The Grand Alliance was the anti-French coalition formed on 20 December 1689 between the Dutch Republic, England and the Holy Roman Empire. It was signed by the two leading opponents of France: William III, Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic and (since April 1689) King of England, and Emperor Leopold I, on behalf of the Archduchy of Austria. With the later additions of Spain and Savoy, the coalition fought the Nine Years' War (1688–1697) against France that ended with the Peace of Ryswick (1697). The Second Grand Alliance was reformed by the Treaty of The Hague (1701) prior to the War of the Spanish Succession and was dissolved after the Peace of Utrecht (1713). Background The Grand Alliance was the most significant of the coalitions formed in response to the wars of Louis XIV that began in 1667 and ended in 1714. Post-1648, French expansion was helped by the decline of Spanish power while the Peace of Westphalia formalised religious divisions within the Holy Roman Empire. This weakened the collective security previously provided by the Imperial Circles and led to a series of individual agreements, such as the 1679 Wetterau Union. Louis XIV secretly supported the Ottomans against the Austrian Habsburgs in the 1683–1699 Great Turkish War, while weakening Habsburg influence within the Holy Roman Empire by paying subsidies to states including Bavaria, the Palatinate, Cologne and Brandenburg-Prussia. The Protestant Kingdom of Denmark also received subsidies and when James II became King of England in February 1685, he was viewed as a French ally. In 1670, France occupied the Duchy of Lorraine, then much of Alsace in the 1683–1684 War of the Reunions, threatening Imperial states in the Rhineland. The October 1685 Edict of Fontainebleau revoked tolerance for French Huguenots, an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 of whom left France over the next five years. Former allies like Frederick William now invited French exiles to settle in Brandenburg-Prussia and agreed a treaty with the Dutch Republic in October 1685. These events were followed in 1686 by the massacre of around 2,000 Vaudois Protestants, reinforcing widespread fears that Protestant Europe was threatened by a Catholic counter-reformation led by Louis XIV. Formation With Leopold occupied by the Ottomans, William of Orange helped form the anti-French coalition known as the Union of Wetterau, a coalition of German states within the Holy Roman Empire to "preserve the peace and liberties of Europe." The Republic was outside