As we've learned, France and Spain were at war in the mid 17th century
It's hard to find a time when they weren't at war in the 17th century. Which is why the majority of film and tv versions of The Three Musketeers, i.e. a story that's set in the reign of Louis XIII, not Louis XIV., includes a nod to the fact there's a war with Spain going on. The long argument between Cardinal Richelieu and Anne of Austria that majorly factors into the "Musketeers" plot included That Time When He Caught Her Corresponding With Her Brother The King Of Spain, after all. (Which in a French/Spain war is sort of treasonous.) (Again, reminder, Louis XIV didn't just marry a Spanish princess, he was the son of one.) All these eternal Spain vs France wars basically revolved around the two biggest Catholic powers on the continent duking it out for the top spot. Spain had a head start when Charles V. (son of Juana, grandson of Max and Mary on the one and Ferdinand & Isabella on the other hand) was HRE, thus ruling basically ruling every country surrounding France (cue centuries long French complex about not letting this happen again), but even Charles himself had decided this was too much for one man and in his last will split up his Empire (and the Habsburg family) between the Spanish line (his son Philip, the one from Don Carlos and the Armada, becoming King of Spain) and the Austrian line (Charles' younger brother Ferdinand, becoming Emperor after Charles). This insight didn't stop him from having had his share of wars with the French, mostly with Francis I. as King. This Francois was the one who offered Leonardo da Vinci a retirement home, major patron of Renaissance artists, also Catherine de' Medici's father-in-law and thus her only ally in her early years in France. cahn, you may remember this from my story about Catherine and her daughters. On one occasion, after Francis had lost against Charles and gotten captured, he had to deliver his two sons to Spain as hostages to get out of captivity. One of these sons was future Henry II, Catherine's later husband, who ended his time as a Spanish prisoner having major issues with both Dad and the Spanish.
...what I'm getting at: Louis (XIV) pouncing on the first (self made) chance to go to war against Spain isn't original to him, it's carrying on a centuries old tradition at this point. Not that this absolves him from responsibility.
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 first season of the tv series Versailles did something about this that had me in hysterical giggles. Now, while being shot in France and first broadcast in France with a lot of French money, this was actually a British show with exclusively British actors and scriptwriters. And the Anglosaxon tradition of storytelling at this point seems to be hat the hero(es) must always presented as the plucky underdog taking on the Big Bad. Usually the plucky underdog is Britain/England, no matter when the story is set, and how large the British Empire is at whichever point. But in this case, the scriptwriters seem to have concluded that somehow, they have to make Louis into this when he's taking on the Dutch. I mean. Even badly educated viewers might recall there is a certain disproportion with reality there. So what does the first season of Versailles do? Make William of Orange start a couple of conspiracies among the French nobility to overthrow Louis and be behind plots to poison him, and then Louis invades.
(In the second season, the scriptwriters thankfully had given up pretending France wasn't the 900 pounds gorilla on the continent and thus Louis goes on warring because he can and he's slightly megalomaniac. Otoh, he has an accidental meeting with William where they find themselves locked in the same monastery over night and have ridiculous foe yay and serious "you're the only one who can understand someone like me" conversations, which had me hysterical again.)
There is no one who hates the French and Louis specifically more than William III, Prince of Orange and King of England.
Charles-Joseph de Ligne, ghostwriter of fictional Eugene memoirs, doesn't think so. He has Eugene declare that no one, including the Huguenots Louis kicked out of France, hated Louis more than himself. (The dissertation writer about the fictional memoirs quotes this as an example of how Ligne characterises Eugene, that's how I know.) The long term result of this declaration is that Winston Churchill in his four volume Marlborough biography about his ancestor, which is he's largely Eugene positive, praising his ancestor's bff for his military skills and friendship to great-great-howevergreat-granddad, has one criticism, to which: while Marlborough, says Winston, was a model husband and used his gains to start a dynasty of Churchills and for England's glory, Eugene remained single and motivated mainly by his life long grudge against Louis, as proof of which he quotes the fictional memoirs.
Dutch are worried that maybe Anne isn't going to be as committed to this war. But don't worry, she is.
