sometimes suffer high casualties (one reason contemporaries liked to avoid battles), and as we've seen, his most recent battle received criticism for just this reason.

Central Attack Tactics Are Exactly Straight
At Blenheim, Marlborough does a thing that strikes you as very weird if you're used to 18th century military history: he puts most of his cavalry in the middle instead of on the flanks. He makes it work! 

He attacks frontally, advancing his line forward. He successfully forces the crossing of the small river (the Nebel) between the two armies, and then he attacks Blenheim. Here's the map again so you don't have to scroll up:



He fails to take Blenheim in the early stages of the battle, but forces a lot of the French reserves to occupy it to hold it. Then he bombards the center of the French line, and as soon as it starts to weaken, he sends in the cavalry.

The French give way and flee to the Danube, and the reserve troops, in Blenheim, watching their compatriots abandon the field, surrender unconditionally.

Aftermath
To quote Versailles memoirist St. Simon, whom we've met before:

For six days, the King remained in uncertainty as to the real losses that had been sustained. Everybody was afraid to write bad news; all the letters which from time to time arrived, gave, therefore, but an unsatisfactory account of what had taken place. The King used every means in his power to obtain some news...Neither the King nor anybody else could understand, from what had reached them, how it was that an entire army had been placed inside a village, and had surrendered itself by a signed capitulation. It puzzled every brain.

I bet, St. Simon.

In this case, casualties of the French and Allies were nearly equal in terms of killed and wounded (often not counted separately in 18th century battles, because "number of combat-ready soldiers left in my army" was the figure everyone cared about), but the 14,000 surrendering French soldiers really made this a victory for the Allies.

Also, the Bavarian court evacuates, because the Allies now rule the land.

Blenheim Palace
As Selena noted, Marlborough was rewarded with some land in England and money to build the Palace of Blenheim, pictured below, on it:


Source: Wikipedia

Controversial architectural style has been controversial throughout the ages. Tastes are divided on the matter. I leave you to form your own opinions. :P

Naming Things is One of the Two Hard Problems
As for Blenheim vs. Blindheim vs. Höchstädt, well. Blindheim, we've seen, is the name of the village that was fought over during the battle. Höchstädt is the name of the plain that the Franco-Bavarian forces were posted on, and also the name of the town further off. Höchstädt is a bigger town than Blindheim and also the site of a previous battle, and for both reasons was probably more familiar to Germans than the tiny hamlet of Blindheim. Blindheim, in contrast, was the village directly on the battlefield, and is pronounceable for English speakers who want to name palaces after the battle.

German wiki speculates that Blenheim vs. Blindheim is because the arriving English relied on French scouts/guides, and thus it was the French who first mispronounced the name. No citation given. (Google Translate tried telling me the English relied on French reconnaissance aircraft, which puzzled me until I viewed the page in German, whereupon I saw "Aufklärer" and decided it was humans doing the reconnoitering. ;) )

Wittelsbach Sequel
Though partly as a result of this battle, Max Emmanuel fails in his ambitions to become Holy Roman Emperor, his son manages to interrupt the Habsburg streak with a brief and lusterless reign as Charles VII from 1742 to 1745, during the War of the Austrian Succession, because better a Wittelsbach than a WOMAN.


The Great Frost
1709 was an interesting year in Europe. It started out as the coldest. Rivers froze, Louis XIV in Versailles was having his wine freeze on the table before he could drink it, Liselotte was barely able to write for shivering, icicles were hanging from the ceilings, and if that's what it was like in the palaces, you can imagine what it was like for the peasants. Death, mostly.

(I ran across the Great Frost while researching the winters in early 18th century Europe for my fix-it fic, because there's going to have to be some winter traveling, and it turns out 1730 was a very mild winter (which is also good to know for real-life people who had to take off their shirt on the morning of November 6), but 1709 was the coldest between about 1500 and the present day. Then I realized Katte would have been just barely old enough to remember: 4-5 years old, and therefore some of his earliest memories may well have been about being freezing cold.)

Even once spring came, there was massive flooding due to the melting snow and ice, which meant poor crops, which meant even more famine.

Peace Talks
So now Louis has an army he can't pay, feed, or clothe, and his ministers are actually at the point of, "Do we feed the peasants, or do we hope they revolt over the price of bread so we can crush them and confiscate their supplies and feed our army again?"

To make matters worse, the French army has been getting its butt kicked for several years now. In part because Louis' gotten overconfident, in part because Eugene and Marlborough are actually really good at what they do, and in part because the selection process for "Who gets to command the French armies" is "Who's from the best families and BFFs with Louis?" not "Who can kick Allied butt?"

So in the spring of 1709, Louis has actually offered peace on pretty demanding terms. He's offered to give up territory and to acknowledge Archduke Charles as the King of Spain. But the Allies are so drunk on success, they refuse his terms. 

So he manages to supply his army by dint of letting his generals ravage the countryside and take what food they can find, which has the added benefit (?) of making it more lucrative to be in the army than not to. So the French army gets a lot of "volunteers" consisting of people who don't want to starve.

Meanwhile, by 1709, the French have run through a bunch of fail-generals, and they've actually got a good one now (Villars)! So they've got a fighting chance!

But they've only got the one chance, so they have to use it well. One army, which is not very well supplied even now, and the Allies are prowling up and down the border with the Netherlands capturing fortresses.

Strategery
The Battle of Malplaquet revolves around these very simple strategies:

Allies: Force our way past the French border and march on Paris.
French: Don't let the Allies into France!

So Malplaquet is fought on what is today the French/Belgian border (like, literally, the battlefield straddles the border), and my sources differ on where exactly the border was in 1709 (possibly because it was currently being hotly contested!), but either there or close, anyway.

Here's a map with a marker showing the battle site. The Allies are in Belgium and want to advance on Paris. The French have one army with which to defend the country.



The two armies meet near the village of Malplaquet.

Who's There
Eugene and Marlborough, of whom we know. (I have a late 19th century bio of Eugene that's fairly out of date but was the best I could find two years ago. Will read it or find osmething better at some point.)

