A Life in Exile: Charles VI (1685–1740) between Spain and Austria

Abstract

Archduke Charles of Austria (1685-1740), variously King Charles III of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, experienced exile three times in the course of his exacting life. First, as claimant to the crown of Spain, Charles entered a period of exile in his Spanish crown lands in the first decade of the eighteenth century, never permitted to reside in his capital at Madrid, but spending over six years in Barcelona and Valencia. This period of imposed exile from his family and from the crown of Spain, living on the margins of Castilian society, would mark and inform his remaining life. Second, Charles, after his election as Holy Roman Emperor and having re-establishing himself in Vienna in 1712, continued to lay claim to the crown of Spain: formally for 13 years and informally until he died in 1740. This second period of exile, away from Spain proper but surrounded by old and new reminders of that kingdom, marked him as a discontented ruler and an unrequited universal monarch. And third, I will suggest that Charles spent much of his life in what I term ‘internal exile’ from the political reality of his day, seeking to reconstitute the empire of his eponymous antecedent, Charles V. Like the sixteenth-century emperor, Charles spent his life attempting to bring together all the lands once under Habsburg government, creating a universal empire which would stretch from Central Europe to the Spanish Americas to the Philippine Islands.KeywordsEast India CompanyAmerican ColoniAtlantic TradeCharles VersusDutch RepublicThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.