ABSTRACT
During the course of 1688 a sequence of seemingly unrelated succession crises escalated into grand-scale warfare. In May 1685 the Elector Palatinate, Karl von Simmern, had died, and was succeeded by the anti-French Philip Wilhelm von Pfaltz-Neuburg. Louis XIV disputed the succession on behalf of his sister-in-law, the Duchess of Orleans, and in 1688 threatened to invade under pretence of defending her claim to part of the Palatinate. 1 A similar threat loomed over Cologne, ruled by the sickly archbishop Maximilian Henry of Wittelsbach. In January 1688, with French support, Wilhelm von Fürstenberg had been elected coadjutor, a position in which he was in effective control of the actual administration. Due to his dispute with Louis over the Gallican articles, however, the Pope was unwilling to confirm Fürstenberg’s coadjutorship and, after the death of the ecclesiastical prince, unlikely to support his candidacy for the see. 2 A third crisis emerged in England, where James II antagonised the political nation with his controversial religious policies, reaching a climax in June 1688 with the imprisonment of the seven bishops and the controversy around the birth of the Prince of Wales. The vulnerable Dutch state found itself in the middle of these alarming developments. As in 1672 there was an increasing feeling of being prey to the rising powers of absolutism and Catholicism, as France turned its gaze to the Rhine principalities, and England was felt to threaten the United Provinces.
