The War of the Julich Succession was fought between the Catholic Holy Roman Empire and French, English, and Dutch-backed Protestant German Protestant states from 1609 to 1610 and in 1614, resulting in anti-Imperial Brandenburg's acquisition of Cleves-Mark and pro-Imperial Palatinate-Neuburg's acquisition of Julich and Berg.
Background[]
The European Wars of Religion, including the Cologne War and the Strasbourg Bishops' War, resulted in the formation of the rival Catholic League and Protestant Union by the Holy Roman Empire's Roman Catholic and Protestant princes. In 1609, a succession crisis broke out as Julich-Cleves-Berg, which Duke William of Julich-Cleves-Berg had intended to be inherited as a single unit, was disputed between John Sigismund of Brandenburg, Emperor Rudolf II, and Wolfgang Wilhelm of Neuburg. Julich-Cleves-Berg's proximity to the Spanish Road, the Spanish Empire's main artery of reinforcement and supplies for the Spanish Netherlands, caused the Habsburgs and their Dutch and French rivals to become deeply interested in the crisis. Brandenburg, which had recently warred with the Emperor in the Strasbourg War, allied with the Dutch to press its claim on the region. King Henry IV of France, also interested in installing a Protestant ruler in the duchy, rallied the princes of the Protestant Union to oversee that outcome. After the rulers of Brandenburg and Palatinate-Neuburg agreed to share power, and as the Habsburg Archduke Leopold V of Austria was sent by Rudolf to take charge of the duchy, war broke out.
War[]
King Philip III of Spain was reluctant to break his 12-year truce with the Protestants and send Archduke Albert VII of Austria to assist the Catholics, while Rudolf's own response was tempered by his distraction with a brewing rebellion in Bohemia. Archduke Leopold V of Austria was entrusted with securing the duchy, while the French responded by raising levies in northeastern France and dispatching French troops from the Netherlands to Julich-Cleves-Berg. The allied war effort was hampered, however, by divisions between the Catholic convert Henry IV of France and the Protestant Union as well as between the rulers of Brandenburg and Palatinate-Neuburg. Ultimately, the Union agreed to send 5,000 troops to reinforce Brandenburg and Neuburg's 6,300 troops, France's 10,000 troops, and the United Provinces' 13,500 troops.
In March 1610, Protestant forces briefly besieged Strasbourg, while Prince Frederick Henry of Orange's Dutch expedition of 2,300 troops was dispatched to the duchy. King Henry IV raised 20,000 troops from the war, far more than expected, and his decision to march them overland caused the Spanish to fear a French invasion of Flanders. Archduke Albert allowed the French army to pass through Luxembourg, but Henry IV's assassination in May caused the Queen-Regent Marie de Medici to trim the French expedition to 10,000 men (including 3,000 Swiss mercenaries), to limit their involvement in the war to four months, and to advise the Protestants to use the threat of a French army to secure a peace treaty. On 7 July 1610, Emperor Rudolf granted Julich-Cleves-Berg to his loyal subject, Saxony, but the Protestants seized Dachstein, Mutzig, and Molsheim and forced Leopold to flee Julich and its 1,500-strong garrison.
On 29 July 1610, the Dutch joined the Protestants in besieging Julich, and they were joined by the French on 19 August. On 1 September, the garrison surrendered to the 30,000-strong besieging army, after which most of the allies disbanded their forces due to the financial strain of war. In November, peace talks failed to resolve the dispute between the Protestant "possessors" of Julich or Saxony. In 1612, anti-Catholic riots in Aachen caused the Emperor to demand the reinstitution of the Catholic faith in the city, but the possessors refused. Wolfgang Wilhelm also realigned towards Bavaria and Spain after his hopes of a marriage alliance to England fell through, and, in July 1613, he converted to Catholicism. The new ruler of Brandenburg, George William, was popular in Julich-Cleves-Berg, and he came to feud with the Catholic Wolfgang Wilhelm.
In May 1614, 300 Dutch troops ousted Neuburg's garrison from Julich before it could seize the city from Brandenburg. Wolfgang Wilhelm responded by raising 900 troops and seizing Dusseldorf, and Archduke Albert and his general Ambrogio Spinola prepared for war as peace talks stalled. Spinola mobilized 13,300 infantry and 1,300 cavalry to drive the Dutch out of Julich, and Spinola recaptured Aachen for the Catholics before taking Neuss, Mülheim, and Wesel, all included in the Julich inheritance. Spinola opted against besieging the well-defended Julich, and a peace conference from September to November 1614 resolved the war without further bloodshed. Wolfgang Wilhelm and George William partitioned the duchy between them, but the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War and the resumption of the Eighty Years' War between the Dutch and Spanish resulted in the duchy once again becoming a battleground in the 1620s.