In the late 1780s, Spain was one of the most powerful states in the world. Science developed in it, the arts conquered the minds of the aristocracy, industry developed rapidly, the population grew actively … After 10 years in Spain, they saw only a puppet, a means to an end. And after half a century, Spain has already turned into a backward secondary country, going through civil wars one after another, with a weak economy and barely living industry. Spanish history of this period is a story of heroes and traitors, kings and commoners, war and peace. I do not undertake to describe this entire period in detail, but I want to show, using the example of the Spanish kings, where Spain moved under its best rulers, and where it came as a result after insignificant people were at its helm in difficult times. The last successful king of Spain before the Napoleonic Wars and all his successors - both actual and probable - will be considered.
Carlos III de Bourbon
Spain in the XVIII and early XIX centuries was a typical absolutist state of the French model, and was ruled by the Bourbon dynasty, who always remembered everything and did not learn anything new. In an absolute monarchy, the effectiveness of government directly depended on the abilities of kings, both personal and command. As a result, high requirements were imposed on the head of state - he had to either be able to competently manage the state himself, or entrust these functions to worthy advisers, controlling their reliability and efficiency.
The first Bourbon on the Spanish throne was Philip V. He received the crown at a fairly young age - at the age of 17, according to the will of King Charles II, who died childless, and in the future almost unquestioningly obeyed the influence of his grandfather, the French king Louis XIV. However, after 1715, his reign became more or less independent, and the successful selection of ministers allowed Spain to begin to get out of the deep economic crisis, in which it found itself through the fault of the Habsburgs in the 17th century. Also, under Philip V, a gradual limitation of the influence of the church on royal power began, and an increase in the level of public education. This process was continued by Philip's heir, Ferdinand VI, who ruled for 13 years. In a way, his reign became similar to the great time of the Catholic kings - as then, not one ruler was in charge, but a crowned married couple, in this regard, his wife, Barbara de Braganza, turned out to be one of the most intelligent and successful queens of Spain in all its history. Father's reforms under Ferdinand were continued and deepened; With the help of its ministers, among whom the most prominent was the Marquis de la Ensenada, industry, education (already not the most backward within Europe) began to develop in Spain, the army and navy were strengthened. Thanks to the efforts of Philip and Ferdinand, the population of Spain, which had previously been decreasing [1], has increased over 50 years from 7 to 9, 3 million people. At the same time, the king did not allow his state to be drawn into major conflicts, in which he sometimes came to serious decisions such as the dismissal from the post of Secretary of State Ensenada, who actively advocated the war with England. However, in 1759 Ferdinand VI died without leaving heirs, and according to the laws of succession, power passed to his brother Charles, who became King of Spain Carlos III.
The fate of this man turned out to be very interesting. Born as the son of the King of Spain, he was appointed Duke of Parma at a fairly young age (15 years old). Already at this age, Carlos showed himself from the best side - intelligent, inquisitive, patient, he knew how to correctly set tasks for himself and achieve his goal. At first, his skills remained almost unclaimed, but very soon he began to actively participate in public affairs, becoming one of the creators of Spain's victory in the war with Austria. [2] … Then, having at his disposal a fairly small Parma-Spanish force (14 thousand foot and horse, the general command is the Duke of Montemar) and the support of the Spanish fleet from the sea, he cleared the Kingdom of Naples from the Austrians in less than a year, after which he occupied Sicily. As a result, Carlos was crowned King of Naples and Sicily, Charles III, for which he had to abandon the Duchy of Parma - international agreements of that time did not allow certain territories to be united under one crown, among which were Parma, Naples and Sicily. In Naples, the new king began to carry out progressive reforms of the economy and education, began to build a royal palace, and began to strengthen his own army. Very quickly he gained popular popularity, being recognized by both the aristocracy and the common people as a desirable leader. And in 1759, this man, who had already managed to put together his team and gain extensive experience in terms of administrative reforms, received the Spanish crown, for the sake of which he had to abandon the crown of Naples and Sicily.