Arguably: her bff/possible lover Sarah Churchill, wife of Marlborough, is. How much or little Anne losing her enthusiasm for the war is due to the big Anne/Sarah fallout is of course still debated, and there are a great many other factors (which you've named - Archduke Charles becoming Emperor Charles, thereby meaning the candidate England has supported until now would rule Spain and the HRE at the same time; the Malplaquet fallout), but: the Anne/Sarah breakup certainly factors in.
Two fictional versions of the fallout and how they present Anne's changing attitude towards the war and why:
Eugene Scribe: A Glass of Water. This was a mid 19th century comedy and a major international stage hit for the next century as well. There was a very popular 1950s German tv version which I've seen. In it, no one is gay, Anne is a young woman who was never married and at the start of the play is dominated by her evil mistress of the wardrobe Sarah Churchill, wife of war-mangering, evil Marlborough. (Why yes, Eugene Scribe was a French playwright.) On the peace loving side we have Henry Bolingbroke, who uses shy new girl Abigail Masham to a) detach Anne from Sarah, and b) smuggle "Peace with France!" propaganda into the palace. Then it turns out Anne, Sarah and Abigail all fall for the same guy, a handsome hussar. Bolingbroke uses this in a complicated intrigue at the end of which Sarah is publically humiliated and banished, Abigail is married to her beloved hussar, and Anne (who, remember, is a young woman in the play, whose husband George never existed) has grown up and discovered the joys of peacemaking with France. War is over! The evil Churchills are gone! Yay!
The Favourite (aka the recent movie; Greek director, British scriptwriters): Anne's husband George still doesn't exist; well, he did, in that her dead children are frequently mentioned, but where in historical reality George would have been still alive for the start of this story, and Sarah's handling of Anne's grief for his death was one big factor in their fallout - Sarah took it upon herself to remove George's portrait from Anne's room, which Anne took major issue with - , this is never brought up in the film,because in it, all three main female characters are laser focused on each other, and everyone is gay or at least bi. Marlborough does exist, played by Mark Gatiss, and the movie, to be fair, does imply he and Sarah have a good marriage going (both in the emotional and the power claiming sense), but he has only two scenes. Now, the movie has the problem that pushing for peace is a good thing, by and large, in pop culture, whereas pro longing wars are not, unless you make your opponent a Hitler avatar and present the peace party declaring they want "peace for our time". So what it does is have the Tories push for peace not to spare the troops from further wars but because they are selfishly concerned with their own estates. Whereas Sarah pushes for prolonging her husband's command and continuing the war not just for her own power - though certainly for this reason, too - but because making peace too soon would leave England with worse conditions than they could get later on. The movie doesn't try to explain what the Spanish Succession War is actually about and leaves it vaguely at "we're battling the French on the continent and have to continue doing that until we can be sure there will be no more megalomaniac ruler stuff going on"). While the movie in general is cynical, Sarah is still supposed to be right about this and only half selfishly motivated, with the other half being sincerely working for Britain and having far better political insight than any other character. That Sarah and Anne are broken up at the end of the tale (and Anne realises Abigail doesn't love her and is in it solely for power) is a tragedy.
...Also a thing: possible because of my googling, a recent YouTube algorithm brought a scene from a Winston Churchill tv movie to my "you might also like" doorstep, in which brooding Winston sees his ancestor valiantly fighting and looking back through history to him. I note that in addition to Marlborough, we only see English redcoat soldiers doing the fighting, not whom they are actually fighting against. Presumably this is because it would be a bit difficult to explain to the audience how Blenheim (and I guess it's supposed to be Blenheim, not Malplaquet, which Winston is hallucinating) squares with the "plucky little island against big bad" myth. Not least because the majority of soldiers Marlborough was commanding weren't actually British, they came from the other allied nations, and while the French were defeated, Louis himself went on to rule and die in his bed in old age, which isn't exactly what's supposed to happen to British enemies in the myth.
Lastly: one of the weirdest things, if you think about it: Louis' long, long reign - which was partly so long because he became King as a child, but only partly - filled with so many wars against other European nations was also precisely the era when France became the undisputed top cultural power in Europe. As in, that's when all the European nobles of every nation started to speak French, read French literature, stage French plays, dress in French fashion, and every prince who could afford it plus a lot who really could and should not have build their own mini Versailles in their realms. So they might have hated Louis (and have reason for doing so), but good lord, did they ever give the impression of wanting to be him, too.
