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The Battle of Walcourt was fought on 25 August 1689 during the Nine Years' War. The action took place near the ancient walled town of Walcourt near Charleroi in the Spanish Netherlands, and brought to a close a summer of uneventful marching, manoeuvring, and foraging. The battle was a success for the Grand Alliance – the only significant engagement in the theatre during the campaign of 1689. The Allied army was commanded by the Prince of Waldeck; the French army by the duc de Humières. The battle incurred some 2,000 French casualties against the Allied losses of less than 300. The Allied victory had been an auspicious opening of the war for King William III and the Alliance, but for Humières, his military reputation received a fatal blow; in the following campaign of 1690, Humières was replaced by the duc de Luxembourg. ==Background== In September 1688, King Louis XIV’s forces invaded the Rhineland and besieged the German town of Philippsburg. Louis had hoped to compel the powerful German princes, and their Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I, into converting the 1684 Truce of Ratisbon into a permanent peace, thus confirming Louis' territorial gains of the ‘Reunions’.〔Lynn: ''The Wars of Louis XIV, 1667–1714,'' p. 191〕 Other German towns fell in quick succession, including Oppenheim, Kaiserslautern, Heidelberg, and the key fortress of Mainz, but instead of cowering under French aggression, the German princes united against Louis’ forces. What was supposed to be a campaign lasting only months, evolved into the Nine Years' War. By moving into the Rhineland, Louis dispelled fears in the Dutch Republic of a possible attack upon them, thus facilitating Prince William of Orange’s invasion of England in November. William’s success in the subsequent ‘Glorious Revolution’ – leading to his accession to the English throne in February 1689 (reigning jointly with his wife Mary) – enabled him to bring the full commercial and military power of England into the war against France, and rapidly led to the formation of the coalition he had long desired. On 12 May 1689, the Dutch and Emperor Leopold I signed the Grand Alliance, the aims of which were no less than to force France back to her borders as they were at the end of the Thirty Years War, and the Franco-Spanish War, thus depriving Louis of all his gains since his assumption of power.〔Wolf: ''The Emergence of the Great Powers: 1685–1715.'' p. 43〕 The Spanish Netherlands would later become the main theatre of the war, but during the conflict’s early stages in 1689, it was considered only a secondary front. This quiescence was because the main protagonists were busy elsewhere: King William was occupied with political matters in England and a Jacobite rebellion in Scotland, whilst King Louis was busy along the Rhine where the powerful German princes were preparing their forces to push the French army back towards the Rhine, and reverse all their earlier setbacks.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Battle of Walcourt」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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