Everything that was good in the reign of his father and brother, King Carlos III of Spain expanded and deepened even more. In this he was assisted by talented State Secretaries [3] and other ministers - Pedro Abarca Aranda (President of the Royal Council), Jose Monino y Redondo de Floridablanca (Secretary of State), Pedro Rodriguez de Campomanes (Minister of Finance). Many taxes, burdensome for the population and did not bring much benefit, were abolished, freedom of speech, grain trade was established, the road network expanded, new factories were built, the level of agriculture improved, colonization of sparsely populated territories in America expanded as far as possible in an effort to prevent its easy seizure by settlers from Great Britain or France…. The king fought against begging and vagrancy, cobbled streets and lampposts began to appear in the cities, architecture developed, water pipes were installed, and the fleet was restored. In foreign policy, Charles III tried to strengthen the position of Spain, and although not all of his undertakings in this field were successful, as a result he came out in plus. Many of his reforms provoked resistance from the conservative and reactionary part of the population. Especially dangerous among them were the Jesuits, who called on the people to revolt and rebellions against the royal power - as a result of which, in 1767, after a series of uprisings caused by them, the Jesuits were expelled from Spain, and even more, the Pope managed to get a bull about the dissolution of this order in 1773. Spain finally got out of decline, and began to take the first steps towards progress. I have come across information that Carlos III even discussed the idea of introducing a constitutional monarchy like the British one, although this is unreliable. Carlos III was also actively involved in the reforms of the courts and legislation, abolished many laws limiting the growth of Spanish industry, and under him, hospitals were actively built in order to overcome or at least limit the eternal scourge of the Iberian Peninsula - epidemics. Also, with the times of the reign of this king, the emergence of the Spanish national idea is associated - as a single whole, and not as a union of separate independent parts, as it was before. Under Carlos, the Spanish anthem appeared, the modern red-yellow-red flag instead of the old white one began to be used as the flag of the Armada. In general, Spain began to play with new colors, and it clearly had a great future, but … The days of King Carlos III were coming to an end. After a series of tragic deaths of his relatives in 1788, caused by a smallpox epidemic, the aged king died.
It cannot be said that under Carlos III in Spain everything was improved for the better. The agrarian question still needed to be resolved, there were problems with the excessive influence of the church, which boycotted many progressive reforms, and tensions in the colonies gradually increased. Nevertheless, Spain began to recover, emerge from decline. Industry developed, science and culture experienced another upsurge. The process of development of the state went where it was necessary - it was only necessary to continue in the same spirit, and Spain would revive its former power, which is gradually being lost over the years …. But Carlos III was not lucky with the heir. His eldest son Philip was recognized as mentally retarded and excluded from the line of succession during his lifetime, which ended in 1777, 11 years before his father's death. The next in the line of succession was his second son, named after his father Carlos.
Carlos IV and his sons
The relationship between Carlos the father and Carlos the son did not go well. King Carlos III was an extremely pragmatic, somewhat cynical and calm person, personally modest, while his son and heir to the throne liked to inflate something of a universal scale from his personality, while being devoid of real management skills, strength of character and generally some significant mental capacity. The conflict between father and son was shared by the daughter-in-law of Carlos III, Maria Louise of Parma, a rude, vicious and tough woman who manipulated her narrow-minded husband and had many lovers. As king, Carlos IV turned out to be useless - after the death of his father, he transferred all power to the Secretary of State, whose post very soon got the queen's lover, Manuel Godoy, who was only 25 years old. The further history of Spain with this cheerful trio - the domineering queen, the insignificant king and the queen's ambitious lover - is well known to the majority: the rapid slide into a crisis, the almost complete cancellation of all the achievements of its predecessors, wars that are unprofitable for Spain, the loss of ships, finances and people …. I will not delve into this story, but I will simply note that against the background of such a king, the “tsar-rag” Nicholas II, whom we like to scold so much, looks very much even nothing. Together with the king and queen, the royal court also degraded, turning into a crowd of nonentities gnawing at power, having nothing but personal enrichment among their goals. People of the rank of the same Floridablanca in such conditions were simply removed from power.
