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France under Louis XIV 371 Orange ( 625). 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 much 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. 639. The Question of the Spanish Succession. The king of Spain, Charles II ( 634), was childless and brotherless. 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, an- other, and these two ambitious rulers had been considering for some time how they might divide the Spanish possessions between the Bourbons (as the descendants of Henry IV of France were called) and the Hapsburgs. But when Charles II died, in 1700, it was discovered that he had 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. 640. Louis's Grandson, Philip, becomes King of Spain. Should Philip become king of Spain, Louis and his family would control all of southwestern Europe from Holland to Sicily, as well as a great part of North and South America. This would mean the establishment 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 ( 620, 625), 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 the part of the French king. Nevertheless, family pride and per- sonal ambition led Louis criminally to accept the will and risk a terrible war. 641. The War of the Spanish Succession. King William soon succeeded in forming a new Grand Alliance (1701) in which Louis's old enemies England, Holland, and the emperor were