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 212 SPAIN Spain into one kingdom. Among the more prominent kings of Castile are Ferdinand III. (1217-'52), who by successful wars against the Moors annexed Jaen, Cordova, and Seville to his dominions; his son Alfonso X., the Wise (l:2.vj-'84), a patron of science and art, and himself a great scholar, but a weak ruler, un- der whom, while he was striving for the im- perial crown of Germany, the Moors made new conquests in the southern part of Spain ; Al- fonso XL (1324-'50), who broke the power of the Moors ; and his son Pedro the Cruel, who, after a distracted reign, perished in 1369. In Castile the towns possessed fewer rights and attained less prosperity than in Aragon, while the privileges and the power of the clergy and the nobility were more extensive. In the 15th century, during the reign of minor princes, the clergy and nobility usurped so much of the royal prerogatives, that when Isabella (1474- 1504) ascended the throne, royalty was almost powerless. Ferdinand the Catholic united the dignity of grand master of the three Castilian orders of knights for ever with the Spanish crown, obtained from the pope the right of nominating all bishops, expelled the Jews from the Spanish soil, and reorganized the inquisi- tion. (See INQUISITION.) The subjugation of the kingdom of Granada, the last Moorish possession in Spain (1491-'2), completed the political consolidation of the kingdom ; while the conquest of Naples (which had been sep- arated from the crown of Aragon) by Gon- salvo de Cordova, and still more the discov- ery of America by Columbus, and the subse- quent occupation of large portions of North, Central, and South America by Spanish gen- erals, soon raised the new kingdom of Spain to the front rank among the powers of the earth. But the expeditions to America led to a neglect of the native soil, and the expulsion of the Jews and of the bulk of the Moors proved a fatal blow to the flourishing industry of Spain. Ferdinand, who had survived his son-in-law Philip I. of Castile, was succeeded in 1516 by his grandson Charles I., who per- manently united Castile and Aragon, inherited the Netherlands from his paternal grandfather, the German emperor Maximilian of Hapsburg, was elected emperor of Germany (as Charles V.), and conquered Milan. At the beginning of his reign serious insurrections broke out in Valencia and Castile, where the people de- manded a more liberal constitution ; but they were soon quelled, and resulted in the aboli- tion of the principal rights of the towns, the restriction of the powers of the cortes, and a stronger attachment of the clergy and no- bility to the crown. The constitutional privi- leges or fueros of the Basque provinces were however, reconfirmed. The conquest of Mex- ico by Cortes, and of Peru and Chili by Pizar- ro and Almagro, poured immense riches into he royal treasury; but the wars of Charles against Francis I. of France, against the Protes- tants of Germany, against the people of Ghent in the Netherlands, against Pope Clement VII. in Italy, and against Tunis and Algiers, ex- hausted the revenues of the country, burdened the people with enormous taxes, and required the contracting of a heavy debt. Under the reign of his son Philip II. (1556-'98) the vast monarchy began to decay. Philip, under a claim of succession by inheritance, conquered Portugal, which from 1581 to 1640 remained united with Spain ; but this conquest, together with the war against the revolted Netherlands, a brilliant naval warfare against the Turks, the unfortunate naval struggle with England, in which the " invincible armada " was de- stroyed and Cadiz captured by the English, and the extravagance displayed in the building of the Escurial, exhausted the strength of the country. The despotic measures adopted by the inquisition for crushing out Protestantism and the remnants of the Moors (Moriscoes), and by the king for destroying still more thor- oughly the ancient privileges of the people, had in great part the desired effect, but also completed the ruin of Spanish commerce, ag- riculture, and industry. Literature and art, however, continued to flourish, and the Span- ish language and fashions controlled the courts of Europe. The imbecile and fanatical Philip III. (1598-1621) left the reins of government to his favorite, Count Lerma, who squandered the revenues of the state, and drove the last of the Moriscoes, 600,000 in number, out of Spain. Under Philip IV. (1621-'65) Portugal recovered its independence ; Catalonia was de- vastated for 10 years by a civil war ; the Dutch infested the Spanish possessions in America, especially Peru; three fleets were destroyed by gales, diseases, and the enemy ; the Protes- tant Netherlands were abandoned for ever ; insurrections broke out in Naples and Sicily ; and the enmity between Olivarez, the Spanish minister, and Richelieu, involved Spain in a war with France, by which the former lost Koussillon. Under Charles II. (1665-1700) an- other disastrous war was waged against France, and the population of Spain decreased to 8,000,- 000. The death of Charles, with whom the Spanish house of Hapsburg became extinct, occasioned a war for the succession to the Spanish throne, which both the brothers-in- law of Charles, Louis XIV. of France and Leo- pold I. of Austria, tried to secure for princes of their respective families. Charles, in a sec- ond will, appointed Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV., sole heir of all the Spanish monarchy; but Germany, England, and Hol- land contested the validity of the will, and for 13 years resisted the claim of Philip to the Spanish throne. (For the principal events of the war of Spanish succession in the wider sense, see PniLip V., CHARLES VI. of Germany, Louis XIV., EUGENE, and MAKLBOROUGH.) The allies won several signal victories ; yet Philip V. finally maintained himself on the throne, although in the peace of Utrecht (1713) he was obliged to cede Naples, the island of Sar-