Joseph Addison’s Stanhope Essay on Charles III of Spain is a short historical study of the Bourbon king who ruled Spain from 1759 to 1788, written in English and published in the early twentieth century. It is an expository work rather than a narrative: Addison moves through the King’s career reign by reign and department by department, weighing evidence, quoting ambassadors and ministers, and judging the reforms and failures of the Spanish Enlightenment. The book’s centre of gravity is not the King’s personality but the machinery of government he set in motion, first as a young ruler in Naples and then in Spain.
“The truth is, he was not a hero : he had none of those qualities which go to make a great man, good or bad.”
Addison opens by admitting a puzzle. Charles III is among the least studied of Europe’s significant rulers, yet in some respects the most sympathetic figure in Spanish history and, with Henry IV of France, the most deserving of the Bourbon line. The neglect, he suggests, comes from a want of sharpness in the man himself: he was no hero, and one wishes he had partaken less of the prig. His life seemed interesting only as it touched political events, so the personality faded while the reign was praised and blamed in equal measure. Addison’s answer is to treat the reign as a single piece of work, the Spanish reforms flowing naturally from the training Charles received in Naples under Tanucci.
From Naples to Madrid: The Making of a Reforming King
The Neglected King and the Problem of Spanish History
Addison opens by placing Charles III among the least studied of Europe’s significant rulers, and argues that in some respects he is the most sympathetic figure in Spanish annals—with Henry IV of France, the most deserving of the Bourbons. The neglect has a cause: Spanish history lacks precision and definiteness. Flattery, a want of criticism, and the punctilious character of the nobility have blurred its outlines, so that while Henry IV, Louis XIV and Frederick the Great stand out sharply, Charles V is scarcely seen and Philip II remains mysterious. Charles III was luckier in his materials—the Conde de Fernan Nuñez’s contemporary Compendio Historico de la Vida de Carlos III and a voluminous correspondence survive—yet no worthy Life of him exists. His reign is generally granted to be a brilliant attempt to vindicate Spanish history, but the man stays shrouded. He was no hero, and one wishes he partook less of the prig; because his life seemed interesting only as bound up with political events, his personality was forgotten, and he has been too much praised and too much blamed. Some hold that by departing from traditional Spanish policy and freeing himself from ecclesiastical tyranny he hastened his kingdom’s decay. His career is singularly free from blot: no genius, he was an honest, well-intentioned man who did his duty with integrity. His life is of one piece—the reforms in Spain grew naturally out of his training and long reforming reign in Naples under Tanucci. His freedom from Spanish fanaticism comes from early removal from Spanish life and long sojourn in a priest-ridden land; he returned a complete foreigner, his ideas and habits strange and distasteful to most of his subjects.
The Allies Divide After the Conquest
With the conquest, half the allies’ original plan was accomplished; it remained to expel the Emperor completely from Italy and settle Philip in the duchies Carlos had vacated. Montemar rejoined the allies in the North and Mantua was invested. Success bred jealousy: England and Holland grew restless, and Fleury thought Spain had got enough, questioning whether expelling the Emperor merely to please Elizabeth and aggrandize Savoy benefited France—he wanted Tuscany as an equivalent for Lorraine. The King of Sardinia, anxious to trim and balance, grew nervous at the growing power of the Spanish Bourbons in Italy, fearing inconvenient neighbours wanting more elbow-room. Negotiations opened between Paris and Vienna behind Spain’s back; preliminaries were quickly agreed, though the definite treaty was not signed till 1738. Augustus was to remain King of Poland; Lorraine went to Stanislaus for his lifetime, reverting to France; Duke Francis received Tuscany and the hand of Maria Theresa; the Emperor recovered Parma and Piacenza; Savoy had to be content with Novara and Tortona; and Carlos was officially recognised King of Naples.
