The long series of negotiations which led to the Peace of Utrecht had no distinct starting-point and no single concluding date. The Congress at Utrecht, with its sequels at Rastatt and Baden, was but the open avowal of the intention to make peace, a useful clearing-house for the ratification of decisions arrived at by much more devious processes. Much of the difficulty which beset the path to a settlement resulted from differences between the Allies as to how the rather vague objectives of the Grand Alliance would best be secured. Discussion was often as bitter and prolonged between them as with their enemies. Peace was to be made only by common consent, but there was nothing to prevent a party to the Alliance from discussing proposals directly with an enemy, and in fact negotiations of one sort or another were virtually continuous from 1706.

The first significant movements towards peace came in the double approach of France and Spain to the Dutch and English, separately, in July 1706, two months after Ramillies had removed the direct military threat from the Dutch and brought out Allied differences over the administration of the south Netherlands. Louis XIV was ready to dismember the Spanish inheritance if he could so dissolve the coalition against him. Bergeyck approached Bruno van der Dussen, the pensionary of Gouda, with a suggestion that Spain and the Indies should go to Charles III and the Spanish possessions in Italy to Philip V. The Spanish Netherlands should pass to the Dutch.