Philip V of Spain

Philip V of Spain, called "el Animoso" (Versailles, France, December 19, 1683-Madrid, Spain, July 9, 1746), was King of Spain from November 16, 1700 until his death in 1746, with an interruption from January 16 to September 5, 1724 due to the abdication in favor of his son Luis I, who died at an early age on 31 August 1724.

As the great-grandson of Philip IV, he was the successor to the last monarch of the House of Austria, his great-uncle Carlos II, thus becoming the first king of the House of Bourbon in Spain. His reign of 45 years and 3 days (split, as already noted, into two separate periods) is the longest in the history of the Spanish monarchy.

Reign

Accession to the throne and arrival in Spain

Portrait of Felipe V of Spainby Miguel Jacinto Meléndez (1712).

Philip of Bourbon, Duke of Anjou, was born in Versailles as the second son of Louis, Grand Dauphin of France and Maria Anna of Bavaria. Therefore, he was a grandson of the French King Louis XIV and Maria Teresa of Austria, born Infanta of Spain, and a great-grandson of Philip IV of Spain, of the House of Austria.

Since he was not the eldest son, his chances of inheriting the throne of France seemed slim, as were the chances of inheriting that of Spain due to his Spanish ancestry. His paternal grandmother María Teresa (daughter of Felipe IV —from his first marriage, with Isabel de Borbón— and therefore half-sister of King Carlos II of Spain —born from his second marriage with Mariana of Austria—) had renounced her rights to the Spanish throne to be able to marry the King of France (who on the other hand was also her first cousin, both on her father's and mother's side). In fact, Louis XIV and the other European kings had already agreed that the heir to the throne of Spain would be José Fernando de Baviera, given the foreseeable death without heirs of Carlos II. This First Partition Treaty of Spain, signed in The Hague in 1698, awarded José Fernando all the peninsular kingdoms —except Guipúzcoa—, as well as Sardinia, the Spanish Netherlands and all the American territories. For its part, France would stay with Guipúzcoa, Naples and Sicily, while Austria would stay with Milanese.

Philip V of Spain by Hyacinthe Rigaud (1701)

The death of José Fernando de Baviera in 1699 frustrated said partition, with which a new Partition Treaty was negotiated —behind Spain's back— and who should be its king, with which the Second Partition Treaty was signed in 1700. This treaty recognized Archduke Carlos, in turn great-grandson of Philip III of Spain, as heir, and assigned him all the peninsular kingdoms, the Spanish Netherlands and the Indies; instead Naples, Sicily and Tuscany would be for the Dauphin of France, while Emperor Leopold, Duke of Lorraine, would receive the Milanese in exchange for ceding Lorraine and Bar to the Dauphin of France. But if both France and Holland and England were satisfied with the agreement, the emperor was not and claimed the entire Spanish inheritance, since he thought that Charles II himself would name the archduke universal heir. However, Carlos II named his great-nephew Felipe his heir, hoping that Louis XIV would avoid the division of his empire, as his own grandson was the king of Spain. Shortly after, on November 1, 1700, Charles II died and Felipe de Borbón, Duke of Anjou, accepted the Crown on November 16.

Proclamation of Felipe V as king of Spain in the palace of Versailles (France) on November 16, 1700.

The news of Charles II's death on November 1 in Madrid reached Versailles on November 6. On November 16, 1700, Louis XIV announced in the Spanish court that he accepted the will of his cousin, brother, and nephew. He then introduces his seventeen-year-old grandson to the Court with these words: "Gentlemen, behold the King of Spain." Then he told his grandson: "Behave yourself in Spain, which is your first duty now, but remember that you were born in France, to maintain the union between our two nations, this is the way to make them happy and preserve the peace of Europe".

After this, the Spanish Empire and all European monarchies —with the exception of the House of Austria— recognized the new king. Felipe V left Versailles on December 4 and entered Spain through Irún on January 22, 1701, and made his triumphant entry into Madrid on February 18. But after a few months of reign, the political errors accumulated:

• On February 1, 1701, the Paris Parliament retained the letters of Philip V's rights, preserving his right to the throne of France.

• In February 1701, Luis XIV, at the request of the Spanish Regency Council, sent French troops along with the Spanish garrisons of the Netherlands, on the border with the United Provinces, installed according to a bilateral treaty signed with Spain in 1698.

• After the death in the exile of James II of England, in September 1701, Louis XIV recognized his son Jacobo Estuardo as king of England and Scotland, the old suitorwith great indignation of King William III of England.

• The French established themselves in the top positions in Madrid and decided the new way to guide Spanish politics.