Grumbkow, busy two-timing as per usual.

FW, still Crown Prince.

Alte Dessauer, learning a lot from watching Marlborough in this war, lessons that he will apply to the restructuring of the Prussian army, and which will therefore have a huge impact on Frederician warfare. (Fritz was not a big innovator when it came to the army. He made some changes, mostly to the cavalry, but kept a great many things the way FW had left them: meaning, Marlborough-style.)

Old Pretender/James III, son of James II. Suffering from a fever but determined, he takes a bunch of quinine and fights like his claim to the throne depends on it.

Hans Heinrich von Katte, widowed about a year and a half ago. Five-yo son currently being raised by Grandpa Wartensleben, apparently.

Maurice de Saxe/Moritz von Sachsen, illegitimate son of August the Strong, future famous general, currently 12 years old.

And some 180,000 other people. Most nationalities in Europe (and since there are more and smaller nations, that means a *long* list) are represented. Except Spain, ironically.

The Battlefield
Rather than walk you through the stages of this battle, because it was complicated and involves many, many actors and phases, I'm going to give you a visual to go with a description of the basic tactics, and then talk about why the battle ended up being the bloodiest of its century.

Here's the battlefield. Black rectangles are the Allies, white are the French. The Allies are coming down from Belgium, the French are trying to block the way to Paris.



What you need to know about the battlefield:

1) There was a forest on each side: the woods of Sars and of Lainieres.

2) There was a gap between the woods, in which the French stretched out their army from one wood to the other.

3) The French built a bunch of earthwork-and-palisade type fortifications.

4) The roads were very important, because the Allies were trying to press into France and the French were trying to stop them.

So the Allies are trying to push toward the lower left of the map, so they can head toward Paris after crushing the French army, while the French are trying to interpose themselves and hopefully crush the Allied army so they can't even think about making a move on Paris.

Why So Bloody?
This was an unusual battle in many respects, and a number of factors combined to make it a very bloody battle. Here are some of those factors.

1) Aggressive generals on both sides: Marlborough, Eugene, and the French commander Villars. Most generals like marching around and attacking supply lines. These are three oddities for their time.

And let's not even get started on the Prince of Orange, who just kept ordering suicidal attacks against a fortified French position despite being badly outnumbered. His troops would attack, be slaughtered, have to fall back, and he'd order another attack. And he kept doing that! He survived, but almost no one else in that spot did. (He's controversial because it's not clear to what extent he was following orders versus being gratuitously suicidally brave.)

Furthermore, Marlborough writes to his wife Sarah shortly before the battle that if he has an army this size and an opportunity this good to end the war, and he doesn't take it, it's all over for the Marlboroughs. They're already starting to slide out of favor.

2) Paradoxically: the hesitation of all three commanders to attack. Both sides had ample opportunity to attack in the 5 days leading up to the battle, but neither side felt confident enough to do so.

You see, when you're marching around, you can more or less control your army and the outcome of events (modulo some desertion). You can keep track of what's going on, and have some assurance that at the end, you'll still have an army. Once you start a battle, you lose almost all control over events, you can't predict what's going to happen, you have very little idea of what's going on except in your immediate vicinity, and you may or may not still have an army at the end.

So, for example, on September 6-7, the marching Allies are strung out and disunited, and the already-in-position French could have attacked and done some serious damage, maybe won a decisive battle...but the French were still barely able to feed their army, it was the last army they had, the stakes (Paris) were high, and they hesitated.

Instead, the French decided to start fortifying their position and fight a defensive battle.

Conversely, on September 8-10, the Allies had an opportunity to attack the French when they were vulnerable, but they hesitated, because much of their army hadn't arrived yet, they particularly didn't have the artillery they were expecting in a couple days, and the French were in a much stronger position. So they held off on the attack.

And then the French realized that with every passing day, their fortifications became stronger, so they bought as much time as they could.

3) The longer everyone waited, the more troops arrived, and so the armies got bigger and bigger. Since 20% casualties in a big army is a much bigger number than 20% casualties in a smaller army, the fact that both sides had somewhere in the 75,000-90,000 range (my sources differ) meant that when this turned out to be a hard-fought battle, the ultimate casualties were high.

4) French fortifications. You don't normally, in the 18th century, have a pitched battle on a plain with this kind of entrenchments. That's siege stuff.

Normally, in a pitched battle like this, one side gets out of the kitchen when they can't stand the heat: meaning they flee. Meaning the next day, they're still fighting soldiers. But because of the fortifications, both sides at various points in the battle ended up in situations where they had nowhere to retreat, or they had to expose themselves to artillery to do so.

5) Ditto the forests.

Between the forests and the fortifications, you ended up with hand-to-hand combat between soldiers with bayonets, which went against the grain for most of them. Normally, advancing infantry would fire en masse at an opposing line, not aiming at anything in particular, and one side would advance, and when casualties got high, one side would break and run, and the other side would be too relieved and disorganized to pursue. 

Honestly, if you were an infantry soldier in the 18th century, there was a decent chance you couldn't even tell if you'd killed anyone. Between muskets having basically no ability to aim and the tactics of firing blindly, and the tendency of nervous and sometimes conscripted soldiers to instinctively or intentionally fire too high, the rate of fired bullets meeting their targets could be 1 in 100 or 1 in 200.

But here, toward the middle of the battle in Malplaquet, once the Allies had advanced on the fortifications and broken past them in some cases, they were trapped in a small space having to stab people while looking them in the eye (and sometimes rescuing each other), which was deeply traumatic in a way that their experience and training had not equipped them to deal with. So casualties are high, and the whole experience is just shocking in a way that even a normal battle--already stressful!--wasn't.

6) And then we come back to our aggressive generals. Most generals, having met with the kinds of reverses that Eugene and Marlborough met with early on in the battle, would have decided this wasn't working, pulled back their troops, and tried marching off in a different direction to attack a fortress or a supply line or something.

