The Spanish Armies in the War of the league of Augsburg 1688-1697

As it is well known, there is not very much documentation on the organisation of the Spanish armies of the end of the 17th century. The principal reference is the "Historia Organica …" of Count de Clonard, written and published around the 1850’s. It is a monumental work (sixteen volumes), based on scrupulous researches, that were conducted without having access to the archives of the other territories that had been part of the empire under the crown of Spain (particularly Italian States and Flanders), nor other sources which have become available only today (Archivo Historico Nacional Madrid). Nor has the period received great attention in Spain, Italy or Belgium, as it is considered a period of decadence of power. It must also be added that Count de Clonard’s study dealt almost exclusively with units, which still existed or were directly referable to units existing at his time, having lost traces of the many corps that had ceased to exist and were long forgotten. Very recently, a few very well documented studies have been published, among which the doctoral theses of Antonio Espino Lopez ("Catalunya durante el reinado de Carlos II.
Politica y guerra en la frontera catalana", 1679-1697 Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona 1999) and a similar one by Etienne Rooms in Belgium (Doctoral Thesis on “the Army of the Spanish Low Countries in the XVII Century” Ecole Royale Militaire Bruxelles 1999, that should be published in 2002).