Great weapons of Felipe V with real mantle, royal cimera of Castile and the motto «To solis ortu usque ad occasum» (From sunrise to sunset), derived from the famous phrase attributed to Felipe II: "In my domains the sun is not set", referring to the fact that the sun never stood in the Spanish territories, because they covered the two hemispheres. Also included is the word Santiagoin reference to the Holy Pattern of Spain, Santiago el Mayor, and more specifically to the traditional slogan "Santiago and close Spain". They were used by Luis I and later, by Fernando VI, after the death of his father. When the latter died without descendence, his brother Charles VII of Naples went up to the throne as Charles III and modified the central blazon and, therefore, the banners that the angels carry.

Although most countries accepted the new king, Emperor Leopold refused to do so, considering that Archduke Charles of Austria, his second son, had more claim to the throne. Shortly after, Louis XIV recognized that the succession rights to the Crown of France of his second-born grandson, the new King of Spain, remained intact. Although the possibility of Felipe inheriting the French throne was remote, since Louis XIV's son, the Grand Dauphin, was in excellent health, and his son, and Felipe's older brother, was also of the age of reign and married, the prospect of a union of the Crowns of Spain and France under the House of Bourbon, piloted from the court of Versailles, was feared by the rest of the powers. Faced with this situation, England-Scotland, the United Provinces (both countries under the authority of William III of England, King of England and Scotland and Stadtholder of the United Provinces), together with the Austrian Habsburgs, signed the Treaty of Hague. Previously, the French king had established a formal alliance with the Elector of Bavaria in the Treaty of Versailles in March 1701, and in September 1701 Louis XIV managed to get Felipe V to marry María Luisa Gabriela de Saboya, who would become his wife. greater support in the difficult moments that would soon take place; and his brother, the Duke of Burgundy had married Maria Luisa's sister, Maria Adelaide of Savoy, with which the marriage of the two sisters with two brothers was aimed at achieving an alliance with Savoy and facilitating the French entry in Italy.

In May 1701, Austrian armies entered Italy without a prior declaration of war with the intention of occupying Spanish possessions. In September, the Emperor, England, and the Netherlands signed the Treaty of The Hague, establishing an Alliance with which to oppose France and Spain. Finally, in May 1702, this "Great Alliance" declared war on France and Spain, with which the War of the Spanish Succession formally began.

War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714)

The War of Succession was an international conflict, but also a civil conflict, because while the Crown of Castile and Navarre remained faithful to the Bourbon candidate, most of the Crown of Aragon, especially out of fear of the bourgeoisie and the nobility to lose their enormous economic privileges, lent their support to the Austrian candidate. Inside, the fighting was favorable to the Felipe troops, who after the victory of Almansa (1707) gained control over Aragon and Valencia.

In 1711 Archduke Charles was elected Holy Roman Emperor. The European powers, now fearful of the excessive power of the Habsburgs, withdrew their troops and signed the Treaty of Utrecht that same year, in which Spain lost its possessions in Europe and retained its metropolitan territories (with the exception of Gibraltar and Menorca, which became Great Britain) and overseas. However, Felipe was recognized as the legitimate King of Spain by all countries, with the exception of Archduke Carlos, then already Emperor, who continued to claim the Spanish throne for himself.

Domestic policy

Currency of 8 gold shields coined by Felipe V in Seville, 1730

2 maravedís de Felipe V de España dated in 1744 from the Segovia Cage

Volume V of the edition Dictionary of the Castilian language in 1737

Despite his personal conditions and his illness, which plunged him into intermittent and long dementia, he knew how to choose his ministers: from the first French governments, followed by that of Julio Alberoni and, after the adventure of Baron de Ripperdá, by the Spanish ministers, among whom José Patiño stood out for his internal government program and his diplomatic action. They acted from the State and Office secretariats, the closest equivalent to the later ministries, which supplanted the councils of the Habsburg polisinodial regime, reserved for honors and considerations but emptied of power, with the exception of the Council of Castilla, which was growing in number. its powers. For this reason, the opposition to the governments of Felipe V always came from the relegated nobles.

During his long reign he achieved some internal reconstruction with regard to the Treasury, the Army and the Navy, practically recreated by the demands of the rational exploitation of the Indies, and as an inevitable means to face the maritime and colonial rivalries of England. His fundamental achievement, however, was the centralization and administrative unification and the creation of a modern State, without the difficulties that the historical kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon posed before, incorporated into the fiscal system and with its privileges and public law (not so the private one) abolished with the application of the Decrees of Nueva Planta. Currently, historians draw attention to the reasons why Felipe V continues to be a reviled monarch despite the fact that during his reign "he promoted the rationalization of the administration in order to promote economic development in a kingdom plunged into a severe economic crisis. Felipe V also launched a land reform process to overcome the ancestral backwardness of the countryside. No less important was his interest in promoting trade, industrial production and communication routes and thus enable the formation of a national market .

