| War of Devolution | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the wars of Louis XIV | |||||||||
 Louis XIV visiting a trench during the war | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||||
 France[1] |
 Spanish Empire[1] | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
| c. 50,000 [dubious – discuss] | 30,000 [2] | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| 2,000-4,500 | 2,000–3,000 [3] | ||||||||
The War of Devolution[a] took place from May 1667 to May 1668. In the course of the war, France occupied large parts of the Spanish Netherlands and Franche-Comté, both then provinces of the Holy Roman Empire ruled by Spain. Its name derives from an obscure law known as the Jus Devolutionis, used by Louis XIV to claim that these territories had "devolved" to him by right of marriage to Maria Theresa of Spain.
The French encountered minimal resistance, but Louis returned much of their gains in the May 1668 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. The terms were agreed by Emperor Leopold I in January 1668, reinforced by the Triple Alliance of England, Sweden and the Dutch Republic.
The French invasion of the Spanish Netherlands marked the end of the long-standing Franco-Dutch alliance, and was the first of Louis XIV's wars of expansion that dominated Western Europe for the last decades of the 17th century.
- ^ a b Encyclopedia Britannica.
- ^ Mitchell 2019, p. 38.
- ^ Clodfelter 2008, p. 46.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).