Spanish Habsburgs

All figures

• Charles V1500 – 1558
• Philip II of Spain1527 – 1598
• Philip III of Spain1578 – 1621
• Philip IV of Spain1605 – 1665
• Charles II of Spain1661 – 1700

Related events

• Conflict

  Spanish Conquest of Tenochtitlan

  1519 – 1521· this dynasty: conqueror (under Charles V)

  A two-year campaign by Hernán Cortés and roughly six hundred Spaniards, aided by smallpox and tens of thousands of indigenous allies who hated Mexica rule, destroyed the Aztec Empire. Moctezuma II received Cortés peacefully in Tenochtitlan in November 1519 and was held captive there; he died in disputed circumstances during the Mexica uprising of 1520. The eighty-day Spanish siege ended on 13 August 1521 with the capture of the last tlatoani, Cuauhtémoc.

  Also involved: Aztec Empire (destroyed)

• Marriage

  Marriage of Mary I and Philip II of Spain

  1554

  On 25 July 1554 Mary Tudor married her cousin Philip of Spain, son of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, in Winchester Cathedral. The match was deeply unpopular in England — a Catholic prince of the rising Habsburg superpower marrying the reigning queen on terms widely seen as compromising English sovereignty. The marriage produced no children; on Mary's death Philip lost his English title and pursued the throne through war against her Protestant successor Elizabeth.

  Also involved: Tudor

• Succession

  Abdication of Charles V

  1556· this dynasty: received Spain and the global empire

  Between 1554 and 1556 Charles V, exhausted by four decades of universal war, partitioned the empire he had inherited intact. His son Philip received Spain, the Indies, the Italian possessions, and the Low Countries; his brother Ferdinand received Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, and ultimately the imperial title. The split divided the Habsburgs into Spanish and Austrian branches that would remain cousin powers for the next century and a half. Charles retired to a monastery in Yuste and died there in 1558.

  Also involved: Austrian Habsburgs (received the imperial and Austrian inheritance)

• Conflict

  Defeat of the Spanish Armada

  1588· this dynasty: defeated

  Philip II of Spain assembled the Grande y Felicísima Armada — 130 ships, 30,000 men — to invade Elizabethan England, depose its Protestant queen, and reclaim the English throne for Catholicism. English long-range gunnery, fireships at Calais, and the great Atlantic gales drove the fleet north around Scotland and Ireland; perhaps half the ships and most of the men never returned to Spain. The defeat ended Spain's century-long dominance of European warfare.

  Also involved: Tudor (victor)

See also