The Two Sicilies in 1735
The kingdom Carlos inherited is described as hopelessly sunk in misery and decay, its unhappiness owed to bad governance and a history of being jockeyed from one tyranny to another—alternately independent kingdom and vassal province—with laws drawing strength from Greek, Roman, Lombard, Norman, Swabian, Angevin, Arragonese, Spanish-Hapsburg, German-Hapsburg, Feudal and Ecclesiastical systems at once. Viceroy, clergy and baronage fought for paramountcy: the Viceroy decided cases by arbitrary will, the Nuncio held a court and imprisoned whom he pleased, the baronage exercised feudal justice. Finance aimed only at securing money for the splendour of the viceregal court, solved by taxes on every article of luxury or necessity and supplemented by the sale of titles. The army had fallen into an armed mob, filled by emptying prisons, kidnapping, and feudal lords contributing unwilling vassals, until “soldier” became an insult; the navy had ceased to exist, no galley fit for sea, and pirates were active. The greatest evil was the scandalous power and immunities of the Church: in the kingdom of Naples alone some 22 archbishops, 116 bishops, 56,500 priests, 31,800 friars and 23,600 nuns held two-thirds of the landed property and paid no taxes.
Tanucci and the Work of Reform
Carlos, an untried youth of twenty who had not yet begun to shave, faced a difficult task but brought with him Tanucci, a man of extraordinary ability called the real author of the reforms; under his guidance Carlos learned not only to reign but to govern. Tanucci’s influence told especially in ecclesiastical questions; no friend of the papacy, he declared that “the Court of Rome is the cause of Italian servitude.” That influence reached beyond Naples, and to the end of his days he remained the King’s confidential friend. The work was both destructive and constructive: Rome and the Church must be curbed and feudalism crushed before a Government, fleet and army could be created. The Pope had favoured Carlos at first, but his success inclined the Papacy toward the Emperor. The Acanea had been sent to Rome by both the new King and the Emperor, putting the Pope in the awkward position of having to declare himself; he named a commission which decided that, since Carlos was not universally recognised as King of Naples, tribute should be accepted from the Emperor. The decision was just but unpalatable. A riot broke out at Rome against the Spanish party; the populace, probably inflamed by Imperial emissaries, sacked the Neapolitan embassy, and the tumult spread to Velletri, where feeling ran against recruiting agents of Spain and Naples. Spanish soldiers were turned out but soon returned, killed some inhabitants, exacted tribute and committed excesses. The Spanish and Neapolitan Ambassadors left Rome; the Nuncio was ordered out of Naples; the one bound for Spain was stopped by order at Bayonne. The Emperor offered the Pope troops, and had Clement not given in, another war might have broken out. After negotiations the three leaders of the riot were sent to Naples, imprisoned briefly, made publicly to crave pardon, and released.
The Tribunal of Economy
These bickerings hastened the inevitable struggle. A Tribunal of Economy was created to inquire into the kingdom and propose reforms; it struck at ecclesiastical abuses, declared many grounds of exemption from taxation without foundation, revoked the right of several convents to grow tobacco, confiscated fraudulently acquired possessions to the Treasury, and taxed the rest at fair valuation. The Bishop of Sessa, who remonstrated, was banished. The ecclesiastical body was the primary cause of evil, claiming power over matters beyond its concern. Abolition of abuses added three million ducats to the revenue in a single year, but ecclesiastical property still needed regular taxation or an arrest of mortmain accumulation. Abate Genovesi proposed that all ecclesiastical property belong to the Crown, each monk or nun receiving four and each superior six carlinas daily; the plan was approved by the Council but modified, given the Pope’s certain refusal.