Portada del Decreto de Nueva Planta de la Real Audiencia del Principado de Cataluña

The Nueva Planta Decrees (Decree of 1707 for Aragon and Valencia, of 1715 for Majorca and of 1716 for Catalonia) imposed the Castilian legal, political and administrative model in the territories of the Crown of Aragon, which had tended, especially in Catalonia, to support the claims of the Austrian candidate. Only the Basque Provinces and Navarra, as well as the Aran Valley, retained their traditional charter and foral institutions due to their demonstrated fidelity to the new king during the war of the Spanish succession. Thus, the State was organized into provinces governed by a Captain General and an audience, who were in charge of the administration with total loyalty to the government of Madrid. In addition, for the economic and financial administration, the provincial Intendencies were established, following the French model, which led to the appearance of the figure of the Intendants.

For the central government, the State Secretariats were created, predecessors of the current ministries, whose positions were held by officials appointed by the king. The Councils of the territories that had legally or physically disappeared from the Catholic Monarchy (Councils of Aragon, Italy and Flanders) were abolished. So, that of Navarre, that of the Indies, that of the Inquisition, that of Órdenes (the only one that has survived to this day), etc., remained. In fact, everything was concentrated in the Council of Castilla. Likewise, the Cortes de Castilla were organized, in which representatives of the old Aragonese states were gradually integrated. However, the decline of the Castilian Courts continued as in previous centuries, with a merely protocol role (as oaths of the Princes of Asturias).

Felipe V faced the ruinous economic and financial situation of the State, fighting against corruption and establishing new taxes to make the tax burden more equitable. He encouraged state intervention in the economy, favoring agriculture and creating the so-called royal manufacturing. By the end of his reign, the income from the Treasury had multiplied and the economy had improved substantially.

Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso

Following the example of his grandfather Louis XIV, who considered culture and art as a means to demonstrate royal greatness, Philip V encouraged artistic and cultural development. He ordered the construction of the Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso, inspired by the French style whose paradigmatic model was Versailles, where he retired to hunt and recover from his depression. However, the Italian influence in the courtly art of the reign is notorious, mainly due to the strong personality of Queen Isabella Farnese. Felipe V acquired important Roman sculptures from Cristina de Suecia to decorate the Granja. His other great artistic project was the Royal Palace of Madrid, which he ordered to be built after the fire in the Alcázar in Madrid, which he had always disliked. During his reign, the palace of Aranjuez was expanded and remarkably reformed. His reign coincided with the introduction in Spain of the Rococo style. Felipe V was also the founder of such prestigious cultural organizations as the Royal Spanish Academy and the Royal Academy of History, following the French model.

Equally, in the field of dynastic law, Felipe V established French customs in Spain. Thus, after an attempt to introduce the Salic law, frustrated by the opposition of the Cortes, on May 10, 1713, he promulgated a new succession regulation, which constituted the Fundamental Succession Law, in which women could only inherit the throne if there were no male heirs in the main (sons) or lateral (brothers and nephews) line, which was intended to block the access of foreign dynasties to the Spanish throne.

As a consequence of the needs of the war and following the French model, Felipe V carried out a profound remodeling of the army, replacing the old tercios with a new military model based on brigades, regiments, battalions, companies and squadrons. New features such as uniforms, rifles and the bayonet were introduced, and artillery was perfected. During the reign of Felipe V, the reconstruction of the Spanish navy began: more modern ships and new shipyards were built, and the different flotillas and navies were organized into the Spanish Armada (1717). This policy would be continued by his sons, and until the end of the century Spanish naval power continued to be one of the most important in the world.

It should be noted that, although Felipe V had absolute power, he never ruled as such. The disease that he had suffered since adolescence and which caused the king to have temporary attacks of depression (Isabel Farnesio tried to cure the king's melancholy with the song of the castrato Farinelli) prevented Felipe V from being able to regularly carry out his duties of government. Therefore, the real power was exercised by his prime ministers, some courtiers such as the princess of the Ursinos, and later his second wife, Isabel Farnesio, whom he had married in 1714.

Political and administrative reforms

Picture of Felipe V in the Almudín of Játiva exposed face down as punishment for ordering the city fire in 1707

Philip V would make the public administration run directly on behalf of the State and the municipalities were established. The administration would be exercised from now on by the Crown and by public officials specially appointed for such purposes. All public administration functions were to fall into the hands of professionals. The appointment of officials would take into account only their preparation and competence. They would only be promoted based on merit and had to receive a good salary to avoid corruption.

Philip V carried out a complete modernization of administrative techniques. This would be possible thanks to the professionalism of public officials and the development of laws and clear indications. The accountability to the authorities would be regular and periodic, and the control would be carried out permanently, being able to replace the official who did not fulfill his functions.

The mandatory and immediate observance of the law was established. During the 16th and 17th centuries, many ordinances sent from the metropolis were "observed, but not fulfilled" by the colonial authorities. According to the historian Céspedes del Castillo, the goal of the reform was to replace that formula with another like this: "I obey, I comply, and I report having done so quickly and accurately." Finally, the power of the archbishopric and the functions of the bishops were limited, thus reducing the power of the church.

