Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy, was already middle-aged when the wars that would determine the future of his family’s reign were being fought.
The First Partition Treaty of 1698 had fallen apart with the death in 1691 of Prince Joseph Ferdinand, heir to the Spanish throne. France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic had divided up much of Western Europe like pieces of a pie, but the treaty also specified that Prince Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria would become heir to the Spanish throne. He was six years old at the time and his death at age seven threw the contract back into dispute.
War in the Spanish kingdom complicated things, made worse by the death of Charles II in Spain in the year 1700, especially since he died childless. Philip – the grandson of France’s King Louis XIV – was proclaimed k
