On March 7, 1701, the news of the death of Carlos II of Spain was known in Mexico. The news came very late, since the Spanish monarch, the last of the Austrian dynasty, had died on November 1 of the previous year.
Carlos II took the throne when his father, Felipe IV, died. He was a boy who had barely turned four years old. “He was a frail child,” writes Grimberg, “and emaciated, physically and mentally retarded, who never enjoyed perfect health and grew up ignorant and diffident.”
Due to the young age of the monarch, the Regency remained in the hands of his mother, Mariana of Austria, a capricious woman, far from all discretion and prudence, who from the first moment appointed her confessor, the Jesuit, as a member of the Regency Council. German Everardo Nihard, very similar to her in character, an appointment that caused general discontent among the nobility and the people.
Carlos II had serious political problems because he had no one to inherit the throne when he died, despite the fact that he married twice. Many thought that the monarch had been bewitched, thus unleashing a brutal hunt to find the culprits.
This situation was used by their enemies to try to seize the territory. Definitely, Carlos II had a sad reign. Being choleric and stubborn led him to disaster.
#choleric #stubborn