History
The House of Bourbon - Part One - The 18th century monarchs
By h.b.
Jun 1, 2008 - 10:05 AM

Felipe V: Born in Versailles on 19th December 1683, was King of Spain from 1700-January 1724, and again from August 1724-1746.
Philippe, duc d’Anjou, the first king of the Bourbon dynasty in Spain, was a grandson of Louis XIV of France and María Teresa of Spain (who was the daughter of Felipe IV of Spain, and sister to Carlos II of Spain) and the second son of Louis, le Grand Dauphin, heir apparent to Louis XIV. Philippe inherited the Spanish throne when Carlos I, the last Hapsburg king, died without descendants and named his grand-nephew as his heir. That decision led to eleven years of European conflict, known as the War of the Spanish Succession.
Felipe V first married Maria Louisa of Savoy, with whom he had four sons, two of whom survived into adulthood. He married again after becoming widowed, and has seven children – six surviving into adulthood - with his second wife, Isabella Farnese of Parma.

Luis I: Born in Madrid on 25th August 1707, reigned January 1724 - August 1724. Luis, the eldest son of Felipe V and Maria Louisa of Savoy, was just 16 years old when his father abdicated in his favour, and was less than a week past his seventeenth birthday when he died of smallpox on 31st August 1724. Luis died without heirs and his father returned to the throne and ruled for another 22 years.
Luis was married to Louise Elisabeth of Orléans, a daughter of the French regent, Phillippe II, Duke of Orléans, in 1722 when he was 15 years old and she was 12.

Fernando VI: Born in Madrid on 23rd September 1713, reigned 1746-1759. The second surviving son of Felipe V and Maria Louisa, was known as Fernando the Just. He was married to Maria Barbara of Braganza in 1729, daughter of Joao V of Portugal and Maria Anna of Austria. His policies centred on neutrality abroad and reforms at home. He died without heirs.

Carlos III: Born in Madrid on 20th January 1716, reigned 1759-1788. Carlos was the eldest son of Felipe V with his second wife, Isabella Farnese of Parma, and relinquished the crowns of Naples and Sicily (which later became known as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies – el Reino de las Dos Sicilias) to his third son, Ferdinand, when he came to the Spanish throne upon the death of his elder brother. Carlos abandoned his brother’s policy of neutrality abroad, and took Spain into two wars with Britain, losing and then regaining Florida, and gaining Louisiana and Menorca. Generally seen as an enlightened despot who brought in a number of reforms, he is also noted for expelling the Jesuits from Spain. He married Maria Amalia of Saxony, the daughter of Augustus III of Poland, who died the year after he ascended the throne in Spain. He never married again. Only seven of their 13 children survived into adulthood.

Carlos IV: Born in Portici, Naples in 1748, reigned 1788-1808. The second son of Carlos III, he married his first cousin, Maria Louisa, daughter of the Duke of Parma. Seven of their 14 children survived into adulthood. He left much of the government of his kingdom in the hands of his wife and her lover, Manuel Godoy, who became first minister in 1792. The reign of Carlos IV took Spain into war with France after the execution of Louis XVI, a later alliance with Spain’s neighbour and war with Britain, the loss of its Louisiana territory to France, and finally, the end of the first period of Bourbon rule in Spain, with Napoleon’s invasion of Spain in 1808, and an uprising which led Carlos to abdicate in favour of his son, Fernando. Fernando himself was forced to surrender the crown to the French and was imprisoned for years in France. Napoleon installed his elder brother, Giuseppe Buonaparte, on the Spanish throne on 6th July 1808, as José I of Spain.