The Suppression of the Jesuits
The Real Pragmática of 2 April 1767 formalised the expulsion, and Grimaldi lost no time in pressing the case abroad. In two long conferences with the Portuguese ambassador he laid out the evidence, even handing over original papers seized from the Jesuits that proved, in his reading, their dangerous principles and their direct hand in the Madrid troubles. Naples and Parma followed Spain’s lead. In Naples the driving force was Tanucci; in Parma it was William du Tillot, a Frenchman of the philosophical school, who pushed ecclesiastical reforms until the Roman curia answered with contempt. Torreggiani treated his demands haughtily, du Tillot appealed to Spain, and an edict of 16 January 1768 forbade recourse to foreign tribunals. Rome struck back with the brief Monitorio de Parma, annulling du Tillot’s legislation and excommunicating all who obeyed it—a move that only inflamed France, Spain and Naples into hostile measures. Neapolitans occupied Benevento, the French seized Avignon, the Jesuits were driven from Parma, and the Bourbon courts began negotiating with Portugal for a collective petition to Rome demanding the abolition of the Order.
The book treats the abolition itself briefly. Seditious pamphlets and spurious miracles orchestrated by the Jesuits’ friends merely hardened the King. Spain, France, Portugal and Naples presented memorials early in 1769, and the death of Clement XIII on 2 February opened the way to a settlement through the election of an anti-Jesuitical pope. The cardinals were about evenly divided; the Spanish party proposed demanding a written guarantee from its candidate that he would abolish the Order, which Bernis vehemently opposed. After much intrigue the conclave chose Ganganelli, committed to no party but known to dislike the Company. Cautious and diplomatic, he declared he would take time to consider, and by the bull Coelestium munerum thesaurus renewed the Jesuits’ missionary privileges. Carlos, firmly persuaded the Jesuits had conspired against him, would not be shaken, and the Pope’s temporising only increased his ardour. Choiseul’s fall changed nothing in France’s conduct; his successor Aiguillon was a friend of the Jesuits, but the need to keep in with Carlos neutralised his sympathies. Spain pressed, d’Aiguillon followed, and at last, on 21 July 1773, the brief Dominus ac Redemptor Noster abolished the Company of Jesus.
Grimaldi and Aranda
Across the ten years between the Madrid Riot and Grimaldi’s fall, domestic history is chiefly the rivalry of Grimaldi and Aranda, heads of the “Golillas” and the “Arragonese” parties. The President of the Council, by the very circumstances of his appointment, headed an opposition to the Italian minister; he stood for the Anti-Foreign Party, diametrically opposed to the Golillas in character and policy. A man of action and authority, his firmness blended with knowledge of his country: in power in 1766 he would have shot the insurgents down, then conciliated them with bullfights. But he lacked the requisites of political success—he was not conciliating and had no respect for others’ opinions. It probably never occurred to him that his adversary might be right; at the council board he argued, bullied his opponents, and clung to his views with a tenacity that wearied even his friends. In time he became the most unwelcome of men—the one with a grievance, the prophet of evils to come—until his complaints and warnings tired even the King. Seeing he could not discredit Grimaldi, he solicited employment abroad, and the government sent him to the embassy at Paris, where he indulged his taste for writing bad French, spent freely, and astonished French society with his quaint manners and conceits.
His departure seemed to clear Grimaldi’s path; in truth it made him more dangerous, since from Paris Aranda could better persuade the French ministers to withhold support from the Golillas. Absence also softened memory: gratitude for his great services was no longer obscured by his peevishness, and he was regretted by all. After the unhappy Algiers expedition the popular song ran that if O’Reilly did not die, Aranda would not return, and Cevallos would not go, and Spain would be lost. The Arragonese party grew in numbers and strength. Muzquiz, the finance minister, was an Arragonese by the circumstances of his nomination; Ricla, the new war minister, owed his post to Aranda; Roda, minister of justice, was a Golilla by profession but an Arragonese by birth; Arriaga was an influential member of the Spanish party; Figueroa, Aranda’s successor as President of the Council, was a trimmer. Grimaldi stood alone, the only foreigner, with the King’s favour his sole counterpoise to a unanimous opposition. His position was precarious, but a pretext was wanting to raise the general voice against him and force his resignation. His own rashness soon supplied it.
