Formation of the League of Augsburg

Timeline

1. 1684–1686Upper Rhine and the Alsatian frontier · Upper RhineFrance annexed Alsace and other territories through chambers of reunion and occupied Strasbourg; the 1684 Truce of Regensburg recognized only a twenty-year status quo. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes and persecution of the Vaudois in Savoy convinced Spain, Sweden, and several German states of the need for a clearer defensive arrangement.
2. 1686Augsburg · BavariaLeopold I concluded a defensive league at Augsburg with Spain, Sweden, and the electorates of Bavaria, Saxony, and the Palatinate, pledging mutual defense of the imperial circles and the existing treaty order against Louis XIV's continued Rhine expansion. The terms were largely declaratory and lacked unified military command.
3. 1686–1689Western Europe · Western EuropeSome princes were unwilling to break openly with France, so the league could not immediately become a coalition army. After the French invasion of the Palatinate in 1688, the Magdeburg Convention mobilized north German forces; in 1689 William III, as king of England and the Netherlands, drew the maritime powers in, expanding the League of Augsburg into the Grand Alliance as the Nine Years' War began in earnest.