The history of government in Spain between the middle of
the seventeenth century and the Napoleonic conquest--the form
in which Spain received the French Revolution--is divided into
three periods by the accidents of dynastic succession. The
first consists of the reign of the last Habsburg monarch,
Charles II, 1665-1700. His long-awaited death without a direct
heir had been prepared for in a series of negotiations between
the European Powers who were concerned to prevent the
wealth, power and prestige of the Spanish Empire in Europe
and overseas from being added as a whole either to the dominions
of the French monarchy, or to those of the Austrian Habsburgs,
which would enable the latter to recreate the sixteenth-century
Empire of Charles V. These schemes broke down owing to the
ambitions of Louis XIV, and the unwillingness of the Spaniards
themselves to see their Empire diminished. The War of the
Spanish Succession and the treaties with which it ended con-
firmed, as has been seen, the principle of partition, but left the
Bourbon claimant, Philip V ( 1700-24 and 1724-46) in undis-
puted possession of Spain and her overseas Empire. The second
period consists of the reins of the first three Bourbons,
Philip V, Luis I ( 1724) and Ferdinand VI ( 1746-58). In the
course of these reigns, an attempt was made to introduce into
Spain the administrative system of the more highly-centralized
monarchy of France. There was a recovery in the country's
international standing and the economic decline of the past
century was at least arrested. With the accession of Ferdinand's
half-brother, Charles III ( 1758-88) a third period was in-
augurated. Charles who had ruled successively as Duke of
Parma, and, since 1734, as King of Naples and Sicily, was
influenced if only to a limited extent, by the ideas of the
enlightened despotism current in the Italian peninsula.
In the first part of his reign a number of Italians held high

-77-