CARLOS III

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First son of Philip V and his second wife, Elizabeth Farnes of Parma, Carlos III was considered the greatest of the Spanish Bourbons.

Carlos had a fanatical addiction to hunting, his enduring passion. It is said he hunted all but three days of the year, rain or shine. Slightly before his death he boasted to a foreign ambassador that he had killed 539 wolves and 5,323 foxes.

During his reign the pillar or two-world type coinage was discontinued in favor of the new bust type coinage. The crowned arms of Spain remained the same. Silver coinage was struck in denominations of 8, 4, 2, 1, and 1/2 real. Gold coins were minted in units of 8, 4, 2, 1, and ½ escudos.

He ruled as duke of Parma, by right of his mother, from 1732 to 1734 and then became king of Naples. On the death of his half-brother Ferdinand VI in 1759, after a useful apprenticeship of 25 years as an absolute ruler, Carlos became king of Spain and resigned the crown of Naples.

Carlos III was convinced of his mission to reform Spain and restore it once more as a world power. Though Carlos did not possess a particularly brilliant mind, he had a good deal of common sense and was highly effective in selecting ministers and men of outstanding quality to improve the government.

His frugality and application to the business of government impressed foreign observers as well as his own subjects. His religious devotion was accompanied by a blameless personal life and a chaste loyalty to the memory of his wife, Maria Amalia of Saxony who died in 1760. He never remarried, rather it was said that in the best British public school tradition, he took a cold bath or paced the floor whenever the fevers of lust assailed him.

Carlos’s ecclesiastical policy was conditioned by his determination to complete the subordination of the church to the crown. Subsequently, he exiled the Jesuits and stripped the Inquisition of its last vestige of power.