Marlborough and Eugene: "The attack isn't working? ATTACK HARDER."

(This seeing eye to eye on not doing things the normal way is one of the reasons they got along so well.)

For an example of how these factors worked together, consider that there were 6 cavalry charges between 1 and 2 pm, in what ended up being the biggest cavalry battle of the age. Normally, you can't get a cavalry to attack 6 times. Never mind the men, the horses won't stand for it! Once there's a bunch of loud noises and blood and dead bodies to trip over, everything dissolves into chaos. You get one charge, and that's it.

The fact that Seydlitz managed to charge twice in Rossbach was a sign of just how one-sided the battle was, and the fact that he held off at Zorndorf under threats from Fritz to have his head, was precisely because he knew he'd get one chance, and he'd better make the most of it. (Fritz later, with the benefit of hindsight, admitted Seydlitz made the right call there.)

But here we are at Malplaquet, and you've got commanders that won't give up, and an army, both infantry and cavalry, that can't effectively retreat because of fortifications.

And the slaughter is immense.

Aftermath
The French end up abandoning their position and marching off, thus giving the Allies a tactical victory (whoever is in possession of the field at the end of the day is the winner). However, the Allies are in absolutely no condition to stop them from doing so in good order, meaning the French still have an army at the end of the day, one that can defend Paris.

Critically, they've even saved their artillery, which is highly unusual for a retreating army (see the tactics post for details).

Furthermore, there is no way that the Allies can even think about marching on Paris now. Their casualties are about 25,000, compared to French casualties of ~12,000 (hard to get accurate numbers, as discussed in the Blenheim post).

Villars writes to Louis that if France loses any more battles like this, the Allies are guaranteed to be destroyed, thus making a play on Pyrrhus' famous quote about defeating the Romans at high cost: "Another such victory and we are lost."

So at the end of the day, it's a tactical Pyrrhic victory for the Allies, who get to end the day on the field of Malplaquet, and a strategic victory for the French, who've managed to save Paris.

The war does not end, there's no way it can end this year, and the British (Anne) are not pleased. September 11 is too close to the end of the campaigning season to start a whole new campaign now. In the 1710 election, there will be a landslide Tory victory, because the Tories campaign on a platform of "No more endless war!" And the heavy losses at Malplaquet didn't immediately lead to Marlborough's 1711 downfall, but they contributed.

Conversely, losing this battle this way was as good for French morale as it was bad for the Allies. The situation went from the French offering humiliating terms and the Allies rejecting them because the terms weren't humiliating enough, to the Allies wanting peace, and the French getting better terms in 1712-1714 than those they had offered in 1709. It's a cautionary tale against overconfidence!

Meanwhile, in Russia...
Speaking of 1709 being an interesting year for Europe, if I manage to study the Great Northern War, I'll be able to tell you more, but for now what I know is that 1708/1709 is the last winter that Charles XII's "travel light and live off the army" spends in Russia. After Russia's scorched earth policy plus the coldest winter on record, Charles XII's army is really hurting by the time it confronts Peter's at Poltava (today in Ukraine) in July 1709. The Swedish defeat at the Battle of Poltava pretty much ends Sweden as a military superpower, and nothing is ever the same for Sweden after that.

Meanwhile, in Prussia...
Wilhelmine was born in interesting times, is all I can say. She was born 5 days before the battle of Poltava and 2 months and 8 days before Malplaquet, which means FW has a 2-month old daughter when he's off fighting at Malplaquet. 

Later, FW will celebrate the anniversary of Malplaquet every year (yay battle!) but also decide that maybe battles are to be avoided as much as possible (boo casualties!). Which may in part have to do with imprinting on the bloodiest European battle of the century.


The map again:



The French line stretched from a forest to a forest because you wanted a natural defense on your flanks, to prevent a flanking attack. This limited the number of available battlefields in Europe, because there aren't that many flat plains that have natural obstacles like rivers, swamps, forests, or fortified villages just the right distance apart.

So Villars, concluding that the Allies will have to march between the forests if they want to get past him and his army, fortifies the center of his line extremely strongly.

Marlborough and Eugene decide to begin with a dual flank attack, creating local numerical superiority, to force Villars to pull troops away from his center to defend the positions in the forest.

But they don't have enough troops to attack both forests with numerical superiority. So politics come into play: the nationalities that have the least ability to throw a fit later over high casualties, get sent to attack Boufflers on the right of the French line (Allied left), in the wood of Lainieres, badly outnumbered. Their purpose is not to take the fortified French position, but to create enough of a diversion that Boufflers can't send troops to help Villars on the right, in the wood of Sars.

So the Dutch and the Scots, who have little political clout, have insanely high casualties. This is made worse by the Dutch Prince of Orange, who was denied the chance to inherit William's III title as Stadtholder in the Netherlands, and (according to Horowski) feels extra compelled to prove himself in battle. So he leads a charge against a French fortified position with superior numbers, loses 5,000 of his men in the first 30 minutes, falls back, regroups, attacks again, has horses shot under him, but keeps going.

He has to fall back again, and he's preparing a third attack when some panicked messenger informs Marlborough that the Prince of Orange is getting his entire troops slaughtered. Marlborough and Eugene have to ride over to the Wood of Lainieres, give orders that the Dutch are not to budge until they give the word, no matter what the Prince of Orange says, and then return to what they were doing.

Which was attacking the French in the Wood of Sars, this time with superior numbers. This is where the Prussians (among others) are. We end up with the fierce hand-to-hand infantry combat that is so unusual in this period, and Grumbkow reports having saved a Frenchman's life, which means he's now acquired a French informer for his mission to work out a separate peace with France. (As Horowski says, if Grumbkow's motives were partially humane, because he was shocked by all the slaughter, he wasn't about to report it in a letter to his paymasters. But it may have been some of both.)