Economic reforms

Economic activities were strengthened and regulated. Spain had to recover trade with its overseas possessions, seizing it from the French and English, and combat smuggling. The tax system was improved. Taxes were also increased and customs offices were created, in charge of collecting taxes on internal and external trade.

Felipe V ratified the mercantilist measures, such as the ban on importing textile manufactures or exporting grain; and an attempt was made to revive colonial trade through the creation of privileged trading companies (in the style of the Netherlands or the Kingdom of Great Britain) although they were not very successful. The clauses of the Treaty of Utrecht, which gave England the right to a ship on leave and the seat of Negroes, made it easier for English merchants than for Spanish ones (subject to the monopolistic regulations of the Cádiz fleet and the House of Recruitment).

During this Atlantic trade, important figures in the naval history of Spain arose, among which the privateer Amaro Pargo from Tenerife stands out. Felipe V frequently benefited said privateer in his commercial and privateering raids: he granted him a Royal Order given at the El Pardo Palace in Madrid in September 1714 in which he was appointed captain of a commercial ship bound for Caracas. The monarch also interceded in the release of Amaro during his detention by the Cádiz Contracting House and authorized him to build a ship bound for Campeche, which was armed in privateering.

Educational reforms

Control of education passes into the hands of the State. Instruction was also subject to reform; Primary education continued in the hands of the religious orders due to the lack of competent teachers. However, university education was thoroughly reformed. New higher education institutions called "colegios mayores" were created, which were administered by the State, such as the Colegio de Minería; the scholarship provision system was implemented in them. The scientific academies completed the reforms in this field.

Portrait of Isabel Farnesio, by Louis-Michel van Loo (c. 1739). Oil on canvas, 150 x 110 cm, Museo del Prado (Madrid)

Foreign Policy (1715-1724)

The protagonists of this period were Isabel Farnese and the Prime Minister Giulio Alberoni, an agent of the Parma court who had negotiated their marriage and who acted as the strong man at Court. The death of his grandfather Louis XIV of France led to the rise as Regent of France of the Duke of Orleans, a personal enemy of Felipe V, which frustrated any possible aspiration to intervene in some way in Versailles. This caused a shift in foreign policy, which was added to that produced at home.

It is worth noting the foreign policy of this phase, which started from the rejection of the treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt and had as its objective the recovery of the Italian territories to place the children of Isabel Farnesio in them and create satellite kingdoms of Spain.

In 1717 Spanish troops conquered Sardinia and invaded Sicily the following year. For this reason, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands and Austria signed the Quadruple Alliance against Spain. An English squadron destroyed the Spanish armada at Cape Pesaro and the allies requested the resignation of Giulio Alberoni, promoter of this policy, as a condition for peace.

Conflict with the Holy See (1717 and 1737)

Clemente XI in a coin.

The first conflict with the Holy See during the reign of Philip V occurred during the war of the Spanish succession when Pope Clement XI on January 15, 1709 recognized the other pretender to the Crown, Archduke Carlos, as king, under pressure from the the imperial army that had besieged Rome after defeating the French Bourbon army in northern Italy. Philip V's response was to expel the papal nuncio Antonio Félix Zondadari from the Madrid court on 10 March. Shortly after, on April 22, 1709, Felipe V promulgated a decree by which the de facto independence of the Spanish bishops with respect to Rome was recognized by establishing that in the procedure of ecclesiastical causes they would return to the use "that it had before there would be a permanent nuncio in these kingdoms». Thus, the bishops would have to exercise their jurisdiction over "what falls within their power", both in matters of dispensations and justice, which before the rupture was dealt with by the Roman curia.

The break with the pope and the subsequent decree provoked protests from the most anti-regalist Spanish Catholic hierarchy. Cardinal Portocarrero, Alonso de Monroy, Archbishop of Santiago, and Cardinal Belluga, Bishop of Murcia, each sent letters to the King, the last of them in the form of a forceful Anti-regalist Memorial, which would not see the public light in Rome until the 1740s. In all of them the ideas of the anti-regalist current appear: "a radical anti-episcopalism, since, in his opinion, episcopal claims constitute a danger to the Church; dominance of Roman centralism and exaltation of papal power; fear of regalism that they consider a danger of schism; immunity from ecclesiastical privileges, supported by Rome, and which they consider essential for the preservation of Catholicism in Spain and rejection of any hint of secularization that could express the autonomy of political power".

