![]() His intention was to crossbreed a jack with his mares to produce a robust equine hybrid: the mule.įew mules existed in the early United States. ![]() The animals had an international reputation for being the best of their kind. Washington had made several previous attempts to buy a donkey from Spain. The prized animal arrived at Mount Vernon one year later. Signed in 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht firmly established the Bourbon dynasty on the Spanish throne.Royal Gift was the name George Washington chose for the Spanish jack that King Charles III of Spain gave to him in November 1784. On 29 January 1712 the congress of Utrecht began, during which the European diplomats intended to end the War of the Spanish Succession. ![]() Sadly, it was not always to be the case. Philippe nevertheless remained his grandfather’s ally during the War of Succession sparked by Austria, as the Sun King had feared, in 1701. "The Pyrenees are no more!” The King of France asked his son to be a good Spaniard, but to remember that he was born French and to maintain unity between the two nations. On 16 November 1700 Louis XIV officially presented the new King of Spain in the Hall of Mirrors. “What a fine thing, Sire!" cried the Spanish ambassador. He was Spanish by his grandmother, queen Maria Theresa, and his great-grandmother, Anne of Austria. After a long period of hesitation, Charles II finally decided, almost on his death-bed, in favour of the Duke of Anjou, and therefore the kingdom of France.Īged 17 at the time, Philippe of France was the second son of the Grand Dauphin, son of Louis XIV, and his wife, Maria Anna Victoria of Bavaria. Emperor Leopold, a sworn enemy of Louis XIV, had no intention of surrendering his rights. The harmony of Europe was hanging on Charles II’s choice of successor. In Europe, Spain's possessions included the kingdom of Naples and the Spanish Netherlands (an area taking in modern-day Belgium). Besides the crown, Spain also had an empire on which the sun never set, as Charles Quint once said. It was up to each power to choose their side. ![]() France and Austria both had legitimate claims to the Spanish throne. The question of who would succeed Charles II was shrouded in speculation right up until his death on 1 November 1700, and the topic became a subject of diplomatic tension between the European powers. That Spanish king, Philippe IV, died in 1665, leaving a somewhat dubious successor in the form of Charles II, a malignant child suffering from epilepsy, also born from Philippe IV’s second marriage. In 1666 Leopold had married the Infanta Margarita Teresa in an attempt to counter Louis XIV’s marriage in 1660 to Maria Theresa, Margarita’s elder sister and the daughter of the King of Spain from his second marriage. ![]() Like Louis XIV, Emperor Leopold I also had a claim to the Spanish throne. Just three years after the War of the League of Augsburg, the king was worried about another war with Austria and its allies. The Sun King hesitated for a long time before accepting the decision in his brother-in-law’s will on 12 November 1700. In his will, he had designated the Duke of Anjou, his great-nephew and Louis XIV's grandson, as his successor. King Charles II of Spain was about to die without an heir. ![]()
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