Marlborough and Eugene have success on the right, in the Wood of Sars, where their superior numbers begin to tell (but not without enormous casualties, due to the forest + fortification + aggressive commanders = hand-to-hand combat I talked about). Villars and Eugene are both wounded. Villars tries to carry on, but faints from pain and is hors de combat. Boufflers has to take over. Unfortunately, Bouffler can't be sure the Dutch aren't going to attack again (Malborough didn't tell *him* he'd told the Dutch not to attack until he gave the word, after all!), and even though he's got numerical superiority, he's reluctant to leave the safety of the fortifications. So though he does a good job managing the battle as a whole, he misses an opportunity to crush the Dutch, and also is pinned in place in the Wood of Lainieres.

Which means, in order to defend the assaulted French left in the Wood of Sars, the French (Boufflers, I think; I forget exactly what time Villars was carried off the field) have to divert troops from the center, just as Marlborough planned.

Now the French fortifications in the center are abandoned by the infantry. The Allied cavalry goes charging in. It's the biggest cavalry fight of the century.

The battle's been raging for about 5 hours at this point. The Allied cavalry have been sitting tight and waiting. The French cavalry have been being bombarded by the Allied artillery for 5 hours, and are a mess.

Yet every time the Allied cavalry advance, the French cavalry force them back. The battle rages back and forth, each side charging past the fortifications and then being driven back. Neither side can advance, because every time the French are beating the Allied cavalry and driving them back, the Allied infantry, stationed in the middle, come up to support their mounted troops and drive the French cavalry back. Marlborough was a big fan of mixed troops reinforcing each other in the center; this wasn't usual practice but was one of his hallmarks.

In the end, the success of the French cavalry is that they keep the Allies from breaking through the center and chasing the retreating French troops. This allows the French troops to retreat in good order, keeping 66 of their 80 cannon. Which is a miracle by 18th century standards. Cannon were very heavy and almost immobile once the battle started, and in a retreat, nobody fleeing for their lives stops to drag the heavy guns away. But because the French cavalry were preventing the Allied cavalry from running down the retreating French infantry, the French managed to save their guns.

The success of the Allied cavalry + infantry is that they hold their line. Without the infantry support that Marlborough had so cleverly positioned, contemporaries and historians alike agree that the French cavalry would likely have broken through the Allied center, thus possibly turning the tide of the whole battle.


The French
As we've learned, France and Spain were at war in the mid 17th century: 1635-1659. In 1660, as part of the peace, Louis XIV married Maria Theresa, daughter of the Spanish king (sister of future Charles II). The idea was that this would help improve relations between the countries and end the constant war.

So naturally Louis' reaction is: "This is a great excuse for a war!"

Specifically, Louis' marriage treaty said neither he nor his descendants could invoke the marriage to claim any part of Spanish territory. But the treaty also said the Spanish king would pay a certain sum as dowry for his daughter.

Spain, being sort of broke after all the war, predictably couldn't afford to pay that sum. So Louis declared the whole treaty null and void (something that his contemporaries majorly side-eyed) and started invading the Spanish Netherlands (and another Spanish province, France-Comte, which bordered France).

Louis conquered it, but at the end of the war, had to give it back. But no worries, he's got another war up his sleeve!

Which leads us to...

The Dutch
As we discussed recently, the Dutch spent eighty years getting their independence from Spain and hanging onto it. In 1648, they're finally free! Or at least, the Protestant United Provinces of the Netherlands are; the Spanish Netherlands remain Spanish, obviously.

So naturally the United Provinces, aka the Dutch Republic, end up at war with their new Catholic neighbor: France.

Also naturally, it's the French doing the invading again, and by the French we mean Louis.

The Dutch only manage to stop him using a trick they devised in the eighty years of fighting against Spain that gave them a lot of time to come up with defenses: they discovered that if they used dykes strategically, they could flood parts of their country to stop an advance. You have to flood the land too deeply for soldiers to be able to easily march through (and drag their supply wagons and artillery through), but not so deeply that boats can get through. You also, in freezing weather, have to keep solid ice from forming. A really cold winter can screw you over (and did for the Dutch, on another occasion).

But it worked against the Spanish, and it worked again against the French.

So in 1678, Louis has successfully conquered the Franche-Comté province, which is today part of France, and the Dutch have held onto their country but are super nervous about him trying it again. (Being a flat country makes you easy to invade, just ask Poland.)

So the Dutch set up what is called the Barrier: a series of fortresses near the border with France. These fortresses are their strategic and psychological securities against another French invasion.

They REALLY REALLY hate the French.

So naturally, the first thing Louis does after grandson Philip goes off to be king of Spain is occupy the Spanish Netherlands (because they're right there and he's just doing his grandson a favor by administering them for him!) and seize the Dutch Barrier fortresses.

Why is he able to do this so easily? Because of...

The Bavarians
Or more specifically, the one Bavarian guy who's going to cause so much trouble.

It's Max Emmanuel again. He's governor of the Habsburg Netherlands. He's son-in-law of Emperor Leopold and his wife is niece of Charles II, and since Spain and Austria have been intermarrying and fighting on the same side for ages and are both ruled by Habsburgs, it makes sense that the Spanish Netherlands are administered by a subject of the Holy Roman Empire, who's closely related to both the Emperor and the King.

But Max Emmanuel, who, as we know, wants to be Emperor and has been told no, is now buddying up to Louis, and he agrees to let Louis' troops march through the Spanish Netherlands and invade the Netherlands, even though as  a member of the Holy Roman Emperor, he's kind of supposed to be supporting his emperor's family claim to the Spanish throne, not the French claim. But, part of life as a Holy Roman Emperor is that you can count on German principalities having interests that run counter to yours (just ask MT and FS about the Margrave of Brandenburg).

So now Louis is occupying the Spanish Netherlands as well as Dutch fortresses along the border, and the Dutch, who had previously acknowledged Philip as King of Spain, WANT WAR.

P.S. There is no one who hates the French and Louis specifically more than William III, Prince of Orange and King of England. To the point where when he dies a year or two later, the Dutch are worried that maybe Anne isn't going to be as committed to this war. But don't worry, she is.