But the rupture also mobilized the royalists, starting with Bishop Francisco Solís who wrote an Opinion that the King's Order gave the Illmo. Mr. D. Francisco Solís, Bishop of Córdoba and Viceroy of Aragón in the year 1709 on the Abuses of the Roman Court regarding the Royalties of H.M. and Jurisdiction that resides in the Bishops, in which he defended the independence of the bishops with respect to Rome, when they were consecrated iure divino, which allowed them to convene councils —following, therefore, the principles of episcopalism and conciliarism—, and also pointing to Roman centralism as the main cause of the decline of the Church. Thus, he proposes, following the example of the Councils of Toledo of the Visigothic period, that the king convene a council of all the Spanish bishops to approve the necessary measures to carry out the ecclesiastical reform. With this last proposal, Solís defends following the example of Gallicanism and in his writing he praises the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges:

This practice of convoking the monarchs the National Councils to examine abuses and repair discipline is executed in Spain since its first King Recaredo... [In] the Toledan Councils, the Goth kings were interested in their real authority in re-establishing the discipline and observance of the immaculate laws of the church

Melchor Rafael de Macanaz, is portrayed with the plan of the Colonia de San Felipe that had to be built on the destroyed Játiva.

The French King Louis XIV mediated in the conflict and managed to bring together in Paris a representative of the Pope and a representative of his grandson Felipe, Rodrigo de Villalpando, future Marquis of La Compuesta, who received strict instructions drawn up by the newly appointed prosecutor of the Council of Castilla Melchor de Macanaz, a declared royalist. The document received the name of Pedimento and constitutes one of the capital documents of Hispanic regalism. In it Macanaz defends that in the field of "faith and religion one must blindly follow the doctrine of the Church" but that in temporal aspects the civil power has full autonomy —a proposal very close to the model of the Gallican Church—. However, the Pedimento, among other reasons, would end up costing Macanaz exile as he was denounced before the Inquisition and lost the king's protection when his main supporter at court, the princess of the Ursinos, fell to cause of the arrival of the new queen Isabel de Farnesio. As Antonio Mestre and Pablo Pérez García have pointed out, with the exile of Macanaz "the royal current suffered a terrible blow, but a far-reaching reformist project also disappeared. Because Macanaz wanted a very innovative and ambitious reform of university education... and control of the court of the Holy Office of the Inquisition by the civil government".

The new government team fostered by Queen Isabella of Farnesio and headed by Julio Alberoni fostered a rapprochement with Rome and thus a provisional agreement was reached known as the "concordat of 1717". In it, the papacy recovered its legal situation prior to 1709 in exchange for the payment of 150,000 ducats per year from ecclesiastical revenues for the fight against the Turk —and Alberoni was named cardinal. However, "the great problems raised by Solís or Macanaz were marginalized".

When, by virtue of the Treaty of Seville of 1729, the Infante Don Carlos, the eldest son of the second marriage of Felipe V with Isabel de Farnesio, received the kingdom of Naples, the rupture with the Holy See took place again, because the latter put in He questioned the validity of the Treaty of Seville, alleging that Naples was a fiefdom of the Pope. The basic conflict, however, resided in the demand for the Universal Patronage —that is, to extend to all the domains of the Monarchy of Felipe V the royal patronage that he already held over Granada, the Canary Islands and the Indies—, a proposal promoted by the new royalist team headed by the recently appointed Governor of the Council of Castile, the Bishop of Malaga Gaspar de Molina y Oviedo, and by the new ambassador in Rome, Cardinal Acquaviva, and who had the support of José Patiño, the king's main minister. When the Roman Curia rejected the creation in August 1735 of the Board of Royal Patronage, whose purpose was to promote the incorporation of churches and patronages into the Crown, the papal briefs were "kidnapped" by order of Bishop Molina who thus imposed the exequatur —that no papal order was valid in the domains of the Spanish Monarchy without the endorsement of its sovereign. The final solution to the conflict was the signing of the new "concordat of 1737", in which progress was made along the lines of regalism —and Bishop Molina, like Alberoni, was named cardinal—: " the right of ecclesiastical asylum was regulated; the Church would control the number of clergy and the reform of the clergy would be proposed through the bishops... and Rome gave in with a new tax on ecclesiastical property". However, the fundamental question of the Royal Board of Trustees and the control of ecclesiastical benefits was postponed to be discussed later, although Bishop-Cardinal Molina considered it a success since the "door was left open" for the Board of Royal Board of Trustees to continue acting. on the question of control of ecclesiastical benefits. In 1737, in an investigation carried out by the abbot of Vivanco, he found 30,000 ecclesiastical benefits that escaped the royal patronage for the benefit of the pope.

Abdication, reign of Louis I and recovery of the throne (1724)

Portrait of Louis I, king of Spain, by Jean Ranc (c. 1724). Oil on canvas, 108 x 84 cm, Museo del Prado (Madrid).

On January 10, 1724, King Felipe V signed a decree abdicating his seventeen-year-old son Luis, married to Luisa Isabel of Orleans, two years his junior. The prince received the documents on the 15th, and the provision was published the following day. The reasons for this abdication are the subject of discussion. During the time it was said that the monarch hoped to accede to the throne of France before a possible premature death of Louis XV that would make him his successor, as long as he did not occupy the Spanish throne (since the Treaty of Utrecht prohibited Spain and France from being governed by the same person). Or it is also possible that the abdication of Felipe V was the action of a demented sick man who is aware that he is not in a position to govern and chooses to distance himself from the responsibilities of Government. This last point of view is the one defended by the historian Pedro Voltes: Felipe V abdicated due to the severe depression he suffered in those years.

