Charles II (6 November 1661,
Madrid – 1 November 1700, Madrid), was the last
Habsburg King of
Spain and the ruler of nearly all of
Italy (except
Piedmont, the
Papal States and the
Republic of Venice), the Spanish territories in the Southern
Low Countries, and
Spain's overseas Empire, stretching from
Mexico to the
Philippines. He is noted for his extensive physical, intellectual, and emotional problems – along with the consequent ineffectual rule – as well as his role in the developments preceding the
War of Spanish Succession.
Ancestry
Charles was the only surviving son of his
Habsburg predecessor, King
Philip IV of Spain and his second Queen (and niece),
Mariana of Austria, another Habsburg. His birth was greeted with joy by the Spaniards, who feared the disputed succession which could have ensued if Philip IV had left no male heir.
Pedigree of Charles II. Note large amount of inbreeding.
Seventeenth-century European noble culture commonly matched cousin to first cousin and uncle to niece, to preserve a prosperous family's properties. Charles's own immediate pedigree was exceptionally populated with nieces giving birth to children of their uncles: Charles's mother was niece of Charles's father, being daughter of
Maria Anna of Spain (1606–46) and
Emperor Ferdinand III. Thus, Empress Maria Anna was simultaneously his aunt and grandmother. This inbreeding had given many in the family hereditary weaknesses. That Habsburg generation was more prone to still-births than were peasants in Spanish villages.
There was also insanity in Charles's family; his great-great-great(-great-great, depending along which
lineage one counts) grandmother,
Joanna of Castile ("Joanna the Mad"), mother of the Spanish
King Charles I (who was also
Holy Roman Emperor Charles V) became insane early in life.
Dating to approximately the year 1550,
outbreeding in Charles II's lineage had ceased. From then on, all his ancestors were in one way or another descendants of Joanna the Mad and
Philip I of Castile, and among these just the royal houses of Spain, Austria, and Bavaria. Charles II's
genome was more
homozygous than in an average brother-sister offspring.
He was born physically and mentally disabled, and
disfigured. Possibly through affliction with
mandibular prognathism, he was unable to chew. His tongue was so large that his speech could barely be understood, and he frequently drooled. He may also have suffered from the endocrine disease
acromegaly.
[http://www.xs4all.nl/~monarchs/madmonarchs/carlos2/carlos2_bio.htm]Consequently, Charles II is known in Spanish history as
El Hechizado ("The Hexed") from the popular belief – to which Charles himself subscribed – that his physical and mental disabilities were caused by "sorcery." The king was exorcised, and the case of his exorcisms remains one of the most sinister in the history of Spain. (Hume)
Not having learned to speak until the age of four nor to walk until eight,
Charles was treated as virtually an infant until he was ten years old. Fearing the frail child would be overtaxed, his caretakers did not force Charles to attend school. The indolence of the young Charles was indulged to such an extent that at times he was not expected to be clean. When his half-brother
Don John of Austria, a natural son of Philip IV, obtained power by exiling the queen mother from court, he covered his nose and insisted that the king should at least brush his hair.
The only vigorous activity in which Charles is known to have participated was shooting. He occasionally indulged in the sport in the preserves of the
Escorial.
Early life
Born in the capital of the vast
Spanish empire,
Madrid, and as the only surviving male heir of his father's two marriages (the only brother of Charles to survive infancy was
Balthasar Charles, Prince of Asturias, who died at the age of 16 in 1646), he was named the
Principe de Asturias as his heir. When Charles was four, his father the King died and his mother was made his
Regent - a position in which she remained during much of his reign. Though she was exiled by the king's illegitimate half-brother
John of Austria the Younger, she returned to the court after John's death in 1679.
Reign
The years in which Charles II sat on the throne were difficult for Spain. The economy was stagnant, there was hunger in the land, and the power of the monarchy over the various Spanish provinces was extremely weak. Charles' unfitness for rule meant he was often ignored and power during his reign became the subject of court intrigues and foreign, particularly
French, influence.
