Philip V was King of Spain from 1 November 1700 to 15 January 1724, when
he abdicated in favour of his son Louis, and from 6 September 1724, when he
assumed the throne again upon his son's death, to his own death 9 July 1746.
Before his reign, Philip occupied an exalted place in the royal family of
France as a grandson of King Louis XIV. His father, Louis, the Grand Dauphin,
had the strongest genealogical claim to the throne of Spain when it became
vacant in 1700. However, since the Grand Dauphin and Philip's older brother,
Louis, Duke of Burgundy, could not be displaced from their place in the
succession to the French throne, King Charles II of Spain named Philip as his
heir in his will. It was well known that the union of France and Spain under one
monarch would upset the balance of power in Europe, such that other European
powers would take steps to prevent it. Indeed, Philip's accession in Spain
provoked the 14-year War of the Spanish Succession, which continued until the
Treaty of Utrecht forbade any future possibility of unifying the French and
Spanish thrones. Philip was the first member of the House
of Bourbon to rule as king of Spain. The sum of his two reigns, 45 years and 21
days, is the longest in modern Spanish history.
Early years Philip was born at the Palace of
Versailles in France the second son of Louis, Grand Dauphin, the heir apparent
to the throne of France, and his wife Maria Anna Victoria of Bavaria, Dauphine
Victoire. He was a younger brother of Louis, Duke of Burgundy, the father of
Louis XV of France. At birth, Philip was created Duke of Anjou, a traditional
title for younger sons in the French royal family. He would be known by this
name until he became the king of Spain. Since Philip's older brother, the Duke
of Burgundy, was second in line to the French throne after his father, there
was little expectation that either he or his younger brother Charles, Duke of
Berry, would ever rule over France. Philip was tutored with his brothers by
François Fénelon, Archbishop of Cambrai. The three were also educated by Paul de
Beauvilliers. = Claims to the Spanish throne=
In 1700 the King Charles II of Spain died childless. His will named the
16-year-old Philip, grandson of Charles' half-sister Maria Theresa of Spain, the
first wife of Louis XIV, as his successor. Upon any possible refusal,
the crown of Spain would be offered next to Philip's younger brother, the Duke of
Berry, then to the Archduke Charles of Austria, later Holy Roman Emperor
Charles VI. Philip had the better genealogical claim to the Spanish
throne, because his Spanish grandmother and great-grandmother were older than
the ancestors of the Archduke Charles of Austria. However, the Austrian branch
claimed that Philip's grandmother had renounced the Spanish throne for herself
and her descendants as part of her marriage contract. This was countered by
the French branch's claim that it was on the basis of a dowry that had never been
paid. After a long Royal Council meeting in
France at which the Dauphin spoke up in favour of his son's rights, it was
agreed that Philip would ascend the throne, but would forever renounce his
claim to the throne of France for himself and his descendants.
After the Royal Council decided to accept the provisions of the will of
Charles II naming Philip king of Spain, the Spanish ambassador was called in and
introduced to his new king. The ambassador, along with his son, knelt
before Philip and made a long speech in Spanish which Philip did not understand,
although Louis XIV did. Philip only later learned to speak Spanish.
= First marriage= On 2 November 1701 Philip married the
13-year-old Maria Luisa of Savoy, as chosen by his grandfather. She was the
daughter of Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy, and Philip's second cousin Anne
Marie d'Orléans, also the parents of the Duchess of Burgundy, Philip's
sister-in-law. There was a proxy ceremony at Turin, the capital of the
Duchy of Savoy, and another one at Versailles on 11 September.
As queen of Spain, Maria Luisa proved very popular with her subjects. She
served as regent for her husband on several occasions. Her most successful
term was when Philip was away touring his Italian domains for nine months in
1702. In 1714, she died at the age of 26 from tuberculosis, a devastating
emotional blow to her husband. War of the Spanish Succession
The actions of Louis XIV heightened the fears of the English, the Dutch and the
Austrians, among others. In February 1701, Louis XIV caused the Parlement of
Paris to register a decree that if Philip's elder brother, the Petit
Dauphin Louis, died without an heir, then Philip would surrender the throne
of Spain for the succession to the throne of France, 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. This was the spark that ignited the powder keg created by the
unresolved issues of the War of the League of Augsburg and the acceptance of
the Spanish inheritance by Louis XIV for his grandson.