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Re: War of the Spanish Succession: French, Dutch, and Bavarian Backstories: Fictional annotations
Date: 2021-05-24 07:34 am (UTC)It's hard to find a time when they weren't at war in the 17th century. Which is why the majority of film and tv versions of The Three Musketeers, i.e. a story that's set in the reign of Louis XIII, not Louis XIV., includes a nod to the fact there's a war with Spain going on. The long argument between Cardinal Richelieu and Anne of Austria that majorly factors into the "Musketeers" plot included That Time When He Caught Her Corresponding With Her Brother The King Of Spain, after all. (Which in a French/Spain war is sort of treasonous.) (Again, reminder, Louis XIV didn't just marry a Spanish princess, he was the son of one.) All these eternal Spain vs France wars basically revolved around the two biggest Catholic powers on the continent duking it out for the top spot. Spain had a head start when Charles V. (son of Juana, grandson of Max and Mary on the one and Ferdinand & Isabella on the other hand) was HRE, thus ruling basically ruling every country surrounding France (cue centuries long French complex about not letting this happen again), but even Charles himself had decided this was too much for one man and in his last will split up his Empire (and the Habsburg family) between the Spanish line (his son Philip, the one from Don Carlos and the Armada, becoming King of Spain) and the Austrian line (Charles' younger brother Ferdinand, becoming Emperor after Charles). This insight didn't stop him from having had his share of wars with the French, mostly with Francis I. as King. This Francois was the one who offered Leonardo da Vinci a retirement home, major patron of Renaissance artists, also Catherine de' Medici's father-in-law and thus her only ally in her early years in France.
...what I'm getting at: Louis (XIV) pouncing on the first (self made) chance to go to war against Spain isn't original to him, it's carrying on a centuries old tradition at this point. Not that this absolves him from responsibility.
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 first season of the tv series Versailles did something about this that had me in hysterical giggles. Now, while being shot in France and first broadcast in France with a lot of French money, this was actually a British show with exclusively British actors and scriptwriters. And the Anglosaxon tradition of storytelling at this point seems to be hat the hero(es) must always presented as the plucky underdog taking on the Big Bad. Usually the plucky underdog is Britain/England, no matter when the story is set, and how large the British Empire is at whichever point. But in this case, the scriptwriters seem to have concluded that somehow, they have to make Louis into this when he's taking on the Dutch. I mean. Even badly educated viewers might recall there is a certain disproportion with reality there. So what does the first season of Versailles do? Make William of Orange start a couple of conspiracies among the French nobility to overthrow Louis and be behind plots to poison him, and then Louis invades.
(In the second season, the scriptwriters thankfully had given up pretending France wasn't the 900 pounds gorilla on the continent and thus Louis goes on warring because he can and he's slightly megalomaniac. Otoh, he has an accidental meeting with William where they find themselves locked in the same monastery over night and have ridiculous foe yay and serious "you're the only one who can understand someone like me" conversations, which had me hysterical again.)
There is no one who hates the French and Louis specifically more than William III, Prince of Orange and King of England.
Charles-Joseph de Ligne, ghostwriter of fictional Eugene memoirs, doesn't think so. He has Eugene declare that no one, including the Huguenots Louis kicked out of France, hated Louis more than himself. (The dissertation writer about the fictional memoirs quotes this as an example of how Ligne characterises Eugene, that's how I know.) The long term result of this declaration is that Winston Churchill in his four volume Marlborough biography about his ancestor, which is he's largely Eugene positive, praising his ancestor's bff for his military skills and friendship to great-great-howevergreat-granddad, has one criticism, to which: while Marlborough, says Winston, was a model husband and used his gains to start a dynasty of Churchills and for England's glory, Eugene remained single and motivated mainly by his life long grudge against Louis, as proof of which he quotes the fictional memoirs.
Dutch are worried that maybe Anne isn't going to be as committed to this war. But don't worry, she is.
