Philip II of Spain

Under Philip II (1527-1598) the Spanish monarchy reached its greatest territorial extent and assumed the burdens that came with it. The only legitimate son of Charles V and Isabella of Portugal, he was born at Valladolid and educated in Castile, unlike his itinerant, Netherlands-born father. Charles's abdications of 1555-1556 gave Philip Spain, the Netherlands, Franche-Comté, and the Italian possessions, while the imperial title passed to his uncle Ferdinand I, completing the separation of the Spanish and Austrian branches of the house; the two lines remained allies and continued to intermarry.

Philip married four times: Maria Manuela of Portugal, mother of the unstable Don Carlos, who died in confinement in 1568; Mary I of England, whose death in 1558 ended his association with the English crown; Elisabeth of Valois, sealing the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis with France in 1559; and his niece Anna of Austria, daughter of Emperor Maximilian II, mother of his heir Philip III. In 1580, after the extinction of the Aviz male line, he enforced his claim to Portugal through his mother, uniting the entire Iberian peninsula and the Portuguese overseas empire under one ruler.

He governed this assemblage from Castile as a bureaucrat-king, working through paper rather than presence, and built the Escorial as palace, monastery, and dynastic mausoleum. Revenue from American silver underwrote his wars but never sufficed; the crown suspended payments to its creditors several times during the reign. His foreign policy was framed as the defense of Catholic Christendom: a Spanish-led Holy League fleet defeated the Ottomans at Lepanto in 1571, and he intervened in the French Wars of Religion against Henry IV.

The revolt of the Netherlands, beginning in the 1560s, became the reign's longest war. The repression conducted by the Duke of Alba failed to end it, and by Philip's death the northern provinces were effectively independent under the Dutch Republic. War with England, fed by Elizabeth I's support for the rebels, produced the Armada of 1588, which failed disastrously in its attempt to convoy an invasion force. Philip died at the Escorial on 13 September 1598, succeeded by his son Philip III, leaving a monarchy still vast but financially strained and committed on multiple fronts.