Absolutism Across Europe: Spain, England, Austria, and Prussia

Spain's seventeenth century was one of prolonged decline under its last Habsburg kings, Philip III, Philip IV, and Charles II, with real governance repeatedly displaced by the valimiento system of all-powerful royal favorites such as the Duke of Lerma and the Count-Duke of Olivares. The Spanish crown declared bankruptcy repeatedly, in 1607, 1627, 1647, and 1653, while the loss of Portugal in 1640 and the recognition of Dutch independence in 1648 shrank the Hispanic Monarchy's territory, and the Catalan Reapers' War (1640-1652) directly challenged Olivares's centralizing policies. Charles II, nicknamed "the Bewitched," died without descendants in 1700, having named Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV, as his heir, a succession that triggered the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714).