The Bourbon army was commanded by the Duke of Berwick, illegitimate son of James II of England, while Habsburg forces were led by Henri de Massue, Earl of Galway, an exiled French Huguenot.

[9] Control of the seas allowed the Allies to successfully conduct short-term offensives outside the coastal areas but lack of popular support meant they could not hold territory.

The Grand Alliance secured an operations base in Lisbon when Peter II of Portugal changed sides in May 1703, and the following March, Archduke Charles of Austria arrived to head a land campaign.

[10] The Bourbon alliance between France and Spain won a series of minor victories along the Spanish-Portuguese border, offset by the British capture of Gibraltar; attempts to retake it were defeated at the naval Battle of Málaga in August 1704, with a land siege being abandoned in April 1705.

[11] The 1705 'Pact of Genoa' between English and Catalan representatives opened a second front in the north-east; the Allied capture of Barcelona and Valencia left Toulon as the only major port available to the Bourbons in the Western Mediterranean.

To counter this, James FitzJames, 1st Duke of Berwick, was appointed commander of Bourbon forces in North-East Spain, a total of 33,000 men, split equally between French and Spanish troops, with a number of exiled Irish regiments.

[13] Before beginning his advance on Valencia, Berwick detached 8,000 men to besiege Xàtiva, prompting the Earl of Peterborough, Allied commander in Spain, to consolidate his forces in Catalonia, rather than combine with the 16,500 troops led by Galway and Minas.