Template:House of Bourbon, 1700-1833 (Philip V-Ferdinand VI Arms)
King Philip V of Spain (December 191683 - July 91746) or Philippe of Anjou was king of Spain from 1700 to 1724 and 1724 to 1746, the first of the Bourbon dynasty in Spain.
Both claimants had a legal right due to the fact that Philip's grandfather, King Louis XIV of France and Charles's father, Holy Roman Emperor Leopold, were both the husbands of Charles' older half sisters and sons of Charles' aunts.
Philip had the better claim because his grandmother and great-grandmother were older than Leopold's. However the Austrian branch claimed that Philip's grandmother had renounced the Spanish throne for her descendants as part of her marriage contract. This was countered by the French branch's claim that it was on the basis of a dowry that had never been paid.
After a long council meeting where the Dauphin spoke up in favor of his son's rights, it was agreed that Philip would ascend the throne but would forever renounce his claim to the throne of France for himself and his descendants. It was not difficult to see whether Louis would have refused anyway as a Habsburg ruler in Spain would have put a possible enemy on three frontiers.
After the Royal Council decided to accept Charles' will naming Philip King of Spain, the Spanish ambassador was called in and introduced to his new King. The ambassador, along with his son, kneeled before Philip and made a long speech in Spanish which Philip did not understand, although Louis XIV did. Ironically Philip, who had never been taught Spanish while in France, had only begun taking lessons that day.
These losses greatly diminished the Spanish Empire in Europe, which had already been in decline. Throughout his reign, Philip sought to reverse the decline of Spanish power as Great Britain increasingly began to dominate at sea.
Luis Antonio (25 July1727–7 August1785). Was Archbishop of Toledo, Primate of Spain and Cardinal since 1735. In 1754 renounced his ecclesiastical titles and became Count de Chinchón. In 1776, he married morganatically Doña María Teresa de Vallabriga y de Rozas and had issue, but without royal titles.
On January 141724, Philip abdicated the throne to his eldest son, Louis I, but resumed it later that year when Louis died of smallpox.
Philip helped his Bourbon relatives to make territorial gains in the War of the Polish Succession and the War of the Austrian Succession by reconquering Naples and Sicily from Austria and Oran from the Ottomans. Finally, at the end of his reign Spanish forces also successfully defended their American territories from a large British invasion during the War of Jenkins' Ear.
Philip was afflicted by fits of manic depression and increasingly fell victim to a deep melancholia. His second wife, Elizabeth Farnese, completely dominated her passive husband. She bore him further sons, including another successor, Charles III of Spain. He was later helped with his affliction by the castrato singer Carlo Broschi, famously known as Farinelli, who, for 20 years, sang the same four arias each night to the king, before he went to sleep.
To commemorate the indignities the city of Xàtiva suffered after Philip's victory in the Battle of Almansa in the War of the Spanish Succession, in which he ordered the city to be burned, and renamed to San Felipe, the portrait of the monarch hangs upside down in the local museum of L'Almodí [1]).
An equestrian statue of Philip V was commissioned during his lifetime to be erected in Lima, Viceroyalty of Peru. It came crashing down in a huge earthquake in 1746, the same month Philip V himself died. The statue was never replaced.
