War of the Spanish Succession
France

Louis XIV died on 1 September 1715, and was succeeded by his five-year-old great-grandson Louis XV; on his deathbed, he is alleged to have admitted, "I have loved war too well". True or not, while the final settlement was far more favourable than the Allied terms of 1709, it is hard to see what Louis gained that he had not already achieved through diplomacy by February 1701. From 1666 onward French policies assumed military and economic superiority over their rivals, but this was no longer the case by 1714 when Britain appeared to have overtaken France on both fronts. The continued widening of this gap as British trade expanded post-Utrecht was viewed by Louis's successors as a permanent threat to the European balance of power. Seeking to reduce this was a major factor in France entering the 1740–1748 War of the Austrian Succession.
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