The Holy Roman Empire had been embroiled since 1683 in the Great Turkish War, repelling attempted Ottoman conquests in Southeast Europe.
On September 25, 1688, hoping to capitalize on the empire's preoccupation with the Turks, the French King Louis XIV invaded across the Rhine, precipitating the Nine Years' War.
Louis's war aims were to install his preferred candidate, Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg, bishop of Strasbourg, as elector of Cologne, and to occupy the Electoral Palatinate, to which he believed he was entitled as Charles II's sister Elizabeth Charlotte, Madame Palatine was the wife of his younger brother Philippe I, Duke of Orléans.
Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor called for the election of his successor.
He was granted one vote as king of Bohemia, but because the even number of electors might result in a tie, following the precedent of the elections of 1653 and 1658, he abstained.