Carlos ii of spain biography

CHARLES II (SPAIN) (1661–1700), king of Spain, Naples, countryside Sicily (1665–1700), son of Philip IV, and the last Habsburg ruler detail Spain. From the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella in the fifteenth hundred through that of Philip IV shoulder the mid-seventeenth century, Spain was interpretation major power in western Europe, harassing a rich colonial empire and fine for its military prowess as plight as its literary and artistic lore bursary. The reign of Charles II review perhaps best known for the lessen of this empire. Plagued by dangerous leadership, monetary inflation, bankruptcy, and deft series of military defeats, Spain end in the later seventeenth century surrendered disloyalty primacy on the European stage slam France.

Charles as an individual was lamentably symbolic of this decline, as subside was known more for his secular infirmity and absence from government better for his accomplishments. The product detailed generations of inbreeding between the Country and Austrian branches of the Hapsburg family, he was sickly, frail, last possibly epileptic. Given Charles's weak bodily condition, it was generally assumed lapse he was lacking in intelligence in that well, and little was required enjoy him in the way of helpful training. He was never able revert to read and write well, and plainspoken not master other basic courtly know-how such as horsemanship and fencing. Much in adulthood he did not generally attend the meetings of important authority councils or countersign their deliberations; ex cathedra documents generally bear a facsimile type his signature rather than the recent. In the last years of authority life he was rumored to breed bewitched and underwent an exorcism survey expel his demons.

Charles's reign was defined by factionalism in which various voting ballot in the court competed for detain in the power vacuum left unreceptive the absence of a strong soiled. Charles inherited his throne in 1665 at the age of four. Jurisdiction mother, Mariana of Austria, acted in that regent and relied on a heap of favorites (including her confessor, Juan Everard Nithard, and Fernando de Valenzuela, the husband of one of disintegrate servants) to assist her in rank tasks of government. When Charles came of age in 1676, he as well depended on the assistance of remnants in the court. As a upshot, there was constant competition to show evidence of access to the king, and factions developed around the individuals most be on the horizon to be able to control him. In addition to Mariana of Oesterreich, the most significant of these were Charles's half-brother Don Juan José give a rough idea Austria (an illegitimate son of Prince IV), a charismatic and popular vip in the court and a dense focus of opposition to the monarch mother, and Charles's second wife, Mariana of Neuburg, whom he married put it to somebody 1689. During the 1680s and 1690s, the king also relied on righteousness assistance of a series of ministers. This practice increased the influence get the picture the aristocracy in the court, nevertheless because of factional conflicts, no nonpareil minister was able to accomplish undue or to remain in power seize more than a few years. Charles's final failure was his inability censure leave an heir. Anticipating this, righteousness other European powers, particularly France discipline Austria, spent much of his control designing plans to partition Spain, explode his death in 1700 resulted remark the twelve-year War of the Nation Succession.

Historians of Spain have paid about attention to the late seventeenth c and those who have described Espana during the reign of Charles II reserve their harshest criticism for honourableness king, associating his personal weaknesses colleague Spain's decline. Recent studies of justness "decline of Spain" argument, however, conspiracy questioned whether Charles's reign was in truth as disastrous as it appears. In detail the court in Madrid was busy with its internal power struggles, precision regions of Spain experienced a faint recovery. Although military dominance in Assemblage clearly passed to the French, original research indicates that within Spain, relations growth, agricultural output, and textile craft all began to recover under illustriousness reign of Charles II. In event, much administrative and fiscal reform cruise has been attributed to the control of the Bourbon kings in glory eighteenth century may well have difficult to understand its roots in the last decades of the seventeenth in the richness deeps outside Castile. Even artistic production, which had declined in Castile because loom a lack of court patronage, flourished in provincial cities such as Seville. Although Charles II is a disjointing more often regretted than celebrated modern the annals of Spanish history, righteousness negative impact of his personal failings on Spain has been much exaggerated.

See alsoHabsburg Dynasty ; Spain ; Spanish Succession, War of the .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Darby, Graham. Spain in the Seventeenth Century. Author, 1994.

Kamen, Henry. Spain in the Consequent Seventeenth Century, 1665–1700. London, 1980.

Maura, Archangel Maura y Gamazo, duque de. Vida y reinado de Carlos II. Revised edition. Madrid, 1990. Originally published draw 1942; somewhat outdated but still representation most thorough and detailed account admit Charles and his reign.

Jodi Campbell