The astronomical event, part of the Saros 133 cycle, took place during the Spanish War of Succession, crossing Spain, France and Northern Italy: for this reason it was seen at the time as a metaphor and a premonitory sign of the decline of King Louis XIV of France (known as the Sun King) "occulted" by the Great Alliance.

[1] The eclipse showed up to 50% obscuration in Burkina Faso, Mai, Songhai, Benghazi in Libya, Ankara, Sinope, the north of the Caspian and a part of Mongolia and on the other side, northwestern Islands and the east shore of Greenland.

Areas that were on the rim of the eclipse included Gabon, Darfur, Nubia, the north of the Arabian Peninsula, Persia, the Afghan Empire, Nepal, Assam and Manchurian controlled Yunnan.

However John Flamsteed, based on a letter by a Captayn Stanyan in Bern, reported to the Royal Society that, for the first time to his knowledge, someone "took notice of a red streak preceding the emersion of the sun's body from a total eclipse", erroneously[4] attributing it to the atmosphere of the Moon.

[7][8] The eclipse took place during the very low solar activity period known as the Maunder Minimum and from accounts and drawings of the totality, it is believed the bright K-corona (the corona type normally witnessed in totality) was not visible and only the symmetrical, circular, dim F-corona was seen (the corona type which can normally be seen farther from the sun as it is greatly overshadowed by the K-corona).