Spanish Victory at Racroi

Suppose the cavalry doesn't rout and the Tercio isn't wrecked by artillery barrages, how would things change if the French lose this decisive battle? It's been said that the French were a fifth column during the wars of religion, but if they were officially forced out of the war I still think their privateers/brethren of the coast in the Caribbean would still disrupt resource extraction from the new world and help facilitate Spanish decline. With that said a defeat might end their destabilization of Catalonia. Whether that leads to a preservation of the Iberian depends on whether the British had already come to the aid of Portugal.
 
Suppose the cavalry doesn't rout and the Tercio isn't wrecked by artillery barrages, how would things change if the French lose this decisive battle? It's been said that the French were a fifth column during the wars of religion, but if they were officially forced out of the war I still think their privateers/brethren of the coast in the Caribbean would still disrupt resource extraction from the new world and help facilitate Spanish decline. With that said a defeat might end their destabilization of Catalonia. Whether that leads to a preservation of the Iberian depends on whether the British had already come to the aid of Portugal.
Rocroi was a famous battle but it was not a decisive one because the war continued foe 6 more years. If the Spanish side won, probably noth8ng drastic would follow just as was the case with the battle of Honnecourt which the French lost in the previous year with a lost of approximately 40% of their numbers and all artillery. As it was, the victory at Rocroi did not result in a French invasion of the Spanish Flanders and the maintangible result was reputation of d’Enghien blown out of proportion. Well, of course the French army also got a reputation for defeating a famous Army of the Flanders and, presumably, loss of many veterans made it hard for the Spaniards to train the new troops.

Not sure if your “fifth column” is applicable: France was not a group of people within the state (HRE) working for its enemies and within context of the 30YW this simply does not make sense.
 
Rocroi was a famous battle but it was not a decisive one because the war continued foe 6 more years. If the Spanish side won, probably noth8ng drastic would follow just as was the case with the battle of Honnecourt which the French lost in the previous year with a lost of approximately 40% of their numbers and all artillery. As it was, the victory at Rocroi did not result in a French invasion of the Spanish Flanders and the maintangible result was reputation of d’Enghien blown out of proportion. Well, of course the French army also got a reputation for defeating a famous Army of the Flanders and, presumably, loss of many veterans made it hard for the Spaniards to train the new troops.

Not sure if your “fifth column” is applicable: France was not a group of people within the state (HRE) working for its enemies and within context of the 30YW this simply does not make sense.

Philip et al thought they were fighting on behalf of Christendom, so the French siding with Ottomans and Protestants was seen as a betrayal. At the very least wouldn't a defeat put the French on the defensive? I thought the French didn't take Flanders because the Spanish solidified their holdings.
 
Philip et al thought they were fighting on behalf of Christendom, so the French siding with Ottomans and Protestants was seen as a betrayal. At the very least wouldn't a defeat put the French on the defensive? I thought the French didn't take Flanders because the Spanish solidified their holdings.

The French had their own little entertainment called the Fronde, which lasted from 1648 till 1653. Rather difficult to get engaged in the napoleonesque conquests when you have a civil war to fight with no stable government and a little in the terms of an army loyal to the regime. Anyway, after the Battle of the Dunes (which was a decisive battle of the Franco-Spanish war) France got the whole Artois and a number of towns in Flanders.

As far as terminology is involved, “the fifth column” has a very specific meaning and whatever the Catholic powers may or may not feel about the French position, it simply does not fit the definition.
 
The French had their own little entertainment called the Fronde, which lasted from 1648 till 1653. Rather difficult to get engaged in the napoleonesque conquests when you have a civil war to fight with no stable government and a little in the terms of an army loyal to the regime. Anyway, after the Battle of the Dunes (which was a decisive battle of the Franco-Spanish war) France got the whole Artois and a number of towns in Flanders.

As far as terminology is involved, “the fifth column” has a very specific meaning and whatever the Catholic powers may or may not feel about the French position, it simply does not fit the definition.


Would a defeat embolden the fronde? It was probably too late to split off Burgundy or Occitania, but I'm having a hard time accepting that this would just be a propaganda victory if Spain thought they would get a huge boost from winning.
 