All Spain's hopes were associated with the son of Carlos IV, Ferdinand. And it seemed that this is a real chance to return to the renaissance of the times of Carlos III - this "father-son" pair did not get along in the same way, and it was widely known. But in reality it was nothing more than a personal showdown between Ferdinand and Manuel Godoy, who felt a pure, unclouded hatred for each other. Ferdinand, not being mentally retarded, understood that there was only one way to remove Godoy from power - to overthrow his weak-willed father and his own mother. Prince of Asturias [4] turned out to be good in his own way: his unscrupulousness manifested itself in everything. The conspiracy against his parents and mother's lover was revealed, during interrogation, Ferdinand quickly surrendered all the conspirators. In the course of the investigation, the intentions of the king's son to turn to Napoleon for help were revealed, and Carlos IV was smart enough to send a letter to Napoleon, asking for an explanation of what was perceived by the French emperor as an insult. In fact, this story gave the French a reason to invade Spain, since the leaders of Napoleon's ally were clearly not reliable. As a result of further events, Charles IV abdicated in favor of Ferdinand VII, after which both of them were captured by the French, where they remained until 1814, in every possible way pleasing the pride of Napoleon. None of this couple worried about the future of Spain, like Godoy, who before that was going to give Napoleon a piece of Spain in exchange for a personal principality in Portugal. Meanwhile, the Spanish people, full of hope, waged a difficult, bloody war with the French with the name of King Ferdinand VII on the banners …
After returning to the throne, Ferdinand VII tried to aggravate the crisis in Spain to the best of his ability. After the war with Napoleon, the metropolis lay in ruins; from the industry built under his grandfather, basically there were either ruins or empty workshops without workers who either died in the war or simply fled. The treasury was exhausted, the people expected that the king they adored would begin to change something in the country - but instead, Ferdinand began to tighten the screws and rush into very expensive adventures. Subsequently, his actions, as well as the events of the Napoleonic Wars, led to the fact that until the end of the 19th century, Spain practically did not emerge from civil wars and government crises. Ferdinando Karlosovich turned out to be not the king who could continue to lead Spain along the path indicated by Philip V, Ferdinand VI and Carlos III, but just such a king who could and could successfully ditch as many of the beginnings of his great ancestors as possible.
Another son who was the heir to the Spanish throne after Ferdinand was Don Carlos the Elder, the founder of the Carlist branch of the Bourbons and the organizer of the Carlist Wars in Spain, which cost her a lot of blood without any noticeable results. It would be fair to say that Carlos was better than his brother Ferdinand - and smarter, and more disciplined, and just more consistent. If desired, Carlos could, thanks to his own abilities, captivate the people, which Ferdinand succeeded only thanks to unjustified rumors. However, arguing this, one should nevertheless add that in the future, Carlos still turned out to be not the best ruler: during the First Carlist War, he did little to deal with civil issues, showed despotism and indifference to his own people, and his persecution of his own commanders after military and diplomatic failures led to a split among their own army, and in many ways made it easier for the Christinos to win. A man like that, splitting the ranks of his own supporters, could not restore Spain and return it to the path of progress, and his supporters - radical reactionaries, conservatives and orthodox priests of the Catholic Church of Spain - would not allow a miracle to happen.
Ferdinand, just Ferdinand
In the order of inheritance of the Spanish crown, after Carlos IV and his sons, was the third son of Carlos III, Ferdinand, aka Ferdinand III, king of Sicily, aka Ferdinand IV, king of Naples, aka Ferdinand I, king of the Two Sicilies. It was in his favor that Carlos III renounced the crown of Naples and Sicily, leaving the 8-year-old boy in the care of the Regency Council headed by Bernardo Tanucci. The idea turned out to be not the most successful - the boy seemed to be smart enough, but Tanucci turned out to be a cunning fox, and, thinking for the future, simply scored the young king for training, stimulating in him a craving for pleasure and a dislike for boring state affairs. As a result, Ferdinand was not interested in the government of the kingdom while Tanucci was at the helm - and this lasted until 1778. The story of his removal from power is very "impressive" - according to the marriage contract between Ferdinand and his wife Maria Caroline of Austria, after the birth of her son, she received a post in the State Council. The son was born in 1777, and the queen quickly began to establish her own order in the country. Otherwise, Ferdinand of Naples and Sicilia resembled his nephew Carlos - having given all important matters into the hands of ministers and his wife, who quickly got lovers like the British admiral Acton, he removed himself from power, falling into complete insignificance and devoting all his time to entertainment and mistresses. However, it even benefited - the successful selection of ministers by his wife contributed to the development of the Kingdom of Naples, where at that time the economy and education were rapidly developing, the population was growing rapidly and a powerful modern fleet was gradually being built.
