Philip V quit the Spanish throne, then took it back months later
In January 1724 Philip V handed the crown of Spain to his seventeen-year-old son Louis and stepped away. Seven months later Louis died of smallpox. After much persuasion Philip returned to the throne, going on to rule for 45 years, 9 months and 8 days in total, the longest reign in Spanish royal history.
Philip was never meant to rule anything. Born at Versailles in 1683, a grandson of Louis XIV, he was a younger son with two relatives ahead of him in the French succession, and he grew up as Duke of Anjou. Then in 1700 the childless Charles II, last Habsburg king of Spain, named Philip his heir. The French royal council accepted the will, and Philip became the first Bourbon monarch of Spain, on the understanding that he would give up any claim to France.
Other European powers feared a single Bourbon family controlling both France and Spain, and when Louis XIV took steps to preserve Philip's French rights, England, the Dutch Republic and Austria went to war. The War of the Spanish Succession lasted 13 years. Inside Spain, Castile backed Philip while much of Aragon supported his Austrian rival, Archduke Charles. The Treaty of Utrecht eventually confirmed Philip as king but barred the two crowns from ever uniting, and Spain surrendered its Netherlands and Italian holdings.
Philip used the war to reshape his kingdom. Starting in 1707, his Nueva Planta decrees imposed the Castilian model of government and abolished the separate charters of other realms, notably Aragon, while Navarre and the Basque lands, which had supported him, kept their self-rule. He also introduced a succession law favouring the entire male line over women. Later he tried to recover Italian territory, but a coalition of four powers forced him to make peace.
Philip's personal life shaped his reign. His first wife, Maria Luisa of Savoy, married him at 13, governed as regent while he toured Italy and died at 26, a heavy blow. His second wife, Elisabeth Farnese, came to dominate the government because of his recurring depression. By his death in 1746, Spanish forces had regained Naples and Sicily for his Bourbon relatives.
Source: Philip V of Spain