The War Starts
Even worse, Spain has now granted overseas trading privileges to its new best buddy France, which extremely goes against the interests of the Maritime Powers, aka England and the Netherlands. And, as we know, France is now trying to centralize government in Spain and make it more France-like, and also there's a French court in Madrid, etc. And people are starting to nervously comment that "The Pyrenees are no more," i.e. France has de facto absorbed Spain.

So now England and the Dutch are ready to team up with "What took you so long? I've been fighting for a year" Austria in war against France.

Nine days after they sign a treaty and form the Grand Alliance that will fight the War of the Spanish Succession against France and Spain, what does Louis do but acknowledge the son of his dying friend James II as king of England. You know, the thing that he put in writing four years ago that he wouldn't do, when he signed the Treaty of Ryswick and acknowledged the Protestant succession.

So then the English have to add an addendum to the treaty of the Grand Alliance, which is "We ALSO want Louis to acknowledge the Protestant succession and stop supporting the damn Stuarts. But, like, FOR REAL this time."

So now it's 1701 and most of Europe is at war now (more countries will get sucked in in the next year or two), four whole years after the end of the last major war.


But wait! There's this whole other thread in the tapestry that is the lead-up to the War of the Spanish Succession, which is that everyone tried to avert it by making treaties for 30-some years.

So now we rewind back to shortly after Louis' marriage.

Treaty the First
In the 1660s, Louis signs a treaty with Leopold, both of whom are married to sisters of a sickly and not expected to live long Charles II, that once Charles dies without an heir, they'll divvy everything up by letting Leopold or his heir have the Spanish throne, along with Spanish territory in Italy and overseas, while Louis will get the Spanish Netherlands (this keeps him from being surrounded by Habsburgs; a matter of no small concern to France).

But Charles ruins everything by not dying, and also the Spanish (who weren't consulted) don't particularly want to be divvied up.

More wars happen.

Treaty the Second
In 1689, England and the Netherlands, which are in some respects rivals, because they have competing interests, but who can definitely agree on hating Spain, France, and Austria, agree, and who are now finding it much easier to agree on things now that William of Orange is William III of England, sign a treaty--again without consulting Spain!--that Leopold can be king of Spain, buuuut, the Nine Years' War has just started and that kind of ruins everything.

The Nine Years' War is Louis against everyone, basically: the Dutch, the English, the Holy Roman Empire, the Portuguese, the Swedish, and Savoy. It runs from 1688 to 1697.

Treaty the Third
At the end of 1697, everyone is exhausted, and no one wants another war (even Louis is less than enthusiastic). But Charles II of Spain is really really dying for real this time (he will last another 3 years before giving up the ghost), and everyone can see the writing on the wall for another war.

So they come up with another treaty on how to prevent war over Spain, without consulting Spain.

This time, in 1698, they decide that since France and Austria are clearly ready to go to war if either of the other gets the throne, they'll pick a compromise candidate: grandson of Leopold (so Leopold should be happy), and thus great-grandson of the previous Spanish king. This happens to be the son of Max Emmanuel of Bavaria, who keeps cropping up in this story.

In return for giving up their claims, the French would get some Spanish territories in Italy, and Leopold's son Charles (future father of MT) would get Luxembourg (part of the Spanish Netherlands) and the Spanish-owned Milanese.

Leopold is upset because no one consulted him, they just assumed that he would give up his claims in favor of his Wittelsbach grandson, and he's not on board with this. He does not sign the treaty.

The Spanish are upset because they still aren't on board with being split up, and no one consulted them either.

But regardless, this is the first Partition Treaty, and it's signed by France, England, and the Netherlands, in September 1698. Alas, in February 1699, the compromise candidate, son of Max Emmanuel, dies. He was all of 6 years old. Cause of death is officially smallpox, but poison is suspected.

Treaty the Fourth
Either way, now it's 1699, and they have to come up with yet another treaty. The Second Partition Treaty, signed by Louis and William in March 1700, agrees to let Archduke Charles, younger son of Leopold and his Spanish wife, have Spain as long as Spain and Austria don't pull another Charles V and unite. Joseph gets Austria, Charles gets Spain, east is east, west is west, and never the twain shall meet. In return, France gets Sicily, Naples, and the Milanese.

They give Leopold a two-month deadline to sign the treaty.

Leopold: But I don't want France getting Italy, that's way too close to me. No.

Spain: Again with the not asking us.

Leopold refuses to sign the treaty. So does Spain.

Treaty the Fifth
Later in 1700, at the suggestion of his advisors and the Pope, Charles II changes his will to leave the entire Spanish empire intact to a younger descendant of Louis, because France can probably defend it better, being right next door and Louis being Louis, and they think it'll end better for Spain this way. If Philip doesn't want it, then his younger brother can have it, and if he doesn't want it, Archduke Charles can have it, and if by some miracle none of the three of them want it (highly unlikely!), the Duke of Savoy can have it.

Louis: That sounds pretty good to me.

Leopold: Didn't you just sign a treaty a few months ago saying you would give up your descendants' claims to Spain?

Louis: But you didn't sign it by the deadline, so that makes the whole thing null and void, and I don't have to abide by anything I signed!

Rest of Europe: We're not sure that's how treaties work, Louis...

Louis: Look. It's a loophole. Forget Sun King, I am the Loophole King. I'm not sure what technical nicety I'm going to invoke for breaking the Treaty of Ryswick next year and acknowledging James III, but you should see a pattern emerging here. I invade my neighbors, I break treaties, I end up at ruinous war with coalitions consisting of "most of Europe"...the only thing I haven't done is write an Anti-Machiavel before launching on this career. Anecdotally, among my last words as a dying king ruling over a financially exhausted state will be, "I have loved war too well."


Trolling
Charles II of Spain dies on November 1, 1701. Everyone knows that Spain is favoring France as the successor. After Charles dies, it becomes official. But not without some trolling first.