Almost immediately the War of the Spanish Succession began. Concern among
other European powers that Spain and France united under a single Bourbon
monarch would upset the balance of power pitted powerful France and weak Spain
against the Grand Alliance of England, the Netherlands and Austria.
Inside Spain, the Crown of Castile supported Philip of France. On the other
hand, the majority of the nobility of the Crown of Aragon supported Charles of
Austria, son of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I and claimant to the Spanish
throne by right of his grandmother Maria Anna of Spain. Charles was even hailed
as King of Aragon under the name Charles III.
The war was centred in Spain and west-central Europe, with other
important fighting in Germany and Italy. Prince Eugene of Savoy and the Duke of
Marlborough distinguished themselves as military commanders in the Low
Countries. In colonial North America, the conflict became known to the English
colonists who fought against French and Spanish forces as Queen Anne's War. Over
the course of the fighting, some 400,000 people were killed.
It was with this war as a backdrop that, beginning in 1707, Philip issued the
Nueva Planta decrees, which centralized Spanish rule under the Castilian
political and administrative model and in the process abolished the charters of
all independently administered kingdoms within Spain—most notably the Crown of
Aragon, which was supporting Charles VI in the conflict—except for the Kingdom
of Navarre and the rest of the Basque region, who had supported Philip in the
war for the Spanish throne, and retained their semi-autonomous self-government.
The policy of centralization had as model the French State under Louis XIV
and was strongly supported by politicians such as Joseph de Solís and
the Sardinian-born political philosopher Vicente Bacallar.
At one point in 1712 Philip was offered the choice of renouncing the throne of
Spain so that he could be made heir of France, but he refused.
Philip decided to relinquish his right of succession to France under one
condition: the introduction of semi-Salic law in Spain. Under this law,
the succession to the Spanish crown was limited to his entire male line before
it could pass to any female, a condition of his renunciation made clear to the
allies during the preliminaries of the Treaties of Utrecht. It was not until
this was successfully accomplished that Spain and Great Britain made their own
peace terms at the second Treaty of Utrecht. By the terms of the Treaty of
Utrecht that concluded the war, Spain was forced to cede Minorca and Gibraltar
to Great Britain; the Spanish Netherlands, Naples, Milan, and Sardinia
to the Austrian Habsburgs; and Sicily and parts of Milan to Savoy.
These losses greatly diminished the Spanish Empire in Europe, which had
already been in decline. Throughout his reign, Philip sought to reverse the
decline of Spanish power. Trying to overturn the terms of the Treaty of
Utrecht, he attempted to re-establish Spanish claims in Italy, triggering the
War of the Quadruple Alliance in which Spain fought a coalition of four major
powers. Phillip V was forced to sue for peace.
= Second marriage= Shortly after the death of Queen Maria
Luisa in 1714, the King decided to marry again. His second wife was Elisabeth of
Parma, daughter of Odoardo Farnese, Hereditary Prince of Parma, and Dorothea
Sophie of the Palatinate. At the age of twenty-one, on 24 December 1714, she was
married by proxy in Parma. The marriage was arranged by Cardinal Alberoni, with
the concurrence of the Princesse des Ursins, the Camarera mayor de Palacio of
the king of Spain. = Abdication=
On 14 January 1724, Philip abdicated the throne to his eldest son, the
seventeen-year-old Louis, for reasons still subject to debate. One theory
suggests that Philip V, who exhibited many elements of mental instability
during his reign, did not wish to reign due to his increasing mental decline. A
second theory puts the abdication in context of the Bourbon dynasty. The
French royal family recently had lost many legitimate agnates to diseases.
Indeed, Philip V's abdication occurred just over a month after the death of the
Duke of Orléans, who had been regent for Louis XV of France. The lack of an heir
made another continental war of succession a possibility. Philip V was a
legitimate descendant of Louis XIV, but matters were complicated by the Treaty
of Utrecht, which forbade a union of the French and Spanish crowns. The theory
supposes that Philip V hoped that by abdicating the Spanish crown he could
circumvent the Treaty and succeed to the French throne.
