692 Outlines of European History in Protestant countries by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes resulted in an alliance against the French king headed by William of Orange. Louis speedily justified the suspicions of Europe by a frightful devastation of the Palatinate, burning whole towns and destroying many castles, including the exceptionally beautiful one of the elector at Heidelberg. Ten years later, however, Louis agreed to a peace which put things back as they were before the struggle began. He was preparing for the final and most ambitious undertaking of his life, which precipitated the longest and bloodiest war of all his warlike reign. ■ V Section 125, War of the Spanish Succession The question The king of Spain, Charles H, was childless and brotherless, ish succession and Europe had long been discussing what would become of his vast realms when his sickly existence should come to an end. Louis XIV had married one of his sisters, and the Emperor, Leopold I, another, and these two ambitious rulers had been .. • considering for some time how they might divide the Spanish possessions between the Bourbons and the Hapsburgs. But when Charles H died, in 1700, it was discovered that he hftd left a will in which he made Louis's younger grandson, Philip, the heir to his twenty-two crowns, but on the condition that France and Spain should never be united. Louis's grand- It was a weighty question whether Louis XIV should permit his becomes ^^' grandson to accept this hazardous honor. Should Philip become S^"5n°^ king of Spain, Louis and his family would control all of south- western Europe from Holland to Sicily, as well as a great part of North and South America. This would mean the establish- ment of an empire more powerful than that of Charles V. It was clear that the disinherited Emperor and the ever watchful William of Orange, now king of England (see above, p. 678), would never permit this unprecedented extension of French influence. They had already shown themselves ready to make great sacrifices in order to check far less serious aggressions on
