From the accession of Philip V and the War of the Spanish Succession through the centralising Decretos de Nueva Planta and the loss of Gibraltar, the enlightened reign of Charles III and the expulsion of the Jesuits, Spain's recovery in the American War and the timid rule of Charles IV, Godoy's French alliance and Trafalgar, the Mutiny of Aranjuez and the Bayonne Abdications, to the Dos de Mayo uprising and the opening of the Peninsular War. Slide across a century when an Atlantic empire was reformed, lost the seas, and split apart.
Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV, enters Madrid in April as Philip V of Spain. By the end of the year England, the Dutch Republic, Austria, and a coalition of German princes have allied against him, fearing the union of the French and Spanish crowns under one Bourbon family.
From the accession of Philip V and the War of the Spanish Succession through the centralising Decretos de Nueva Planta and the loss of Gibraltar, the enlightened reign of Charles III and the expulsion of the Jesuits, Spain's recovery in the American War and the timid rule of Charles IV, Godoy's French alliance and Trafalgar, the Mutiny of Aranjuez and the Bayonne Abdications, to the Dos de Mayo uprising and the opening of the Peninsular War. Slide across a century when an Atlantic empire was reformed, lost the seas, and split apart.
Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV, enters Madrid in April as Philip V of Spain. By the end of the year England, the Dutch Republic, Austria, and a coalition of German princes have allied against him, fearing the union of the French and Spanish crowns under one Bourbon family.
By the Peace of Utrecht, Philip V keeps Spain and the Indies but renounces all claim to the French throne. The Spanish Netherlands, Milan, Naples, Sardinia, and Sicily pass to Austria and Savoy; Gibraltar and Menorca pass to Great Britain.
By a final decree of 16 January, the laws, courts, and Cortes of the Crown of Aragon — Catalonia, Valencia, Aragon, and Mallorca — are abolished and replaced with the Castilian model. For the first time Spain becomes a single legal and administrative state.
After two decades of friction over British smuggling in the Caribbean — and the dramatic display in Parliament of a sea-captain's ear, reportedly cut off by a Spanish coastguard — Britain declares war. The conflict soon merges with the wider War of the Austrian Succession.
On the death of his half-brother Ferdinand VI, Charles of Bourbon — for twenty-five years king of Naples and Sicily — sails up the Tyrrhenian to take the throne of Spain. The greatest of the Bourbons, and a prince formed by enlightened Italy, will reign for nearly three decades.
Following the Esquilache riots of 1766 and the perceived Jesuit role in stirring popular discontent, Charles III decrees the expulsion of the Society of Jesus from Spain and the empire. Some five thousand Jesuits are deported overnight, most to the Papal States.
By the Peace of Paris, ending the American War of Independence, Spain recovers Florida and Menorca from Britain. Bernardo de Gálvez, governor of Louisiana, has cleared the Gulf coast from Pensacola to Mobile, and Spain ends the century at the height of her renewed power.
Within a year of Charles III's death, the French Revolution overturns the European order. The new king Charles IV is timid, his queen María Luisa imperious, and royal authority slips first to the elderly Floridablanca, then to Aranda, and finally to the queen's favourite, the young Manuel Godoy.
After the execution of Louis XVI in January, Spain joins the First Coalition. The War of the Pyrenees opens with a Spanish invasion of Roussillon, but within two years revolutionary armies are pouring south into Catalonia and the Basque country.
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes publishes eighty etchings under the title Los Caprichos — a savage indictment of clerical corruption, superstition, and the moral decay of a monarchy he himself serves as principal court painter.
On 21 October, off Cape Trafalgar in Andalusia, Vice-Admiral Nelson destroys the combined French and Spanish fleet of Villeneuve and Gravina. Of the fifteen Spanish ships of the line, eleven are lost; Admiral Federico Gravina dies of his wounds. Spanish sea power, three centuries old, is broken.
By the Treaty of Fontainebleau (27 October), Godoy and Napoleon agree on the joint partition of Portugal. French armies under Junot pour across the Pyrenees and on through Spain; within months a hundred thousand French soldiers are stationed in the peninsula.
On the night of 17 March, partisans of Crown Prince Ferdinand storm Godoy's palace at the royal site of Aranjuez. Godoy is dragged from a roll of carpets where he has hidden for two days; Charles IV abdicates the following morning in favour of his son Ferdinand VII.
In May, Napoleon summons Ferdinand VII and Charles IV to Bayonne and, in a week of menace, induces both to renounce the Spanish crown in his favour. He bestows it on his elder brother Joseph Bonaparte, by way of a constitution drafted with a few co-opted Spanish notables.
On 2 May, as French troops attempt to remove the last Bourbon infante from the Royal Palace in Madrid, the people of the capital rise in armed revolt. By nightfall Murat's columns have crushed them; on 3 May the firing squads at the hill of Príncipe Pío execute the prisoners through the dawn.