During the reign of Charles II, the decline of Spanish power and prestige that started due to the policies of
Count-Duke of Olivares was accelerated. Although the peace
Treaty of Lisbon with
Portugal in 1668 ceded the
North African enclave of
Ceuta to Spain, it was little solace for the
loss of Portugal and the
Portuguese colonies by Philip IV to the
Duke of Braganza's successful revolt against more than 60 years of Habsburg rule.
Charles presided over the greatest
auto de fe in the history of the
Spanish Inquisition in 1680, in which one hundred and twenty prisoners were judged and twenty-one burnt to death. A large, richly adorned book was published celebrating the event. Toward the end of his life, in one of his few independent acts as King, Charles created a
Junta Magna (Great Council) to examine and investigate the Spanish Inquisition. The report was reportedly so damning to the Inquisition that the Inquisitor General convinced the decrepit monarch to "consign the 'terrible indictment' to the flames". When Philip V took the throne, he called for the report but no copy could be found.
The succession
In 1679, the 18-year-old Charles II married
Marie Louise of Orléans (1662–1689), eldest daughter of
Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, the only sibling of
Louis XIV, and his first wife
Princess Henrietta of England. At that time, she was known as a lovely young woman. It is likely that Charles was
impotent, and no children were born. Marie Louise became deeply depressed
and died at 26, ten years after their marriage, leaving 28-year-old Charles heartbroken.
Still in desperate need of a male heir, the next year he married the 23-year-old Palatine princess
Maria Anna of Neuburg, a daughter of
Philip William, Elector of the Palatinate, and sister-in-law of his uncle
Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor. However, this marriage was no more successful than the first in producing the much-desired heir.
Towards the end of his life Charles became increasingly hypersensitive and strange, at one point demanding that the bodies of his family be exhumed so he could look upon the corpses. He reportedly wept upon viewing the body of his first wife, Marie Louise.
As the American historians
Will and
Ariel Durant put it, Charles II was "short, lame,
epileptic, senile, and completely bald before thirty-five, he was always on the verge of death, but repeatedly baffled
Christendom by continuing to live."
Aftermath
When Charles II died in 1700, the line of the
Spanish Habsburgs died with him. He had named a great-nephew,
Philippe de Bourbon, Duke of Anjou (a grandson of the reigning French king
Louis XIV, and of Charles' half-sister,
Maria Theresa of Spain - Louis XIV himself was an heir to the Spanish throne through his mother, daughter of Philip III), as his successor. He had named his blood cousin Charles (from the Austrian branch of the Habsburg dynasty) as alternate successor.
The specter of the multi-continental empire of
Spain passing under the effective control of Louis XIV provoked a massive coalition of powers to oppose the Duc d'Anjou's succession. The actions of Louis heightened the fears of the English, the Dutch and the Austrians, among others. In February of 1701, the French King caused the
Parlement of Paris (a court) to register a decree that should
Louis himself have no heir that the Duc d'Anjou—Phillip V of Spain—would surrender the Spanish throne for that of the French, ensuring dynastic continuity in Europe's greatest land power.
However, a second act of the French King "justified a hostile interpretation": pursuant to a treaty with Spain, Louis occupied several towns in the
Spanish Netherlands (modern Belgium and
Nord-Pas-de-Calais). This was the spark that ignited the powder keg created by the unresolved issues of the War of the League of Augsburg (1689-97) and the acceptance of the Spanish inheritance by Louis XIV for his grandson.
A family tree showing the relationships of the various claimants to Charles II
Almost immediately the
War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1713) began. After eleven years of bloody, global warfare, fought on four continents and three oceans, the Duc d'Anjou, as Philip V, was confirmed as King of Spain on substantially the same terms that the powers of Europe had agreed to before the war. Thus the Treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt ended the war and "achieved little more than...diplomacy might have peacefully achieved in 1701." A proviso of the peace perpetually forbade the union of the Spanish and French thrones.
The
House of Bourbon, founded by Philip V, has intermittently occupied the Spanish throne ever since, and sits today on the throne of Spain in the person of
Juan Carlos I of Spain (1975–present).
Ancestors
Ancestors of Charles II of Spain
Legacy
