The Nine Years War: 1688-1697

The Nine Years War, which lasted from 1688 to 1697, is one of the least remembered conflicts in which the British army took part. The fighting was mostly concentrated in the area known then as the Spanish Netherlands – equating approximately to modern Belgium and Luxembourg – and the Rhineland. It was the first time that large-scale British – or English – armies had been deployed to the Continent in a sustained campaign since the Hundred Years War, two and a half centuries earlier. Clashes also took place at sea and in the Caribbean and North America, where the conflict was known as King William’s War. Britain fought as part of a ‘Grand Alliance’ with the Holy Roman Empire,