The War of the Spanish Succession lasted thirteen years and would have been wonderful if it hadn't been for the Duke of Marlborough. Things went from bad to worse until just about anybody could defeat the French. On one occasion, Louis's favorite regiment was knocked out by a man named Lumley.

[T]he entire course of French history since then has been influenced by something that happened in the eighteenth century” and asks “did France cease to be a great power not, as is usually thought, on 15 June 1815 on the field of Waterloo, but well before that, during the reign of Louis XV when the natural birth-rate was interrupted?

If we consider the relative positions of France and of England from 1680 to 1688, and compare them with the situation when Anne died, the contrast is great indeed. England, lately despised abroad and distraught at home, had become the chief instrument in winning the world war, and had then dictated the Peace. With sea-power no longer rivalled either by France or Holland, with financial and commercial pre-eminence hardly less remarkable, and endowed for the moment with the martial greatness lent her by Marlborough, Great Britain was relatively more important in the world in 1713 than in 1815 or 1919. No country save France was then a rival to her greatness.

The Fascists won because they were the stronger; they had modern arms and the others hadn't. No political strategy could offset that. The most baffling thing in the Spanish war was the behaviour of the great powers. The war was actually won for Franco by the Germans and Italians, whose motives were obvious enough. The motives of France and Britain are less easy to understand. In 1936 it was clear to everyone that if Britain would only help the Spanish Government, even to the extent of a few million pounds' worth of arms, Franco would collapse and German strategy would be severely dislocated. By that time one did not need to be a clairvoyant to foresee that war between Britain and Germany was coming; one could even foretell within a year or two when it would come. Yet in the most mean, cowardly, hypocritical way the British ruling class did all they could to hand Spain over to Franco and the Nazis. Why? Because they were pro-Fascist, was the obvious answer. Undoubtedly they were, and yet when it came to the final showdown they chose to stand up to Germany. It is still very uncertain what plan they acted on in backing Franco, and they may have had no clear plan at all. Whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time, and at certain moments a very important question.

The outcome of the Spanish war was settled in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin — at any rate not in Spain. After the summer of 1937 those with eyes in their heads realized that the Government could not win the war unless there were some profound change in the international set-up, and in deciding to fight on Negrin and the others may have been partly influenced by the expectation that the world war which actually broke out in 1939 was coming in 1938. The much-publicized disunity on the Government side was not a main cause of defeat. The Government militias were hurriedly raised, ill-armed and unimaginative in their military outlook, but they would have been the same if complete political agreement had existed from the start. At the outbreak of war the average Spanish factory-worker did not even know how to fire a rifle (there had never been universal conscription in Spain), and the traditional pacifism of the Left was a great handicap. The thousands of foreigners who served in Spain made good infantry, but there were very few experts of any kind among them. The Trotskyist thesis that the war could have been won if the revolution had not been sabotaged was probably false. To nationalize factories, demolish churches, and issue revolutionary manifestoes would not have made the armies more efficient.

By the French King's placing his Grandson on the Throne of Spain, he is in a Condition to oppress the rest of Europe, unless speedy and effectual Measures be taken. Under this pretence, he is become the real Master of the whole Spanish Monarchy; he has made it to be entirely depending on France, and disposes of it as of his own Dominions, and by that means he has surrounded his Neighbours in such a manner, that though the Name of Peace may be said to continue, yet they are put to the Expence and Inconveniences of War.
This must affect England in the nearest and most sensible Manner, in respect to our Trade, which will soon become precarious in all the valuable Branches of it; in respect to our Peace and Safety at Home, which we cannot hope should long continue; and in respect to that part which England ought to take in the Preservation of the Liberty of Europe.

At Utrecht the bigwigged Plenipotentiaries ended an epoch, and liquidated the fifty years' struggle of the smaller States of Europe to save themselves from the hegemony of France, and of the Protestants of Europe to save themselves from the fate of the French Huguenots. These two movements of self-defence, combined by the political genius of William, had triumphed through the military genius of Marlborough. England, entering late into the struggle, had decided the issue. Her success had demonstrated that a country of free institutions could defeat a State based upon autocratic rule. This was a new idea in the world, and caused men to think afresh on the maxims of State.