At length the folding doors being thrown open the duke of Abrantes appeared, and a general silence ensued to hear the nomination. Near the door stood the two ministers of France and Austria, Blecourt and Harrach. Blecourt advanced with the confidence of a man who expected a declaration in his favor, but the Spaniard, casting on him a look of indifference, advanced to Harrach and embraced him with a fervour which announced the most joyful tidings. Maliciously prolonging his compliment, and repeating his embrace, he said 'Sir, it is with the greatest pleasure--Sir it is with the greatest satisfaction for my whole life--I take my leave of the illustrious House of Austria!'

As we know, Louis accepts on behalf of his grandson, then makes a bunch of unpopular moves, and kicks off a war.

"Sorry I didn't fight you"
Now, the Dutch, as we've seen, are next door neighbors to Louis and have been at war with him in the 17th century, so their biggest concern is "not being invaded by Louis in the future." They are also financially exhausted by the previous century of war.

The Dutch commanders are of the "war is a chess game" stamp and not "war is big battles" stamp, and the ruling body, the Estates General, really just want to fight a defensive war. More to the point, they want Marlborough to hang around in the Low Countries not marching off to attack here and there and everywhere, a potentially costly enterprise that will leave the Netherlands vulnerable. We saw this when he wanted to march off to Blenheim and the Dutch really didn't want him to go (he waited until the last minute to tell them for this reason).

So among Marlborough's accomplishments during the war are many diplomatic triumphs. When he wasn't on the battlefield, he was shuttling around to various European capitals trying to get a bunch of people with very different aims to get along and all pull together. He even met Charles XII of Sweden and convinced him not to get involved in the war, and especially not to attack Leopold! (Charles went on to attack Peter the Great instead, and got destroyed at Poltava in 1709, a couple months before Malplaquet. Vale, Swedish empire.)

Where this becomes amusing is that early on in the war, Marlborough sees an opportunity to attack the French and wants to take it, but his Dutch and various German allies don't agree. Marlborough figures the diplomatic cost of getting off on the wrong foot with his allies will be higher than the tactical cost of a missed opportunity, so he doesn't attack. Per Invincible Generals:

In the next few days, three more opportunities were lost for the same reason, so that when the French had finally reached safety Marlborough sent to them a trumpeter under a flag of truce, bearing an apology for not engaging them, a somewhat ironic and old-fashioned courtesy!

Btw, every pro-Marlborough account I've read is like, "Those ungrateful and unenterprising Dutch! Always holding back the great general!" But, like, the Netherlands were carrying a heavy financial burden of the war, and they really came out of it with nothing left to spare. Marlborough always attacking was great for England, and England came out of the war a naval superpower with French colonies overseas (they got Newfoundland, Hudson's Bay, Nova Scotia, etc.), and exclusive rights to supply the Spanish colonies with slaves. (This will contribute directly to the South Sea Bubble in a few years.) But I'm not convinced that it would have paid off so much for the Dutch.

Maybe? But as it was, their major power days were already coming to an end in 1700, and the War of the Spanish Succession put the final nail in the coffin. They got the Barrier fortresses they wanted, but the Barrier turned out to be kind of a Maginot line: when the War of the Austrian Succession started in 1740, everyone just went around.

Fun Times at Cremona
The moment he hears Philip is in Spain, Leopold sends Eugene to Northern Italy to start trying to capture the Milanese, without even declaring war.

One of Eugene's early adventures in Italy involved a siege on Cremona. He had a man on the inside to help, and together they devised a plan to sneak the Austrians into the city, by sneaking a force in at night through the drainpipes.

This works out great for the Austrians for a while, and they take many prisoners. Among those prisoners is the French commander. But when a French relief arrives, the Austrians are forced to retreat.

The Parisians are so happy about this outcome that they sing a song that goes like this:

By the favor of Bellona,
And good fortune without parallel,
We have kept Cremona
And lost our general!

(Translation mine, aimed for loose rhyming over word-for-word.)

The general in question, Villeroi, had grown up with Louis XIV and played with him when they were children, and they had been ballet partners as young men. Villeroi was resented in the army for having been promoted to the top without having the corresponding skills or experience.

Louis XIV Explains Himself
Back when the war started, the allies had various goals, but a key point is that the treaty that brought the Grand Alliance together and kicked off the war did not require that they fight until Archduke Charles was on the throne of Spain. The idea was that Philip could stay, but Spanish territory had to be divvied up, so that he/France didn't become that powerful. There also had to be guarantees that Philip and his line would never stand to inherit the crown of France.

But by 1709, the French had run through a bunch of fail generals in the east, who were up against the Marlborough + Eugene combo, so the Allies were winning like mad. At the same time, the French had some good generals in the east, like the Duke of Berwick, and Charles/the Allies were pretty unpopular in Spain, and Philip was reasonably popular, so the allies weren't making much headway there.

So in early 1709, when France, exhausted from war and famine, offered these terms:
- Louis would recognize Charles as king of Spain.
- The Allies could have a bunch of territory.
- Some other concessions.

...the Allies really should have accepted! They had met all their original goals and then some.

But the Allies are both drunk on success in the east (Rhineland, Low Countries, Italy) and totally stumped in the west (Spain). So they offer counter terms that Louis has to:
- Make war on Philip if the latter won't abdicate.
- Give up French fortresses as a guarantee that he'll make war on Philip.

They do this knowing that Louis will refuse, because they figure that they've been having so much success that they can totally crush France. (Hence the plan to march on Paris that Villars puts a stop to at Malplaquet.)

Reluctantly, Louis rejects the terms. He then has a proclamation read aloud to the citizens in the towns of France.

Royal Proclamation:

Listen up, everyone, because this will be the first and last time I feel the need to explain myself to my subjects.

I know you're all tired of this war. I'm tired of this war too! I tried to end it, I really did. I offered the Allies ridiculously good terms. But they wouldn't accept. They said I had to kick my own grandson off the throne of Spain! My own family! After all these years of you guys fighting to keep him there.

