<P> In the Nine Years' War (1688--1697) Louis XIV once again invaded the Spanish Netherlands . French forces led by the Duke of Luxembourg defeated the Spanish at Fleurus (1690) and subsequently defeated Dutch forces under William III of Orange, who fought on Spain's side . The war ended with most of the Spanish Netherlands under French occupation, including the important cities of Ghent and Luxembourg . The war revealed to Europe the vulnerability of the Spanish defenses and bureaucracy . Further, the ineffective Spanish Habsburg government took no action to improve them . </P> <P> Spain suffered utter decay and stagnation during the final decades of the seventeenth century . While the rest of Western Europe went through exciting changes in government and society--the Glorious Revolution in England and the reign of the Sun King in France--Spain remained adrift . The Spanish bureaucracy that had built up around the charismatic, industrious, and intelligent Charles I and Philip II demanded a strong and hardworking monarch; the weakness and lack of interest of Philip III and Philip IV contributed to Spain's decay . Charles II was childless and weak ruler, known as "The Bewitched ." In his last will and testament he left his throne to a French prince, the Bourbon Philip of Anjou, rather than to another Hapsburg . This resulted in the War of the Spanish Succession, with the Austrian Hapsburgs and the British challenging Charles II's choice of a Bourbon prince to succeed him as king . </P> <P> To the end of its imperial rule, Spain called its overseas possessions in the Americas and the Philippines "The Indies," an enduring remnant of Columbus's notion that he had reached Asia by sailing west . When these territories reach a high level of importance, the crown established the Council of the Indies in 1524, following the conquest of the Aztec empire, asserting permanent royal control over its possessions . Regions with dense indigenous populations and sources of mineral wealth attracting Spanish settlers became colonial centers, while those without such resources were peripheral to crown interest . Once regions incorporated into the empire and their importance assessed, overseas possessions came under stronger or weaker crown control . The crown learned its lesson with the rule of Christopher Columbus and his heirs in the Caribbean, and they never subsequently gave authorization of sweeping powers to explorers and conquerors . The Catholic Monarchs' conquest of Granada in 1492 and their expulsion of the Jews "were militant expressions of religious statehood at the moment of the beginning of the American colonization ." The crown's power in the religious sphere was absolute in its overseas possessions through the papacy's grant of the Patronato real, and "Catholicism was indissolubly linked with royal authority ." Church - State relations were established in the conquest era and remained stable until the end of the Hapsburg era in 1700, when the Bourbon monarchs implemented major reforms and changed the relationship between crown and altar . </P> <P> The crown's administration of its overseas empire was implemented by royal officials in both the civil and religious spheres, often with overlapping jurisdictions . The crown could administer the empire in the Indies by using native elites as intermediaries with the large indigenous populations . Administrative costs of empire were kept low, with a small number of Spanish officials generally paid low salaries . Crown policy to maintain a closed commercial system limited to one port in Spain and only a few in the Indies was in practice not closed, with European merchant houses supplying Spanish merchants in the Spanish port of Seville with high quality textiles and other manufactured goods that Spain itself could not supply . Much of the silver of the Indies was diverted into those European merchant houses . Crown officials in the Indies enabled the creation of a whole commercial system in which they could coerce native populations to participate while reaping profits themselves in cooperation with merchants . </P>

What led to the decline of spain as a world power