The Falklands, the Family Compact, and American Independence
Louis XV’s refusal to go to war forced a sudden concession to English demands. He had approved the order sent to Bucarelli, but affairs had changed: Choiseul was dismissed, the Parlements showed independence, French preparations were incomplete, and the European situation favoured the Bourbon cause poorly—Russia was free to side with England, a Russian fleet appearing in the Mediterranean for the first time, Portugal remained tied to the English alliance, and the Jesuit question was pending at Rome. Carlos was displeased by this wise decision. Spanish dislike of England was sentimental and intense, fed by English superiority and press attacks. Spain nonetheless improved her army and navy, urged France to do likewise, revived Alberoni’s plan to use Sweden for a descent on the British Isles, and felt the Family Compact had failed. Louis XVI ratified the Compact despite Lord Mansfield’s efforts, and fears of the French Queen and Vienna’s influence were dissipated; France made a treaty to suppress smuggling in Roussillon. Aranda in Paris argued for war, claiming England observed no treaties since peace or war depended on ministerial changes. Vergennes advocated prolonging the American rebellion by underhand help; Turgot favoured passivity. Silas Deane arrived in Paris in July 1776, joined by Franklin and Arthur Lee in September, but the Court had already adopted Vergennes’ plan and dismissed Turgot. Loans, French officers and secret aid went to the colonies while peace was assured to the British ambassador. Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga decided France to declare openly; on 6 February 1778 she recognised colonial independence and concluded treaties of alliance and commerce, and communication of the commercial treaty was met by a declaration of war. Lord North’s late offer—everything but independence—came too late. Grimaldi urged anticipating events in October 1776; Vergennes replied it was wiser to wait. A Bourbon declaration might have reconciled colonies and mother country; Russia offered troops to quell the rebellion, which the Bourbon courts protested.
The Case Against the Jesuits
The edition’s closing appendices turn from narrative to argument, gathering the documentary case against the Society of Jesus. Tanucci’s violent anti-Jesuit opinions run through his correspondence, and he was far from alone; the reaction against the order, the editor argues, was the inevitable consequence of its immense power. In Portugal a conspiracy against the King’s life was laid at the Jesuits’ door, and they were accused of arming Damiens. Voltaire, perhaps echoing the popular voice, has a priest refuse to take charge of a Jesuit’s soul while the Jesuit confesses that “we want to dominate everywhere.” The order was thought partly responsible for seditious pamphlets, and Coxe mentions a forged letter from the General at Rome to the Provincial in Spain.
Carlos himself was satisfied that they had conspired against him. Writing to Tanucci on 16 June 1767, he says he grows daily more content with what was done. Roda’s letter of 23 June 1767 calls the Jesuits the principal fomenter of sedition, printers of seditious papers, preachers against Portugal and France, and enemies of the House of Bourbon and the Family Compact. The charge of complicity in the Madrid Riot, the editor concedes, is at least not proved; the archives hold no real proof, only vague accusations such as the case of Navarro. Devisme, writing to Shelburne, observes that the religious orders cordially hate one another, that the rich Jesuits are most detested, and that the royal Treasury will benefit. In Naples a parallel committee report, with Tanucci its moving spirit, called the Jesuits thieves who corrupt the young and have murdered kings, warning that they might attempt the young King’s life. The Bishop of Cuenca affair, a letter of 15 April 1766 to the confessor Joachim Eleto, declared Spain ruined by persecution of the church; the King ordered explanations, and after requisitories by the fiscals Campomanes and Moñino, the Council admonished the Bishop.
The Army and the Algiers Expedition
Military reform, by contrast, seemed amateurish. Bristol, writing to Pitt on 25 February 1760, notes officers absent seven or eight years at a stretch. The Quinta’s many exemptions threw the burden of service on the peasant, and a decree of 9 June 1762 revised them. Foreign recruiting proved difficult; schemes included three hundred Hungarians and offers from the Prince of Hohenlohe and from Wadenburg Schissimpfurt to sell subjects. Swinburne praises the soldiers’ bravery but criticises their discipline and uniforms.