A decision, memorable in the world's history, of the secular struggle between the two neighbouring peoples [France and Germany] was at stake [in 1870], and in danger of being ruined, through personal and predominantly female influences with no historical justification, influences which owed their efficacy, not to political considerations but to feelings which the terms humanity and civilisation, imported to us from England, still rouse in German natures. ... [I]f the conclusion of the French war had been a little less favourable to Germany, then would this mighty war, with its victories and its enthusiasm, have remained without the effect it produced on our national unification. I never doubted that the victory over France must precede the restoration of the German kingdom, and if we did not succeed in bringing it this time to a perfect conclusion, further wars without the preliminary security of our perfect unification were full in view.

Yet this third-rate and mediocre action is counted, with Waterloo and Gettysburg, among the decisive battles of history; and Goethe was not the only man there who knew that the scene before him was the beginning of a new epoch for mankind. With 36,000 men and 40 guns the French had arrested the advance of Europe, not by skilful tactics or the touch of steel, but by the moral effect of their solidity when they met the best of existing armies. The nation discovered that the Continent was at its mercy, and the war begun for the salvation of monarchy became a war for the expansion of the Republic. It was founded at Paris, and consolidated at Valmy. Yet no military event was less decisive. The French stood their ground because nobody attacked them, and they were not attacked because they stood their ground. The Prussians suffered a strategic, though not a tactical defeat. By retiring to their encampment they renounced the purposes for which they went to war, the province they occupied, and the prestige of Frederic.

Franco, it is tempting to think, is too peripheral a figure to be ranked as a 'maker of twentieth-century Europe'- central to Spanish history of the era, naturally, but not necessarily of wider importance. It is, of course, obvious that Franco's wider impact scarcely compares with that of Hitler and Mussolini, or Lenin and Stalin. He presents a case-study in the role and impact of the individual in history at the lower end of the scale. And it is fair to say that for much of the twentieth century Spain was on the periphery of the key developments in Europe. It has been judged that Franco 'at best influenced world history during the 1930s. But the twentieth century would not have been much different without him.'
Such an assessment is too dismissive. European as well as Spanish history would certainly, in indefinable ways, have been different had the republic survived after 1936. That it did not survive owed much to Franco's leadership in the Civil War. Moreover, the importance of that war was such that it drew in- in different measure- Europe's major powers and attracted the participation of volunteer fighters from across the continent. Franco's dealings with the Axis powers during the Second World War and then with the West during the Cold War also gave his long dictatorship a significance not confined to Spain. Moreover, the character of the subsequent transition to pluralist democracy, and the impact of Franco's era on Spanish memory and political culture and on the divisive question of regional separatism in one of Europe's biggest countries, additionally make Franco a figure of relevance to European, not just Spanish, history. Not least, Franco demonstrates how an individual with recognized qualities as a military commander but no experience of political leadership could benefit from the historical conditions that made his assumption of power possible in the first place and enabled him to go on to 'make his own history.'

The war hitherto, however glorious to France, has not been unprofitable to England; her fleets were never more formidable, and, in the true spirit of trade, she will console herself for the disgrace of her arms by land in the acquisition of wealth and commerce and power by sea; but these very acquisitions render it, if possible, incumbent not merely on France but on all Europe to endeavour to reduce her within due limits and to prevent that enormous accumulation of wealth which the undisturbed possession of the commerce of the whole world would give her; and this reduction of her power can be alone, as I presume, accomplished with certainty and effect by separating Ireland from Great Britain.

Franco failed. He came up against the Gibraltarians and he lost. And everyone who has come after him has failed. The only thing his steel gates attracted was rust. But the last siege of Gibraltar forged the iron will of the people of Rock. It sealed our separate and distinct identity. It gave shape to our modern reality. Now anyone who attempts our economic strangulation, our forced subjugation is on notice that they too will fail.

The Spanish Civil War was, in a sense, the war before the lights went out—the war that could have changed the course of European and world history if power actors had behaved in different ways.

I wonder nowadays whether the neglect of military history and war does not have the effect of giving some people an anaemic and unreal idea of the deeper processes of mundane history. Indeed, it is possible that our conventional history-teaching underestimates the part played by war in the development of our civilisation and our economy, as well as in the rise of the modern state. It has been noted that great constitutional concessions were won from English kings who were usually unsuccessful in their foreign policy; and certainly it is not easy to know what would have happened if King John or Charles I or James II had been more fortunate in this field. Ranke thought that the disgrace suffered by the French monarchy in its foreign policy had much to do with the outbreak of the French Revolution.