In the early years of the eighteenth century the fear of French power fused into alliance nations and individuals who under other circumstances would have stood suspiciously apart. During the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1713) the Protestant Circle of Princes fought for and with a Roman Catholic emperor; England recognized a would-be king of Spain, Charles III, and repudiated the would-be king of England, James III; Dutchmen and Englishmen accepted one another's aid, gracelessly, but to some purpose. Monarchs at the time, and historians later on, insisted that the war was not one of religion; nevertheless, a vast number of men then living viewed it as such.