Would a defeat embolden the fronde? It was probably too late to split off Burgundy or Occitania, but I'm having a hard time accepting that this would just be a propaganda victory if Spain thought they would get a huge boost from winning.

Rocroi happened in 1643 and Fronde started in 1648 but in between you have a child king and a weak regency with too many people fighting for the influence in the government, plus a need to raise taxes to pay for the ongoing war, plus Parliament of Paris trying to assert its traditional rights at the expense of the royal power, plus a number of the top aristocrats trying to expand their their power by getting back whatever Richelieu took from them, plus Mazarin making serious mistakes by trying to play rough when he did not have a military backup, etc.

OTOH, Spain was in a tough spot running out of money and not being able to raise the numbers of troops needed for something as serious as a big scale invasion of France.
 

Vitruvius

Donor
Rocroi was a famous battle but it was not a decisive one because the war continued foe 6 more years. If the Spanish side won, probably noth8ng drastic would follow just as was the case with the battle of Honnecourt which the French lost in the previous year with a lost of approximately 40% of their numbers and all artillery. As it was, the victory at Rocroi did not result in a French invasion of the Spanish Flanders and the maintangible result was reputation of d’Enghien blown out of proportion. Well, of course the French army also got a reputation for defeating a famous Army of the Flanders and, presumably, loss of many veterans made it hard for the Spaniards to train the new troops.

Pretty much this. It wasn't really decisive and in the context of the Franco-Spanish War was just another one in a long series of Spanish defeats but Spain kept fighting for 16 more years (1659 vs 1648 for the end of hostilities since France worked to exclude Spain from the Peace Settlement at Westphalia). So the converse would be likely be true, a Spanish victory would be just a blip in a long drawn out war with France. 1643 IMHO is too late to shift the balance in the war with France. By that time the Spanish didn't have the strength to really exploit a victory. They couldn't even do it in 1636 when they captured Corbie. Even then even with the road to Paris seemingly open and with German support (the Bavarian cavalry under von Werth raided across Champagne) they lacked the ability and ambition to take and hold territory in France. Jus the year before in 1642 Francisco de Melo (who lost at Rocroi) won a victory over the French at the Battle of Honnecourt but again Spain was unable to exploit the victory. And by the time the French and Spanish met at Rocroi the weakened but still extremely disciplined French Army of Germany (French forces under Guebriant mixed with Hessians allies and the remnants of Bernard of Saxe-Weimer's Germans brought up from Breisgau) had routed the Imperial Army under Lamboy which had until then been guarding the Spanish flank in Luxembourg. So the possibility of Spanish-Imperial cooperation that existed in 1636 is gone as well.

I'd say the latest point that Spain could really reverse the tide was 1640-1641. I've always thought that la Marfee was a major lost opportunity for Spain. After that the Portuguese and Catalan revolts are in full swing, France had captured Perpignan the year before securing Roussillon while they brought Thomas of Savoy over to their side and went on the offensive in Northern Italy with Turin secured. And finally they've captured too many towns in Artois for Spain to achieve a crushing victory in the north as campaigning in Flanders required a brutal series of sieges with at least two armies (one to besiege a place and another to support it and stop the opposing side from counter attacking to relieve the siege) and so could not be reversed in a single campaign season.

Though I would say that if France lost it could destabilize the Regency of Anne and Mazarin which was in it's early days. They certainly exploited the Victory and Rocroi to establish the reign of Louis XIV and their Regency on good terms. I'd think best case scenario if the Regency destabilizes and the political situation in France makes prolonging the War with Spain untenable beyond Westphalia (as it nearly did when the Fronde broke out OTL) then Spain could be brought into the Universal Peace. Though it would likely be on the same terms as the Treaty of the Pyrenees as I doubt Spain would be able to demand or get a better settlement than that and Philip was OTL prepared to marry his daughter to Louis with Artois and Roussillon as a dowry to end the war as early as 1647-48. But Peace with France even on those terms does help as it gives Spain the opportunity to spend the 1650s solely focused on reclaiming Portugal and/or fighting the English Commonwealth so there could be some benefits down the road.
 

Marc

Donor
Victory or defeat at Rocroi, or any other similar battle, has be kept in the larger context of what is arguably a steady political, economic and social decline of Spain after the death of Philip II.
 
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