But later Ferdinand "suffered". Due to the actions of revolutionary France, he lost his crown, but thanks to the actions of the British fleet and the Russian squadron of Ushakov, the crown was returned to him. After that, tightening of the nuts began. Ferdinand himself took the reins of government into his own hands, and repression began against those who opposed him. In this he was helped by his wife and her advisers, who treated the revolutionaries with fierce hatred - after all, they executed her sister, Marie Antoinette. Soon Napoleon regained control of the Kingdom of Naples, giving it to Murat, but Sicily remained in the hands of Ferdinand. At the same time, republicans or simply liberal-minded people in Sicily were constantly persecuted and executed; the process went even further when, in 1815, Ferdinand was returned to the crown of Naples. The number of victims during this time is estimated at about 10 thousand - at the same time, a huge scale! It got to the point that the English envoy in Naples, William Bentinck, was forced to ask the king to restrain the repression and send his wife away from the court in order to stop the bloodshed. The king obeyed, Maria Carolina went home to Vienna, where she soon died; immediately after receiving news of her death, Ferdinand, not caring about mourning, married one of his many mistresses, Lucia Migliaccio. The tightening of the screws continued, albeit on a smaller scale, leading in 1820 to the uprising of the Carbonarii, who advocated the introduction of the Constitution and the limitation of the king's power, which had to be suppressed with the help of the Austrian army. During the deployment of another repression against his own population, Ferdinand finally died. The war with unwanted representatives of his own people became his biggest state project, in which he personally participated.
As you can tell from all this - Ferdinand was a bad candidate for kings. His sons were no better - Francis, who became king of the Two Sicilies after his father, and Leopoldo, who did not participate in state affairs and did not want to have anything to do with them. Nor does Ferdinand do better than his notable contribution to the science and culture of his time - during his reign the Palermo Observatory was built, and the Royal Bourbon Museum was founded in Naples. If he somehow magically became the king of Spain, the history of this state would not have followed an unambiguously good path - although, perhaps, it would have been possible to avoid many of the troubles, the creator of which was Carlos IV and Ferdinand VII. And at the time of the death of the father of the king of Naples and Sicily, Carlos III, Ferdinand might not have taken the Spanish throne - he had only one son, his wife was pregnant with a child whose gender was not yet clear, as a result of which Ferdinand would either have to leave Naples on his son and go to Spain without heirs, or transfer power in him to someone else, which deprived his children of the Neapolitan inheritance - and this, by the standards of that time, was an almost unacceptable option. As a result of all this, Ferdinand could relinquish the throne of Spain, and another son of Carlos III, Gabriel, became the heir, but….
Infant Gabriel
The fourth son of King Carlos III, Gabriel, born on May 12, 1752, was strikingly different from all the other children of this king. From his youth, he began to show great aptitude for science, was hardworking and curious. In addition, since childhood, he made great strides in the field of arts: according to the Spanish composer Antonio Soler, who was then the teacher of the young Infanta, Gabriel played the harpsichord perfectly. He had successes in foreign languages, he knew Latin perfectly, reading the works of Roman authors in the original. He did not lag behind in the exact sciences. The boy clearly showed talent from childhood, thanks to which he quickly became the favorite of his smart father, who saw significant potential in him. Since childhood, he was second in line to the throne after his older brother Carlos; after the wedding of another brother - Ferdinand - he became the third in the order of succession. The birth of heirs to both brothers further and further pushed Gabriel away from the royal title, but this did not particularly sadden him - so he could devote more time to science and art. From the moment he came of age in 1768, he also began to show philanthropic tendencies, donating significant sums to various institutions in Spain. The young Infante was loved by many.
