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Great Alliance or '''Grand Alliance''' became the name of the late 17th and early 18th century Alliances of the Netherlands, Great Britain and the German Empire against France. The Alliance was twice installed. Between 1689 and 1698 it fought the Nine Years War against France. After the treaty of The Hague signed in 1701 it went into a second phase as the Alliance of the Spanish Succession war. Its end began with the Tory victory in 1710 which led to the Peace Of Utrecht - the peace with France which granted France Spain's crown. The Great Alliance unfolded an enormous cultural importance as an example of a possible European union supported by (most of) the German Territories, Britain and the Netherlands as well as by many of Frances intellectuals dissatisfied with the the absolotistic rule under Louis XIV, the eviction of the huguenots in 1685 and the union of catholicism and the French crown at home. In cultural terms French fashions propagated by journals, newspapers and books published in the free Netherlands became the platform of the political movement which would attack France's politics rather than the nation and its people. French fashions could under this pretext be propagated all over Europe without the usual fear that one was favouring the culture of the enemy - one would favour the culture of a civilised nation, not the culture of the political opponent Louis XIV who fought a war against Europe and against the cultural elite of his own country. Europe became between 1689 and 1721 - the end of the Great Northern War which had begun in 1700 - the object of a European fashion, reflected by a mass of title pages in which Europe appeared as the central word. The end of the Great Alliance had its own history with a growing dissatisfaction of the British populace fiancing the wars abroad. The ballance of power doctrine eventually resulted, however, from the wars Britain proved able to begin and to end at its liberty. A euphoria how wars were to be fought in the future can be noted as another result of the Great Alliance. The death toll of the most important battles and sieges was enormous, yet none of the three wars fought from 1689-1721 led to a revival of the atrocities of the Great German war fought in the early 17th century. The Generals of the Great Alliance rather became heroes of a Europe civilised even at war - an illusion which would last into the early days of the First World War. |
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