The Algiers expedition is best told in Fernán Núñez’s Diario. The convoy assembled at Carthagena on 25 May, sailed on 23 June, and reached Algiers Bay on 30 June. Confusion and counter-orders, together with O’Reilly’s failure to correct the troops’ extension, produced losses under three thousand men, thirteen guns, and the baggage. The Moors, warned by spies and guided by a Mr. Dupont, were prepared. Grantham had predicted mismanagement.
The Limits of the Family Compact
The final appendix measures the Family Compact and finds it wanting. Carlos, writing to Louis XV on 2 March 1768, urges a naval increase against England. Grimaldi’s war plan of 1766 is detailed but childish. Carlos’s letter of 22 December 1770 and Louis’s reply of 21 December 1770 are quoted at length, and there the documentary record closes.
Tanucci, the Church, and the Machinery of Reform
The intellectual spine of the book is the struggle between the crown and the Church, and Addison gives it a vivid cast. Tanucci, the Italian minister who guided Charles in Naples, is presented as the real author of the reforms; no friend of the papacy, he declared that “the Court of Rome is the cause of Italian servitude.” Around him stand the men who carried the work into Spain: Squillaci, the low-born favourite whose arrogance helped spark the Madrid riot of 1766; Grimaldi, the Italian who boasted the Family Compact was his child and held his ground for a decade on the King’s favour alone; and Aranda, the old-school Spaniard and energetic reformer who restored order after the riot and later argued from Paris for war with England. Addison is careful to show that reform was resisted less by conservative conviction than by ultranational instinct: Spain was anti-foreign, yet its government sat in the hands of an Italian gardener’s son, a Dutch adventurer, and an Irishman, and an “old Spanish party” rose to neutralise the reforms. The book’s most telling institutional idea is the Junta de Estado, the cabinet council Floridablanca proposed to give the secretariats cohesion and collective responsibility, which Addison calls the father of the Spanish Cabinet Council.
What the Reign Meant
Addison’s verdict is elegiac rather than triumphant. He laments that no permanent results remained, but argues that Charles came too late: nineteen years could not undo three centuries of work, and the King could only begin a new epoch. His political testament repeatedly confesses “I have not had time to do this, but it should be done,” leaving successors a vast scheme of union with Portugal, better colonial government, and even a graduated income tax. The portrait of the man matches the modest scale of the achievement. Charles was not complex, not talented, with no record of reading a book and a hatred of music and the theatre; his life was dull and regular, his only diversion shooting, which he said warded off constitutional melancholy. Yet his motto, “Primero Carlos que Rey” — Charles before King — and his stubbornness, which Grimaldi described to Rochford as a resolution nothing could alter, made him more than a figurehead. To Spaniards, Addison notes, he remains “los tiempos gloriosos de Carlos III.”
The Essay’s Place
The book belongs to a particular moment of English historical writing: a prize essay of the Edwardian era, confident in its judgments, fond of the telling despatch and the character sketch, and interested in Spain chiefly as a test case of whether enlightened despotism could work. Its value now lies in that very distance. Addison writes with open admiration for the reforming impulse and open impatience with the Inquisition, which he shows silencing itself before royal orders, limiting its jurisdiction to heresy in 1770, and then turning on Olavide, sentenced in 1778 to eight years’ seclusion in a monastery. He is equally candid about failure, from the mismanaged Algiers expedition to the futile siege of Gibraltar, where the great floating batteries were destroyed and the British lost ninety men to the enemy’s two thousand. The result is a portrait of an honest, well-intentioned king whose reign was a brilliant attempt to vindicate Spanish history, and whose biographer, for all his reservations, never quite shakes the conviction that the attempt deserved better than it got.
