Charles III of Spain

Biography

Charles was born in Madrid in 1716, the eldest son of Philip V of Spain by his second wife, Elisabeth Farnese, whose Italian inheritance shaped his early career. In 1731, aged fifteen, he became Duke of Parma and Piacenza on the death of his childless great-uncle Antonio Farnese.

During the War of the Polish Succession he led a Spanish army south through Italy in 1734 in a largely bloodless campaign that took Naples and Sicily from Austria. Crowned at Palermo in July 1735, he ruled the two kingdoms for almost twenty-five years, a claim confirmed by the Treaty of Vienna of 1738. In Naples he reformed administration, invited Jews to return to Sicily and began the vast royal palace at Caserta.

When his half-brother Ferdinand VI died childless in 1759, Charles succeeded to the Spanish throne and left Naples to his third son. His alliance with France through the Family Compact of 1761 drew Spain into the last phase of the Seven Years' War, and in the 1763 Treaty of Paris Spain gave up Florida to Britain in exchange for the return of Havana and Manila. After the Esquilache Riots of 1766, aimed at his unpopular Italian minister, he exiled the minister and in 1767 expelled the Jesuits from Spain and its empire.

As a proponent of enlightened absolutism, Charles pursued the Bourbon Reforms: he promoted trade, agriculture and science, strengthened the army and navy, extended royal control over the Church, and reorganised the American empire with new viceroyalties and intendancies. He reluctantly supported the American revolutionaries against Britain, recovering Menorca and West Florida, and died in Madrid in December 1788.