5 - Conflicts with Spain, 1713–1744

Summary

The great loser in the treaty settlements at the end of the Spanish Succession War was Spain itself. Not only did it lose the Spanish provinces in Italy and Flanders, and found its trade monopoly with the overseas empire opened to British merchants and ships, but it had to cede control over two parts of its metropolitan territory, Gibraltar and Minorca, to Britain. These territorial losses eventually rankled particularly, as did that of Oran, taken by the Algerines in 1708. Spanish resentment at these, and its Italian losses, meant that these matters became the centres of British concern in the Mediterranean in the thirty years after 1713.

For Spain the enemies were all too numerous: Austria, which held the former Spanish provinces in Italy and Sardinia; Savoy, which held Sicily; Britain, holding Gibraltar and Minorca; Algiers, holding Oran; France, whose king Louis XIV died in 1715 and had cut the Spanish King Felipe V out of the succession to the French kingship and out of the regency for his young successor. Italy and its islands became Spain's target of choice for recovery. This was in part because of the influence of King Felipe's second wife, the Italian princess Isabella of the Farnese dynasty of Parma, and his latest chief minister Cardinal Alberoni. The king did not in fact need much wifely persuasion, nor did the Spaniards generally, to work for the recovery of other lost lands. This ambition became one of the dominant international political themes of the next generation.

Queen Isabella – referred to as ‘Elizabeth Farnese’ by British historians – was a strong-willed woman married to a man who was liable to devastating fits of depression. As a result she became one of the most effective powers in Spain for much of her husband's reign. One of her main ambitions was to see that her sons by King Felipe achieved their own kingdoms – he had a son by his first wife, who eventually succeeded him. The former Spanish provinces in Italy, and her own homeland of Parma, were to her particularly apt targets for her sons.