Gabriel married late - in 1785, at the age of 33. His wife was Mariana Victoria de Braganza, daughter of the Portuguese king, who at that time was 17 years old. The couple quickly managed to conceive an heir, and the Infant Pedro Carlos was born, named after his grandfathers, kings. A year later, Mariana Victoria gave birth to a daughter, but a week later she died. And a year later, the events turned into a tragedy: shortly after the third birth, Gabriel's wife caught smallpox, which was raging in Spain at that time, and died on November 2, 1788. A week later, on November 9, a newborn son, the Infant Carlos Jose Antonio, died - infant mortality at that time was very high even among the nobility. But the series of deaths did not end there - Gabriel, who grieved for his wife and son, caught smallpox himself, and died on November 23. This series of deaths crippled the already weak health of King Carlos III, who followed his beloved son on December 14, 1788. In just over one month, the Spanish royal family suffered huge losses. Orphaned Pedro Carlos was raised in Portugal and died young in 1812 in Brazil.
The Infante Gabriel had practically no chance of becoming king even if he did not catch smallpox and die in 1788. And, ironically, of all the potential heirs to the Spanish crown, only Gabriel could continue the work started by his father and lead Spain through years of trouble and destruction without the fatal losses that she suffered in reality. But alas, the only worthy heir to the Spanish crown died before his father, while nonentities like Carlos IV, Ferdinand VII or Ferdinand of Naples lived to old age, keeping power in their hands to the last …
Decline
Spain is probably one of the most offended by the history of states in the entire modern era: in a very short time it was thrown from the list of promising Great Powers into the ranks of minor ones, and internal conflicts finished off all the huge potential laid in the state during the 18th century. It was especially offensive to see such a result after the start of the upsurge under Carlos III: it seemed that a little more - and everything will work out, and Spain will return everything that it lost, but instead, she was handed lousy leaders and brought down the horrors and destruction of the Pyrenean War. If in 1790 Spain had a gradually developing industry, if at that time moderate progressives like Floridablanca were still trying to do something, then only 30 years later, in 1820, Spain was already in ruins. The population suffered huge losses during the total war with the French; the area of cultivated land was significantly reduced - also because there was no one to cultivate it. Ambitious plans have sunk into oblivion. Many peasants, not wanting to return to their former occupations, began to rob, almost completely paralyzing communications in some areas. Most of the large enterprises were either destroyed during the war or lost a significant part of their workers - among these was the famous La Cavada, one of the largest foundry artillery factories in Europe before the Napoleonic Wars. Spain was rapidly losing its former colonies, which could have been preserved, at least partially, had a sufficiently clever and pragmatic ruler taken over them in the 1780s and 1790s. Contradictions were growing in the country, which threatened to tear the country between the despotism of Ferdinand and the gaining momentum of the liberal movement. Ferdinand himself seemed to do everything on purpose in order to aggravate the situation - suppressing the liberals at the beginning of his reign and giving free rein to the reactionaries, at the end he abruptly changed his bearings, which, coupled with the change in the order of succession to the throne, acted like a match thrown into a barrel of gunpowder. The same stupid king got involved in a series of adventures that devastated the treasury, which was already exhausted after the war of 1808-1814. The once mighty Armada almost ceased to exist - if in 1796 there were 77 ships of the line, by 1823 there were already 7 of them, and by 1830 - and at all 3 ….
The sad statistics can be continued further, but this is not so important. It is important that almost leaving the brink of the abyss under Carlos III, Spain rushed into the abyss immediately after his death, and if before the Napoleonic Wars it was a strong developing state with very definite prospects, then after them Spain was expected only more than 100 years of decline, civil wars, bloody conflicts, conspiracies, coups and stupid and incompetent rulers. It's no joke - after Carlos III, the first really sensible king of Spain was Alfonso XII, who ruled for only 11 years and died of tuberculosis at the age of only 27! It was possible to get out of the decline of Spain only by the last third of the XX century, but those were already different times, different rulers and a completely different Spain….
Notes (edit)
1) If in 1492 there were from 6 to 10 million people in all of Spain, then in 1700 - only 7 million. During the same time, the population of England, one of the main opponents of Spain, increased from 2 to 5.8 million.
2) The conflict became part of the War of the Polish Succession.
3) Secretary of State - the head of the government of royal Spain during the times of absolutism.
4) The title of heir to the throne in Spain.
