Just as soon as William III could free himself up from wars in the British Isles, to secure his throne (and his wife Mary II's), he got stuck into the fighting on the Continent, on behalf of his home country of Holland. This was the Nine Years War, where the Grand Alliance fought to block the attempts of Louis XIV's France to win the territory it needed to give it what it regarded as defensible borders (its 'natural' borders).

It might have looked as though France was championing Catholicism against Protestant Holland, except that the Grand Alliance included Catholic states, most notably the major power Austria and the waning but still significant one, Spain. Getting the religion right obviously mattered, but never as much as serving the national interest.

This was the Nine Years' War, and nine years was a long time for pre-industrial economies to wage war. In the end, exhausted, the combatants were forced to the negotiating table. Changes were small, and the biggest questions left unanswered. The biggest of them all is what would happen once the inbred, deeply ill and childless king of Spain, Charles II, died. Who'd inherit his throne and his country's still considerable territories?

By not deciding such pretty crucial matters, the powers only left them to provoke another war in the near future. Just as soon as the Spanish king died. Which he did, not three years later.

Illustration: Charles II of Spain, by Juan Carreño de Miranda, showing the Hapsburg jaw, outwards sign of terrible health handicaps caused by generations of inbreeding.. Copyright ©Museo Nacional del Prado

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License