The kings parents Felipe and Isabel retired to the Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso, but the queen was always perfectly informed of what was happening at the court in Madrid.

Louis I reigned for only eight months. In the middle of August he fell ill with smallpox and died on the 31st of that month. Having abdicated Felipe V, his successor should have been the other son Fernando, ten years old, but the quick action of Queen Isabel Farnesio prevented it. He had to confront certain sectors of the Castilian nobility who supported Fernando's option, arguing that there was no room for reversing the abdication of a king. «The king's confessor himself, Father Bermúdez, understood that it was a mortal sin to resume a crown which he had renounced with all the solemnities. The confessor then met, at the monarch's request, a board of theologians in the Jesuit convent, which was opposed to Felipe V's return to the throne and was only willing to approve that he exercise power as regent for his son and heir, Fernando. Neither as a regent nor as a king or as anything, Felipe V answered angrily, eager to ruminate in peace his depression ». To counter the opinion of the theologians, the queen pressured the Council of Castile to ask Felipe V to recover the throne. On September 6, 1724, a week after the death of his son, Luis, Felipe V once again held the Crown of the Spanish Monarchy, and his son Fernando was proclaimed the new Prince of Asturias and sworn in shortly after by the Courts of Castile, convened for this purpose.

Foreign Policy (1725-1746)

Territorial losses as a result of the Utrecht Treaty

In 1725 peace and alliance treaties were signed with Charles VI of Austria, and the following year the Spanish-British War began. This rivalry, originated from the advantages that England had obtained in the Treaty of Utrecht, marked the rest of the reign with incessant maritime incidents (since 1739 known by the name of war of the Asiento). The organization of the League of Hannover among the European powers suspicious of the Spanish-Austrian treaty forced them to denounce it and sign the El Pardo Agreement (1728) that definitively recognized the validity of the Treaty of Utrecht. Under the leadership of Patiño, foreign policy was reoriented, seeking an alliance with France through the First Family Pact (1733), in the context of the War of the Polish Succession.

The ambivalent position towards the Treaty of Utrecht and France's European policy also aimed at recovering the Italian territories in order to place the children of Isabella Farnese in them and create satellite kingdoms of Spain. The task was entrusted to Carlos, the future Carlos III of Spain, who began with Plasencia, Parma and Tuscany (1732) to later occupy the throne of Naples in 1734 (the three duchies had to be returned to Austria, to be later recovered, except Tuscany, by the infante Felipe). Spain was once again a naval power, dominating the Atlantic, and a factor in the Western Mediterranean (although England continued to control Gibraltar and Menorca). The new minister José del Campillo y Cossío, in the context of the War of the Austrian Succession led to the Second Family Pact (1743).

Holy Roman Empire

The Treaty of Vienna of 1725 was signed by Charles VI of the Holy Roman Empire and Philip V of Spain. According to the terms of the agreement, Carlos VI renounced his aspirations to the Spanish throne maintained during the war of the Spanish succession, while Felipe V renounced the territories of the Empire in Italy and the Netherlands.

Eugenio de Saboya, Felipe Ludovico and Gundavaro Thomas appeared at the signing of the treaty on behalf of Carlos VI and Juan Guillermo Ripperdá on behalf of Felipe V.

Denmark

The Treaty of San Ildefonso of 1742, signed between Felipe V (Spain) and Cristián VI (Denmark), was a treaty of friendship, navigation and commerce which established the conditions that would govern commercial relations between both countries.

At the signing of the treaty, José del Campillo y Cossío appeared on behalf of Felipe V and Federico Luis, Baron of Dehn, on behalf of Cristián VI, who adjusted the agreement in the Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso on 18 September July 1742. The agreement would be annulled in 1753.

France, Naples and the Republic of Genoa

The Treaty of Aranjuez of 1745 was a military alliance agreed between the kingdoms of Spain, France and Naples with the Republic of Genoa, to support the latter against the attacks of Sardinia and Austria, within the framework of the war of Austrian succession.

The drafting and signing of the treaty, concluded in Aranjuez on May 1, 1745, was attended by Sebastián de la Cuadra, on behalf of Felipe V of Spain, Luis Guido Guerapin Baureal, on behalf of King Louis XV of France, Esteban Reggio and Gravina, envoy of Charles VII of Naples, and Jerónimo Grimaldi on behalf of the Republic of Genoa.

