Lothar Franz von Schönborn and the Spanish Succession 1699–1701

Abstract

The cloud, no larger than a man’s hand, which had been visible in the skies of Europe since the death of Felipe IV in 1665, had become by 1700 a lowering thunderhead which obscured the entire political horizon. Carlos II, the last, childless scion of the Spanish Habsburgs, died at Madrid on November 1 of the last year of the old century.¹ The statesmen of Europe, who viewed the inevitable struggle which would follow the death of Carlos with grave misgivings, had been searching for over a generation for a peaceful means of avoiding such a struggle.² But as had been the case so frequently, rational arrangements made by sensible men of good will were blown asunder by political irrationalities, human inconsistencies and unforeseen events beyond anyone’s control. The First Treaty of Partition, which William III and Louis XIV had devised as a way of avoiding a general war over the Spanish succession, was rendered irrelevant by the untimely but quite probably natural death of the youthful Electoral Prince of Bavaria, Joseph Ferdinand.³ A second treaty of partition, also the work of English and French diplomatists, failed to lessen the threat of war because the Emperor Leopold refused to have anything to do with it and asserted that he and his sons were the only legitimate heirs to the Spanish crown.⁴