In any case, Louis died on 31 August 1724 in Madrid of smallpox, having
reigned only seven months and leaving no issue. Philip was forced to return to
the Spanish throne as his younger son, the later Ferdinand VI, was not yet of
age. Later reign
Philip helped his Bourbon relatives to make territorial gains in the War of the
Polish Succession and the War of the Austrian Succession by reconquering
Naples and Sicily from Austria and Oran from the Ottomans. Finally, at the end
of his reign Spanish forces also successfully defended their American
territories from a large British invasion during the War of Jenkins' Ear.
During Philip's reign, Spain began to recover from the stagnation it had
suffered during the twilight of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty. Although the
population of Spain grew, the financial and taxation systems were archaic and
the treasury ran deficits. The king employed thousands of highly paid
retainers at his palaces—not to rule the country but to look after the royal
family. The army and bureaucracy went months without pay and only the
shipments of silver from the New World kept the system going. Spain suspended
payments on its debt in 1739—effectively declaring bankruptcy.
= Death= Philip was afflicted by fits of manic
depression and increasingly fell victim to a deep melancholia. His second wife,
Elizabeth Farnese, completely dominated her passive husband. She bore him
further sons, including another successor, Charles III of Spain.
Beginning in August 1737 his affliction was eased by the castrato singer
Farinelli, who, became the "Musico de Camara of Their Majesties." Farinelli
would sing eight or nine arias for the king and queen every night, usually with
a trio of musicians. Philip died on 9 July 1746 in El
Escorial, in Madrid, but was buried in his favorite Royal Palace of La Granja
de San Ildefonso, near Segovia. Ferdinand VI of Spain, his son by his
first queen Maria Luisa of Savoy, succeeded him.
Issue Philip married his double-second cousin
Maria Luisa of Savoy on 3 November 1701 and they had 4 sons:
Louis I of Spain. Wife - Louise Élisabeth d'Orléans.
Philip. Philip.
Ferdinand VI of Spain. Wife - Barbara of Portugal.
He married Elisabeth Farnese on 24 December 1714, they had 6 children:
Charles III of Spain. Wife - Maria Amalia of Saxony.
Mariana Victoria, Queen of Portugal as wife of King Joseph.
Philip, Duke of Parma and founder of the line of House of Bourbon-Parma. Wife -
Louise Élisabeth of France. Maria Theresa Raphaela, wife of Louis,
Dauphin of France. Louis, known as the Cardinal-Infante.
Was Archbishop of Toledo, Primate of Spain and Cardinal since 1735. In 1754,
renounced his ecclesiastical titles and became Count of Chinchón. In 1776, he
married morganatically María Teresa de Vallabriga and had issue, but without
royal titles. Maria Antonietta, wife of Victor Amadeus
III of Sardinia. Heraldry
Legacy Historians have not been kind to the
king. Lynch says Philip V advanced the government only marginally over that of
his predecessors and was more of a liability than the incapacitated Charles
II. When a conflict came up between the interests of Spain and France, he
usually favored France. However Philip did make some reforms in government, and
strengthened the central authorities relative to the provinces. Merit became
more important, although most senior positions still went to the landed
aristocracy. Below the elite level, the inefficiency and corruption that had
existed under Charles II was as widespread as ever. The reforms started
by Philip V culminated in much more important reforms of Charles III. The
economy, on the whole, improved over the previous half-century, with greater
productivity, and fewer famines and epidemics.
To commemorate the indignities the city of Xàtiva suffered after Philip's
victory in the Battle of Almansa in the War of the Spanish Succession, in which
he ordered the city to be burned and renamed San Felipe, the portrait of the
monarch hangs upside down in the local museum of L'Almodí.
All legitimate agnatic descendants of Louis XIV alive today are descended from
Philip V. Ancestry
Notes Further reading
Armstrong, Edward. Elizabeth Farnese: "The Termagant of Spain". London:
Longmans, Green, and Co. Kamen, Henry. Philip V of Spain: The
King Who Reigned Twice. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. ISBN
0-300-08718-7. Lynch, John. Bourbon Spain 1700–1808
Petrie, Sir Charles. The Spanish Royal House. London: Geoffrey Bles.