Abstract
Long before the beginning of the 1709 campaign in western Europe, opposition to the burdens of the war had made itself felt in all the belligerent countries. In France it was most serious. Heavy and frequent military requisitions, on top of increasing taxes, and above all the loss of men and beasts in the countryside, had already led to courageous protests directed at Louis XIV himself. As early as 1693, the outstanding writer, Fenelon (tutor to the King’s children) had written to him, ‘Your people are dying of hunger. The cultivation of the land is almost abandoned; towns and countryside are being depopulated; industries are languishing; trade has been wholly destroyed. All France is nothing more than a great hospital.’1 The five years between the peace of Ryswick in 1697 and the beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession had brought a revival.
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