And grandson Philip, well, he did what I told him back in the early years, sure, but now he's got a mind of his own. He's made it clear he's not going to take this lying down.

So it's either a dishonorable war against Spain, or an honorable war against the Grand Alliance. And I know you all don't want a dishonorable war any more than I do.

So I'm going to have to ask you to tighten your belts, sign up as recruits to replace the dead who've fallen in this war, and I'll try to get us a peace that allows us to hold our heads up as Frenchmen.

And that, plus Villars being a competent general, is how we ended up with Malplaquet and the Peace of Utrecht.


I've now finished reading the Philip V bio, Philip V of Spain: The King Who Reigned Twice, by Henry Kamen (1997), and here are my findings.

French Throne
Remember when I said I wasn't sure if Philip would have claimed the French throne, just because there were people in France and Spain who thought he should? And then I read further and reported that he had pamphlets printed and distributed in France asserting his claims? It gets even better: any time young Louis XV was sick, Philip hopped out of his depression sickbed and started preparing to rush to France to claim the throne and assert himself against that upstart Philippe d'Orleans.

Yeeeeah. There would have been a war if Louis had died. Good job, Madame de Ventadour!

His obsession with ruling France was so well-known that people speculated that the reason he abdicated the crown of Spain was that he wanted to be free to claim the French throne. Kamen argues that there's no evidence for this and that it needs to be kept in mind that this is unknowable.

Languages
He did learn some Spanish, and apparently could handle paperwork in Spanish. But he always spoke French with his family, his ministers, his generals, and his confessor.

Mental Health
The author (Henry Kamen) does a good job of destigmatizing mental illness. He repeatedly refers to Philip's "neurobiological disorder" and refutes claims that Philip was "lazy" or "weak"; if he spent all day in bed and couldn't rule his kingdom, those were symptoms of his illness. The 1997 publication date no doubt helps tremendously.

Where I'm more hesitant is over the diagnosis. Kamen asserts that Philip was bipolar, because he veered between bedridden (depressed) and energetic (manic). I'm less certain that the episodes of activity fit the clinical criteria for mania. I think I would need to see a lot more primary sources to look for evidence. 

Two things make me suspicious. One, that these "manic" episodes seem to only hit when there's a war to be fought or a kingdom to be claimed. I.e., the triggers seem purely external. Two, that his "symptoms" don't seem to impair his ability to do what needs to be done; this seems to be when he actually gets stuff done. It's quite possible that his passion for war and for claiming France gave him a burst of adrenaline that afforded him temporary relief from the depression, but that what he had was straight-up major depression, whose intensity fluctuated.

The one thing that makes me think of mania were the occasional episodes where he talked a lot, and very fast. That sounds like an actual symptom. Risk-taking may be one of the standard symptoms of mania, but I don't accept Philip's risking his life in battle as a symptom by itself; there's too much cultural context for that. He had a love of warfare, and we might just be seeing that and calling it mania because it contrasts with the depression. 

So I'm ready to say he had depression, but I'm agnostic on bipolar.

Abdication
So, Philip definitely had a lot of guilt, anxiety, and self-esteem issues that are part and parcel of his depression, and which fed into his pathological piety. He flagellated himself, despite not being encouraged to do so by his confessor.

In one scribbled note to the confessor, the king wrote, 'Father, as this evening is my day for discipline [i.e. flagellation], please let me know what I should do, if I can say a Miserere in its place, and if you can relieve me of the obligation'; The confessor wrote back: 'Sire, Your Majesty has no obligation to do the discipline, or to say the Miserere, or to do anything in its place. I relieve you of the need to do anything.'

But Philip continues to obsess over saving his soul. He becomes convinced he can only do this by retiring to a place of complete tranquility. As early as 1720, he and Isabella sign their first vow to someday abdicate. 1720 is key because it's right after the 1718-1720 war of the Quadruple Alliance, where Spain tried to regain territory lost in the War of the Spanish Succession, and France, England, Austria, and the Netherlands ganged up on them and made them give it back. France invaded Spain, which was deeply traumatic for Philip, who was still kinda-sorta French at heart. (Remember when I said the Duke of Berwick really didn't want to invade Spain and fight against the king he'd fought *on behalf of* for over 10 years? Berwick's son was actually in Philip's service! It was tough for everyone.)

So that was depressing, and Philip got worse and started thinking about abdication. He and Isabella repeated this vow in writing in 1721, 1722, and 1723. Finally, in 1724, when their oldest son reached his majority, Philip abdicated. The reasons he gave are:

Having for the last four years considered, and reflected deeply and profoundly on, the miseries of this life, through the illnesses, wars and upheavals that God has seen fit to send me in the twenty-three years of my reign... [and now that my son is old enough to rule, I'm abdicating.]

Any other reasons, like wanting to rule France, are speculation. So then Philip and Isabella stepped down and went to live in their palace retreat.

...Where they held court and told their son what to do from afar and just generally couldn't give up power.

Then the new king died, seven months later, from smallpox. His brother was only 11 and not ready to rule. There was debate over what to do. Philip V ended up reclaiming the crown, but there were those who thought he could only legally become regent.

Philip himself often felt this. He was tormented over whether he had the right to be king, after having abdicated. As we've seen, he dealt with this by trying to abdicate; then, when Isabella foiled that, by refusing to talk, or refusing to talk to anyone but her (or one time his valet). Can't talk, can't rule!

Btw, just as I'm sometimes left thinking, "Did Voltaire really design a war chariot or can I not read German as well as I think I can?" or "Is German 'Kickboxer' a false friend and it actually means something else??" I've spent the last couple days worried that I misread or misremembered, and it didn't actually say that he thought he was a frog and I've misled everyone...

Nope, I'm staring at the page again, and it does say: "At one time in July he believed that he was a frog."

So that happened.

In the end, Philip reigned just short of 46 years, minus the 7 months of unofficially ruling from his retreat.