Family Pacts

The Family Pacts were three alliances agreed upon on different dates in the 18th century between the monarchies of Spain and France. They owe their name to the relationship of kinship between the kings who signed the pacts, all of them belonging to the House of Bourbon. Spain realized that a policy of friendship with France was convenient for it, so an agreement was signed by which they were linked militarily. Two of them were signed in the time of Philip V, and the pacts led Spain into a series of European wars of the time:

• First covenant: signed in 1734, makes Spain intervene in the war of succession of Poland, which ends the Vienna treaty in 1738. In this treatise, the Infante Carlos (future Carlos III of Spain) obtains the crowns of Naples and Sicily.

• Second covenant: Spain entered the war of succession of Austria in 1743, and when this war ended in 1748, Philip V had died, and by the treaty of Aguisgrán, Prince Philip obtained the duchess of Parma, Plasencia and Guastalla.

Death

Table details The family of Felipe V of Van Loo (1743), in which stands the prince of Asturias Fernando, next to his father King Philip V and his stepmother, Queen Elizabeth Farnesio, both seated.

During the last years of his reign, Felipe V's mental illness and physical deterioration worsened, the king can be seen in famous works by French painters such as Jean Ranc and Van Loo, the fatigue that He presented, product of eating problems and psychological ills, until on the night of July 9, 1746 he died of a cerebrovascular attack. Barely a week after his father's death, the new King Ferdinand VI—the only surviving son from his first marriage—ordered his stepmother, the widowed queen Isabel Farnesio—who had subjected the princes of Asturias to a kind of "house arrest" for almost fifteen years -, that she left the royal palace of Buen Retiro and went to live in a house belonging to the Duchess of Osuna, accompanied by her children, the infants Luis and María Victoria. The following year she was banished from Madrid and her residence was established in the palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso. When the widow queen protested by means of a letter in which she told the king that "I would like to know if I have failed in something to amend it", Fernando VI responded with another letter in which he said: "What I determine in my kingdoms it does not admit consultation of anyone before being executed and obeyed".

Sepulchre of Felipe V and Isabel Farnesio in the Royal Colegiata of the Holy Trinity, at the Royal Palace of the Farm of San Ildefonso (Segovia)

At the express wish of Felipe V, his body was not buried in the royal crypt of the Monastery of El Escorial, as the kings of the house of Austria had been and their Bourbon successors would also be (except, likewise, Fernando VI), but in the Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso located in the town of La Granja de San Ildefonso (province of Segovia), which had been preferred by him in life, as an architectural whim much more to his liking and which he loved it was reminiscent of the long-awaited French court. The monarch's remains rest together with those of his second wife, Isabel Farnesio, in a mausoleum located in the Royal Collegiate Church of the Holy Trinity, in the so-called Sala de las Reliquias, inside the aforementioned Royal Palace.

Personality of Felipe V

The French nobleman Louis de Rouvroy, Duke of Saint-Simon gave a brief generalized description of the first King of Spain of the House of Bourbon when he was French ambassador in Madrid:

Philip V, King of Spain, has a great sense of righteousness, a great fund of equity, is very religious, has a great fear of the devil, lacks vices and does not allow them in those around him.^{[chuckles]required]}

Louis de Rouvroy, Duke of Saint-Simon

However, French historian Janine Fayard states:

The office bore him, did not know how to have fun and at the end of his life this boredom would lead him to immerse himself in a total inertia, in prison of a deep pathological melancholy. Only the war brought him out for brief moments of his congenital apathy, which earned him the name of "animoso". His whole life was dominated by his family. Alusive caricatures soon appeared. One of them is guided by Cardinal Portocarrero and the Ambassador of France, Duke of Harcourt, with this inscription: "Go, child, go because the Cardinal sends him"

In the same line as the French historian, the historian Pedro Voltes highlighted the mental deterioration of Felipe V during his life. He thus recounts one of the multiple crises he suffered:

Prince Fernando was once admitted to the presence of his father, who had been held in El Pardo. There he was able to capture with his own eyes the unsanitary tragicomics of the sovereign: he had always tried to wear a shirt used before by the queen, because he feared that they would poison him with a shirt; other times he dispensed from that garment and walked naked before strangers; he spent whole days in bed in the midst of the greatest dirt, made muecas and dwelt at himself, chanted and shouted Even worse: at a certain time when he was able to have paper and pen, he quickly composed a letter of abdication and sent it to the president of the Council of Castile, the supreme organ of government, to gather the counselors and to find out that he ceded the crown, to Prince Fernando, his heir. The president, Archbishop of Valencia, was addicted to the queen and entertained the letter until he informed the queen. Isabel Farnesio shook and shook and commanded to strengthen vigilance over her husband.

