
Europe nursed bitter memories of the severe depredations carried out by French armies in the Spanish Netherlands and of the bombardment of Luxembourg during the War of the Reunions (1683-1684). Great and lesser powers alike did not accept as more than temporary the peace with Louis XIV agreed at Ratisbon in 1684. However, no plans were afoot to reverse these French gains. Austria and its south German allies were preoccupied with an ongoing war with the Ottoman Empire, while the Netherlands and north German states fixed their attention on a building succession crisis in England, where a new Catholic king, James II, was at odds with a restless Protestant people. In 1686 representatives of Austria, Spain, and Sweden met with those from several minor German powers, including Bavaria and the Palatinate, in the Imperial city of Augsburg. They agreed to a vague defensive alliance, the League of Augsburg, against further French aggression in Germany. The Germans were frightened by Louis’ longstanding policy of expansion along his Rhine frontier, and his disrespect for the legal and religious rights of free Imperial cities guaranteed by France in the Peace of Westphalia (1648).