Relationship with Isabella
So it appears that reports of Isabella's dominance may have been exaggerated. Young Philip V was shy and insecure, and Louis XIV, through his ministers, and then increasingly Marie Louise, made the decisions. But the older he got, the more he seems to have had his own opinions. He apparently felt especially strongly on matters of foreign policy.

Like Marie Louise, Isabella was his main emotional support. And he definitely had much worse depression during his second marriage than his first. Quite possibly because war had a therapeutic effect on him, and Marie Louise died just at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession. Isabella got him during a mixture of peacetime and wartime, so she got to see the worst episodes. It's also likely that since he wasn't getting actual therapy, his mental health continued deteriorating as he got older. Since, you know, war isn't *actually* therapeutic and the guy clearly needed real therapy.

When he was bedridden, he and Isabella were inseparable. She seems to have worn herself out trying to live a normal life and also meet all of his needs, including the nocturnal schedule. It was impossible for ambassadors to meet with one of them alone; it was always both of them, and in fact, she stayed so close to him, that you basically couldn't catch either of them alone.

During audiences, he would listen and refuse to talk, and she would do all the talking. And when he was really badly off, she wouldn't let anyone see him. This led contemporaries to believe she was making all the decisions. A conclusion that was made all the easier by the fact that when you don't like the decision, it's easier to blame the bad advisor than the king, and especially when the decision-maker is a woman, which goes against the laws of nature! As we've discussed, Contemporaries concluded that he was sexually dependent, and that she dominated him because of her sexual hold on him. Nonsense, says Kamen, he was mentally ill, and their relationship just didn't fit into the contemporary worldview.

When it came to politics, Kamen argues that Philip was making the decisions, communicating them to her in private, and she was just enforcing them. His take on Isabella is that she basically molded herself to be whatever her husband needed. She nursed him, was his therapist, was his first minister, and implemented all his ideas without having any of her own.

The problem here is that some of his evidence is Isabella asserting that she was just carrying out Philip's ideas and that she had no wishes apart from his. And Kamen just refutes all the ambassadors' claims and uncritically accepts hers.

Whereas I would submit that maybe an unpopular woman whose power derived from her husband might actually feel the need to say that. Maybe she was doing a Caroline of Ansbach with George II, convincing her husband that her ideas originated with him!

If you step away from what they say and look at what they *do*, this is what I see:

- Isabella's first act on arriving is to dismiss the Princess d'Ursins for being insolent, and then say to Philip, upon meeting him, "Hope you don't mind I got rid of your late wife's advisor who's either been or been perceived the dominant power in Spain for the last decade and a half."

- When Philip abdicates the first time, Isabella goes along with it. After he returns to the throne, she does everything in her power to stop him, from keeping him under lock and guard, to having her messenger burst in on the council meeting and tear up the paper Philip wrote.

- Philip has opinions of his own when he's not laid up with depression, and he devotes himself to ruling, and I don't see a strong reversal of policy when he's incapacitated and Isabella's doing the talking.

What I see here is the royal couple working as a team and presenting a united front. On the one hand, I don't see evidence that Isabella has no ideas that diverge from his. It seems like she's the kind of person who's willing to take the initiative when she feels strongly. Which means that she's probably got strong feelings about other things as well, we just don't see her fighting Philip unless she can't get him to agree with her using milder means. 

On the other hand, given his level of activity when he's not incapacitated, and given the continuity in some of his opinions between his first marriage and second, it does seem like he was doing at least some of the ruling. So Isabella's dominance may well have been overestimated, because she was an obvious scapegoat.

Finally, I regret to report, when his mental health plummeted, Philip was known to fight with Isabella and hit her hard enough on at least one occasion that she had to explain the scratches and bruises to Rottembourg (pretty sure "the French ambassador" is him), thus moving him off the "candidate for decent marriage" list and into the "no no no" list for me. Plus there's the whole requiring my non-stop attendance on him all night while he refuses to bathe or dress and is soiling the bed. I'm not sure running Spain is worth it.

Music therapy
By popular demand, Kamen's account of the Farinelli episode!

In 1737, Farinelli's in London, where he's had a contract since 1734. Isabella invites him to Spain. On his way, he performs for Louis XV. When he arrives in Spain, Philip is depressed and not attending the royal concert. But...

As the clear tones of his voice rose into the air, they penetrated to the bedroom where the afflicted Philip lay. The divine voice immediately resuscitated the king, who snapped out of his depression and began to attend once more to his work routine. Astonished by the therapeutic effects of Farinelli's music, the king and queen demanded that he sing for them every day.

He finds the workload, especially the nocturnal part, demanding, but he uses his position to introduce Italian opera to Spain, where it's a big hit, and in general create closer cultural ties between Italy and Spain. He writes, 'my achievement is that I am considered not as mere Farinelli, but as ambassador Farinelli.'

It was said by many that Philip only wanted to hear the same handful of arias, but that's slander, says Kamen. If you look at Farinelli's own papers, he had to sing hundreds of different pieces.

Through Farinelli, the king had discovered at last, after many years of suffering, a satisfactory therapy for his disorder.

That said, "satisfactory therapy" isn't the same thing as "immediate cure"; he continues to struggle with depression for the rest of his life. He dies in 1746. 

Death
It was very quick: he woke up at noon, felt suddenly sick at 1:30, and was dead three minutes later. He was 62.

Interestingly, while Kamen says his sudden death was the result of long-term deterioration of mind and body, and Spanish Wikipedia says he died of a stroke, the actual symptoms Kamen gives (Wiki gives none) suggest something very different to me:

At 1:30, he said to Elizabeth [Isabella] that he thought he was going to vomit. She immediately called for a doctor, but was told that the king's physician was out at lunch. Philip's throat started swelling, as did his tongue, and he fell back on the bed. Within seconds he was dead. It had been three minutes from the moment that he mentioned vomiting.

That sounds like anaphylaxis to me: the swelling, the nausea, and the speed of the attack. Whatever he was allergic to, he might have died of it no matter how healthy he'd been.

For more backstory from the 15th-17th centuries, see selenak's various posts in this thread.