When the childless Spanish King Charles II died leaving his crown to a French Bourbon prince, Louis XIV formally announced his grandson's acceptance, famously declaring 'there are no more Pyrenees.' The prospect of French and Spanish crowns united under one dynasty alarmed England, Austria, and the Dutch Republic, who formed a Grand Alliance and launched a war that would rage across Europe and the Americas for over a decade.
The scene at Versailles was theatrical: Louis XIV presented the seventeen-year-old Philip of Anjou to the assembled court and to the Spanish ambassador, who reportedly knelt before the young prince as his new king. Louis's remark that 'there are no more Pyrenees'—suggesting the mountain border between France and Spain had effectively dissolved—captured the alarming scale of what he was proposing: a Bourbon-controlled bloc stretching from the Low Countries to the Philippines.
Other European powers, having spent generations trying to contain French power, could not tolerate the prospect. England's William III, the Dutch Republic, and the Holy Roman Empire formed a Grand Alliance within months, and by 1701 the War of the Spanish Succession had begun, eventually drawing in fighting from Germany to Gibraltar to Quebec.
The war ground on until 1714, killing hundreds of thousands and reshaping Europe's map at the Treaty of Utrecht, which allowed Philip to keep the Spanish throne only on the condition that the French and Spanish crowns would never be merged.