A similar assessment is made by the historian Ricardo García Cárcel:

Philip V reigned twice. There is certainly a first Philip, before 1724, who wanted to be king... But after the death of his son Louis, the Philip V who once again exercises as king will no longer be the same. Kamen saw the abdication not only guided by religious motives—official conversion—but produced by the incidence of depressive disease already manifested in a galloping way. [...] The second Philip is a king, first of all, consort of his wife, Isabel Farnesio, who frequently used the phrase “the king and I”, as an emblem of a singular dual monarchy in which he made the decisions was the queen. Philip's psychopathological state over these years was calamitous—although the disease came from afar—and it is necessary to positively assess Kamen's certain discard when he broke with the powerful evaluations of the king's psychology on the part of the romantic historiography, which he always preferred to believe in a king kidnapped in the alcove by his wife—as Macanaz believed—before a mindless king

Awards

Spanish decorations

• Grand Master of the Order of the Golden Toy
• Grand Master of the Order of Montesa
• Grand Master of the Order of Alcántara
• Grand Master of the Order of Calatrava
• Grand Master of the Order of Santiago

Foreign Awards

• Knight of the Order of the Holy Spirit (Kingdom of France)
• Knight of the Order of Saint Michael (Reino de France)

Married couples and children

First marriage

Philip V of Spain married his cousin, María Luisa Gabriela de Saboya (September 17, 1688 – February 14, 1714), on November 2, 1701 and they had four children:

Descendence of Felipe V and María Luisa Gabriela de Saboya

Image Name Life duration Notes Luis I of Spain Queen Consort Luisa Isabel de Orleans 25 August 1707 31 August 1724 King of Spain (14 January 1724-31 August 1724). His 229-day reign is the shortest in Spanish history, he married Luisa Isabel de Orleans and had no descendants. Infante Felipe de España 2 July 1709 29 July 1709 Death in childhood. Infante Felipe Pedro Gabriel de España 7 June 1712 28 December 1719 Death in childhood. Fernando VI de España Queen Consort Barbara of Braganza 23 September 1713 10 August 1759 King of Spain (9 July 1746-10 August 1759). He married Barbara of Braganza and had no descendants.

Second marriage

He married Isabel Farnesio (October 25, 1692-July 11, 1766) on December 24, 1714; they had seven children:

Descendence of Felipe V and Isabel Farnesio

Image Name Life duration Notes Carlos III de España Queen Consort Maria Amalia de Saxony 20 January 1716 14 December 1788 King of Spain (10 August 1759-until his death). He married Mary Amalia of Saxony; they had thirteen children. Infante Francisco 21 March 1717 21 April 1717 Death in childhood. Mariana Victoria de Borbón Consort José I of Portugal 31 March 1718 15 January 1781 Queen Consorte of Portugal and Algarve (31 July 1750-24 February 1777). He married Joseph I of Portugal; they had four children. Felipe I de Parma Conyuge Luisa Isabel de France 15 March 1720 18 July 1765 Duke of Parma, Plasencia and Guastalla (1748 – until his death). He founded the house of Bourbon-Parma (also known as the Bourbons of Parma); he married Luisa Isabel of France; they had three children. María Teresa Antonia Rafaela Conyuge Luis, Dolphin of France 11 June 1726 22 July 1746 Dolphin of France (23 February 1745-until his death). He married Luis de France (son of Louis XV of France); they had a son. Luis Antonio Jaime Conyuge María Teresa de Vallabriga y Rozas 25 July 1727 7 August 1785 Archbishop of Toledo, Primate of Spain (1735), Cardinal of Santa María della Scala (1735), with only eight years and Archbishop of Seville (1741), In 1754 he resigned to his ecclesiastical titles, being finally the XIII Count of Chinchón (1761-until his death). He contracted morganical marriage with Mary Teresa of Vallabriga and Rozas; they had three children separated from the succession. María Antonia Fernanda Consort Victor Amadeo III of Sardinia 17 November 1729 19 September 1785 Queen Corsorte of Sardinia (20 February 1773-until his death). He married Victor Amadeo III of Sardinia; they had twelve children.

Portrait of the family of Felipe V, by Louis-Michel van Loo (c. 1743). Oil on canvas, 408 x 520 cm, Museo del Prado (Madrid); in the portrait is observed the infant Fernando de España (future Fernando VI), his wife, Barbara de Braganza, the kings Felipe V and Isabel Farnesio, the Infante Felipe (futuro duque de Parma) with his wife Luisa Isabel de Borbón, the Infanta Mariana Victoria of Spain, the Infanta Rafaele Carlos (futuro

Ancestors

Titles

Predecessor: Carlos II de España	King of Spain 1700-1724	Successor: Luis I of Spain
	Duke of Milan 1700-1706	Successor: Carlos de Habsburg(initulated as Carlos III of Spain)
	King of Naples 1700-1707
	King of Sardinia 1700-1708
	Sovereign of the Netherlands 1700-1711	Successor: Maximilian II Manuel de Baviera
	King of Sicily 1700-1713	Successor: Victor Amadeo II de Saboya
Predecessor: Luis I of Spain	King of Spain 1724-1746	Successor: Fernando VI de España