PRELIMINARY ENCOUNTERS, 1689-1748
[Sidenote: War of the League of Augsburg]
Colonial and commercial rivalry could hardly bring France and Great
Britain to blows while the Stuart kings looked to Louis XIV for
friendly aid in the erection of absolutism and the reinstatement of
Catholicism in England.
The Revolution of 1689, which we have already discussed [Footnote: See above, pp. 286 ff.] in its political significance, was important in its bearing on foreign relations, for it placed on the English throne the arch-enemy of France, William III, whose chief concern was the protection of his ancestral possessions—the Dutch Netherlands—against the encroachments of Louis XIV. The support given by the latter to the pretensions of James II was a second cause of war. In an earlier chapter [Footnote: See above, pp. 247 ff.] we have seen how international relations in 1689 led to the juncture of England and Holland with the League of Augsburg, which included the emperor, the kings of Spain and Sweden, and the electors of Bavaria, Saxony, and the Palatinate; and how the resulting War of the League of Augsburg was waged in Europe from 1689 to 1697. It was during that struggle, it will be remembered, that King William finally defeated James II and the latter's French and Irish allies in the battle of the Boyne (1690). It was also during that struggle that the French navy, though successful against combined Dutch and English squadrons off Beachy Head (1690), was decisively beaten by the English in a three-day battle near La Hogue (1692).
[Sidenote: King William's War, 1689-1697]
The War of the League of Augsburg had its counterpart in the American "King William's War," of which two aspects should be noted. In the first place, the New England colonists aided in the capture (1690) of the French fortress of Port Royal in Acadia (Nova Scotia) and in an inconsequential attack on Quebec. In the second place, we must notice the role of the Indians. As early as 1670, Roger Williams, a famous New England preacher, had declared, "the French and Romish Jesuits, the firebrands of the world, for their godbelly sake, are kindling at our back in this country their hellish fires with all the natives of this country." The outbreak of King William's War was a signal for the kindling of fires more to be feared than those imagined by the good divine; the burning of Dover (N. H.), Schenectady (N. Y.), and Groton (Mass.) by the red allies of the French governor, Count Frontenac, earned the latter the lasting hatred of the "Yankees."
[Sidenote: Treaty of Ryswick, 1697]
The contest was interrupted rather than settled by the colorless treaty of Ryswick (1697), according to which Louis XIV promised not to question William's right to the English throne, and all colonial conquests, including Port Royal, were restored.
[Sidenote: War of the Spanish Succession]
Only five years later Europe was plunged into the long War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713). King William and the Habsburg emperor with other European princes formed a Grand Alliance to prevent Louis' grandson Philip from inheriting the Spanish crowns. For if France and Spain were united under the Bourbon family, their armies would overawe Europe; their united colonial empires would surround and perhaps engulf the British colonies; their combined navies might drive the British from the seas. Furthermore, the English were angered when Louis XIV, upon the death of James II (1701), openly recognized the Catholic son of the exiled royal Stuart as "James III," king of Great Britain.