Philip II ruled lands on every known continent and still went bankrupt five times
Spain's Philip the Prudent held crowns from Portugal to Naples, was briefly king of England through his marriage to Mary I, and gave his name to the Philippines. Yet he defaulted on the state's debts five times, lost the Armada, and refused to answer the enemy propaganda that shaped his reputation for centuries.
He was born in Valladolid on 21 May 1527, son of Emperor Charles V and Isabella of Portugal, and at eleven months old received the Castilian parliament's oath as heir. Raised in Castile, he spoke Spanish as his mother tongue, handled Latin and Portuguese, and never felt at home in the German lands his Habsburg family also ruled, which helped cost him the imperial title. Charles found him grave and studious, and in 1543 left the sixteen-year-old as regent of Spain with written advice stressing piety, patience, modesty and distrust. One minister later said his smile was cut by a sword.
In 1556 he inherited the Spanish empire, and after a succession crisis took Portugal as well in 1580. The conquest of the Inca Empire and of the Philippines was completed in his reign, and in 1584 he finished El Escorial, the vast royal palace outside Madrid. Seeing himself as Catholic Europe's shield, he fought the Ottomans, with wins at Oran, Malta and Lepanto, while funding the Catholic League in France.
The 1588 Armada against England, meant to topple his former sister-in-law Elizabeth I, was driven off and then wrecked by storms on the way home. Later fleets in 1596 and 1597 failed too. All that fighting ran on borrowed money, and the crown defaulted in 1557, 1560, 1569, 1575 and 1596. A scheme to push on into China was weighed and dropped.
His power was less absolute than it looked. Spain was a bundle of separate realms with their own laws, and local assemblies often overrode him. When Aragon's parliament revolted in 1592, he had its chief justice, Juan de Lanuza, executed, and he forced his heir on Navarre in an irregular ceremony. After the Morisco revolt of 1569 in Granada, he scattered its population across other provinces. He died on 13 September 1598, and historians still argue over his character and aims.
Source: Philip II of Spain