Arguably: her bff/possible lover Sarah Churchill, wife of Marlborough, is. How much or little Anne losing her enthusiasm for the war is due to the big Anne/Sarah fallout is of course still debated, and there are a great many other factors (which you've named - Archduke Charles becoming Emperor Charles, thereby meaning the candidate England has supported until now would rule Spain and the HRE at the same time; the Malplaquet fallout), but: the Anne/Sarah breakup certainly factors in.
Two fictional versions of the fallout and how they present Anne's changing attitude towards the war and why:
Eugene Scribe: A Glass of Water. This was a mid 19th century comedy and a major international stage hit for the next century as well. There was a very popular 1950s German tv version which I've seen. In it, no one is gay, Anne is a young woman who was never married and at the start of the play is dominated by her evil mistress of the wardrobe Sarah Churchill, wife of war-mangering, evil Marlborough. (Why yes, Eugene Scribe was a French playwright.) On the peace loving side we have Henry Bolingbroke, who uses shy new girl Abigail Masham to a) detach Anne from Sarah, and b) smuggle "Peace with France!" propaganda into the palace. Then it turns out Anne, Sarah and Abigail all fall for the same guy, a handsome hussar. Bolingbroke uses this in a complicated intrigue at the end of which Sarah is publically humiliated and banished, Abigail is married to her beloved hussar, and Anne (who, remember, is a young woman in the play, whose husband George never existed) has grown up and discovered the joys of peacemaking with France. War is over! The evil Churchills are gone! Yay!
The Favourite (aka the recent movie; Greek director, British scriptwriters): Anne's husband George still doesn't exist; well, he did, in that her dead children are frequently mentioned, but where in historical reality George would have been still alive for the start of this story, and Sarah's handling of Anne's grief for his death was one big factor in their fallout - Sarah took it upon herself to remove George's portrait from Anne's room, which Anne took major issue with - , this is never brought up in the film,because in it, all three main female characters are laser focused on each other, and everyone is gay or at least bi. Marlborough does exist, played by Mark Gatiss, and the movie, to be fair, does imply he and Sarah have a good marriage going (both in the emotional and the power claiming sense), but he has only two scenes. Now, the movie has the problem that pushing for peace is a good thing, by and large, in pop culture, whereas pro longing wars are not, unless you make your opponent a Hitler avatar and present the peace party declaring they want "peace for our time". So what it does is have the Tories push for peace not to spare the troops from further wars but because they are selfishly concerned with their own estates. Whereas Sarah pushes for prolonging her husband's command and continuing the war not just for her own power - though certainly for this reason, too - but because making peace too soon would leave England with worse conditions than they could get later on. The movie doesn't try to explain what the Spanish Succession War is actually about and leaves it vaguely at "we're battling the French on the continent and have to continue doing that until we can be sure there will be no more megalomaniac ruler stuff going on"). While the movie in general is cynical, Sarah is still supposed to be right about this and only half selfishly motivated, with the other half being sincerely working for Britain and having far better political insight than any other character. That Sarah and Anne are broken up at the end of the tale (and Anne realises Abigail doesn't love her and is in it solely for power) is a tragedy.
...Also a thing: possible because of my googling, a recent YouTube algorithm brought a scene from a Winston Churchill tv movie to my "you might also like" doorstep, in which brooding Winston sees his ancestor valiantly fighting and looking back through history to him. I note that in addition to Marlborough, we only see English redcoat soldiers doing the fighting, not whom they are actually fighting against. Presumably this is because it would be a bit difficult to explain to the audience how Blenheim (and I guess it's supposed to be Blenheim, not Malplaquet, which Winston is hallucinating) squares with the "plucky little island against big bad" myth. Not least because the majority of soldiers Marlborough was commanding weren't actually British, they came from the other allied nations, and while the French were defeated, Louis himself went on to rule and die in his bed in old age, which isn't exactly what's supposed to happen to British enemies in the myth.
Lastly: one of the weirdest things, if you think about it: Louis' long, long reign - which was partly so long because he became King as a child, but only partly - filled with so many wars against other European nations was also precisely the era when France became the undisputed top cultural power in Europe. As in, that's when all the European nobles of every nation started to speak French, read French literature, stage French plays, dress in French fashion, and every prince who could afford it plus a lot who really could and should not have build their own mini Versailles in their realms. So they might have hated Louis (and have reason for doing so), but good lord, did they ever give the impression of wanting to be him, too.