A Brief History of Spain (Part Five)

In 1700, Carlos II, the last of the Habsburg kings of Spain, died childless.  The throne passed to his nephew Philippe, a member a France's royal family of Bourbon and a grandson of King Louis XIV.  The rest of Europe was alarmed.  They feared that the balance of power would be upset with Spain and France united under the Bourbon family.  Thus, the War of Spanish Succession began.  An alliance of England, Austria, the Dutch Republic, and Portugal fought against Spain and France.  At first it seemed that the Bourbons had no chance of winning against the alliance, but then the French began to win some important victories.  In 1713 a peace was negotiated.  According to the Treaty of Utrecht, the Bourbon claimant was recognized as King Felipe V of Spain.  However he was required to give up any claim to the French throne, thus eliminating the possibility of the union of the two countries.  Also, Austria took over Spanish possessions in Flanders and Italy, and England took Gibraltar which guards the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea.

The Bourbon dynasty ruled Spain for the remainder of the eighteenth century.  Felipe V was succeeded by his son Fernando VI, who in turn was succeeded in 1758 by Fernando's half-brother, Carlos III.  Carlos was the greatest of the Bourbon kings of Spain.  Although he ruled as an absolute monarch, he was strongly influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment.  He sought to make Spain a more modern and progressive country, and passed many reforms, decreasing the influence of the Church and the Inquisition, and improving the economy and colonial policies.  The people of Madrid gave him the nickname of "El Rey Alcalde" (The Mayor King) because of his many projects to modernize and beautify the capital city.

(image from the web)

Carlos III of Spain

Unfortunately, his son, the next king of Spain, was far less competent.  Carlos IV was more interested in hunting than governing, and left the affairs of state to his domineering wife, Maria Luisa, and the Prime Minister Manuel Godoy (who is rumored to have been the Queen's lover).  Carlos came to the throne in 1788... during the tumultuous events of the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon.

 

Carlos IV is most famous for having been the patron of the great artist, Francisco Goya.  One of Goya's most famous paintings is this group portrait, " The Family of Carlos IV".

 

 (image from the web)

 

Goya portrayed the royal family as they really were... Carlos appears rather empty-headed and Maria Luisa looks like a shrew.  One writer commented that the royal couple looked like "the local baker and his wife after they won the lottery."  The King and Queen were supposedly pleased with the portrait however.  It is said that they were so impressed with Goya's rendering of their splendid attire, that they never noticed how unflattering their portraits were. 

 

 

Spain was torn by the Napoleonic Wars that were raging across Europe.  Carlos favored an alliance with France, while his son Fernando wanted closer ties with England.  Napoleon, who already had 100,000 troops in Spain, forced Carlos and his son to abdicate, and proclaimed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as the new king of Spain.

Although Carlos had been unpopular with the Spanish people, the French occupiers were even more hated.  On May 2, 1808, the people of Madrid revolted against the French.  (The Second of May is today Spain's national holiday.)  The French troops crushed the rebellion, and the next day, hundreds of Spanish insurgents were executed in retaliation.   The event was immortalized in Goya's masterpiece, "The Third of May".

 (image from the web)

 



 The executions, however, only stiffened the Spanish resistance, and Napoleon's forces soon found that the uprising against the French had spread throughout the country.  The constant skirmishes were a thorn in Napoleon's side and a drain on his resources.  It is from this uprising that we get the term "guerrilla warfare"  ("guerrilla" means "little war" in Spanish). 

During the war, rebels formed a government known as the "Cortes de Cádiz", and wrote a liberal constitution for Spain.  But after Napoleon's defeat in 1814, the son of Carlos, Fernando, assumed the throne as Fernando VII.  Fernando ruled as an absolute monarch and dismissed the "Cortes".  Meanwhile, the chaos in Spain, had given most of the Spanish colonies in the Americas the opportunity to declare their own independence.  All that was left of Spain's once mighty overseas empire were Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Philippines.

The nineteenth century in Spain was an era of inept monarchs, struggles between conservatives and liberals, and even a couple of civil wars known as the Carlist Wars.  In 1898 Spain found itself embroiled in a short but disastrous war with the United States.  The U.S. declared war on Spain after the American battleship "USS Maine" sank in Havana harbor as the result of an explosion.  Spain was blamed for the explosion, although there is no evidence that the Spanish were responsible.  As a result of the war, Spain lost its last colonies.  Cuba became independent, and Puerto Rico and the Philippines became U.S. territories.  It was a humiliating defeat, but much worse was to await Spain in the twentieth century.