The War of Precedence - 1661

Hey Guys,

In 1661 both the French and Spanish carriages had a running fight in the streets of London over who's carriage would follow directly behind King Charles II's. At the end of the around a dozen men had been killed by gunfire and sword-fighting, it was only by threat of war that Louis XIV gained precedence over Philip IV. However what if Philip IV refused, say he made a diplomatic blunder or he simply didn't believe France would actually go to war.

For the purposes of this thread let's say (no matter how implausible it may be) that Louis XIV does as he said he would and declares war on Spain, 6 years earlier than he did in the War of Devolution. How would the war go, who would get involved and what would be the outcome?
 
That's certainly an interesting PoD you have found yourself there.

I don't know much about the period to be perfectly honest but the question that immediately comes to my mind is what would the British do? As you probably know the War of Devolution was ended (as far as I can gather from a brief skim of wikipedia) by a coalition of the Dutch, Swedish, and English. In that case I'm not really sure what would be different about a war fought a couple years earlier.

My thoughts are the English wouldn't get involved, since it isn't an actual claim to anything by the French and as such less dangerous to them. But as the French don't actually have a claim to anything they might not get to keep as much of the Spanish Netherlands as they may like.
 
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