After the French marched into Franche-Comté on February 2, 1668, and then swiftly overran it, the powers of Europe began conspiring against Louis. Spanish hegemony might have been receding, but nobody was anxious to see France supplant Spain. On February 7, the Netherlands, England and Sweden concluded an alliance directed against France. In the face of that threat, Louis prudently accepted the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, whereby he returned Franche-Comté to Spain, retaining only a slice of Flanders. The territory Louis did acquire was valuable, however, because it provided France with a defensible northern border. It also provided him with a springboard from which to attack the Netherlands, the most prominent of the powers compelling him to sign the treaty.

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England, still stinging from defeats at the hands of the Dutch at sea and eager to reduce the commercial dominance of the Netherlands, agreed to an alliance with France. Louis then confidently invaded the Netherlands on April 29, 1672. The Dutch, however, proved to be tougher opponents than the Spanish had been.

On June 12, Turenne and Condé crossed the Rhine River and defeated the Dutch, sending the French military's reputation soaring and causing celebrations in France. On June 20, Utrecht surrendered. A few days later, the French were poised outside Amsterdam. The Dutch government tried to sue for peace, but French demands were so exorbitant that, on August 27, a popular uprising overthrew the government and Prince William II of Orange was installed in power. William's desperate response to the French threat was to order the dikes opened up, literally turning Amsterdam into an island.

A stalemate ensued, with the French engaged in a cruel guerrilla war in the Dutch countryside. The Hapsburg emperor joined the Dutch, as did Brandenburg and Spain. Louis' armies retook Franche-Comté–making it the French province of Burgundy once and for all–and defeated the Austrians in Lorraine. On January 5, 1675, Turenne defeated imperial forces at Turckheim, again permitting the French to cross the Rhine. But on July 27 Turenne was killed at Sasbach, and Condé retired. Still, the French continued to win victories, with their king still occasionally participating in battles and sieges, such as the taking of Valenciennes on March 17, 1677.

In August 1678, the war finally ended with the signing of the Treaty of Nijmegen. Again, it was largely a French triumph at Spain's expense–Louis acquired Lorraine, Alsace, Burgundy, Freiburg and Brisach, as well as more of Flanders.

Louis now devised a new plan of conquest. He created the Chambers of Reunion, a committee whose task was to comb archives for any claim France might ever have had to the territories of Alsace-Lorraine. If France once controlled a region, Louis was determined that she would do so again. Once the list was compiled, he began the slow process of annexing lands. Most acquisitions were small, belonging to minor German princes–hardly worth a declaration of war. However, when Louis annexed the imperial city of Strasbourg in 1681, followed by Luxembourg in 1684, he again went too far. In 1686, a coalition, known as the League of Augsburg, began to form against him. In 1688, to Louis' dismay, his implacable Dutch adversary, William of Orange, overthrew King James II of England and subsequently added England to the League of Augsburg, alongside the Netherlands, Spain, Savoy, Sweden and the Hapsburg Empire.

Aware of impending war, Louis struck first, invading the Palatinate. Again, fortresses fell quickly before the French army, but no matter how many battles the French won, the League of Augsburg fielded another army. For the League, this was a war with no palpable objectives except to reduce French power.

The most important event came on July 10, 1690, when the French navy, under Admiral Anne Hilarion de Costentin, comte de Tourville, scored a victory over an Anglo-Dutch fleet at Beachy Head. The way was then opened for an invasion of England and an attempt to restore James II to the English throne, but that opportunity was lost when Tourville lost 12 ships in the wake of the battles of Barfleur and La Hougue in May and June 1692.

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