Of all the great questions of Habsburg history, perhaps the greatest is this: What would have been the consequence if Charles V had decided to prioritize differently his dealings with France, the Ottoman Empire, and Christian reformers? It is certain that the House of Habsburg would have proceeded along a different path, but such a truism hardly advances a better understanding of events in the empire, or in Europe more widely, in the sixteenth century. Charles V, as pater ecclesiae and as head of a monarchia universalis, stands astride the traditional and the modern. To him is attributed the last opportunity for Habsburg universal empire, with the long hand of the casa de Austria imprinting Habsburg ambitions on the world.Footnote ¹

The sixteenth century was peppered with wasted opportunities, lost chances to end wars, settle religious disputes, and reduce grievances. It was to Charles V's eponymous heir, Archduke Charles (1685–1740), that the greatest opportunity presented itself—to recreate not just the empire of Charles V, but an imperial domain that might include the lands of the Holy Roman Empire, the Erblande, Bavaria, the East and West Indies, as well as Spain and the Spanish American lands. Such an opportunity was not the stuff of wild flights of imperial fancy. It was discussed at the highest levels of government; and on a number of occasions, it was almost within the grasp of the House of Habsburg, less falling from hold than bullishly pushed away in fits of ill-advised pique. Territorial expansion and diplomatic influence was accompanied by “the fullest unfolding of Baroque civilization: buildings, fine arts, display, popular piety, all reached their largest extent during the reign of the least colorful of Habsburg emperors.”Footnote ² Under Charles, “Italian ambitions could be revived, even Spanish visions nurtured; an older dream of universal empire could be temporarily resuscitated.”Footnote ³

This article seeks to consider the ripples of imperial ambition emanating from the person of Emperor Charles VI, centered on Charles's years in Spain and working out throughout his later life in Vienna. The echo of Spain and Spanish government was always there, sometimes quite audible, other times little more than a whisper, a rumor from a distant land. The proposition is simple: Charles was resolutely changed by his experience of life and leadership at his Spanish court in Barcelona, and this experience marked his form and style of rule in Vienna and throughout his imperial and royal lands. Charles, the last Habsburg Emperor, had the final chance to recreate the empire of Charles V; and even the most valiant of efforts failed to secure the imperial heritage he so desired. Charles's failed opportunity would dominate his life and rule. In developing these ideas, I will consider Archduke Charles of Austria's plans, as King Charles III of Spain and later Emperor Charles VI, to govern a united Habsburg Empire from Madrid, Barcelona, and Vienna in the light of his missed opportunities and lost chances between the commencement of the War of Spanish Succession and his death in 1740.

Charles attempted to follow in the footsteps of the King and Emperor Charles V in creating a universal empire; his plans ultimately failed. The opportunity to create a new Habsburg Empire also shows how ideas and theories developed in the Spanish Habsburg world came, after the loss of the War of Spanish Succession, to have real and significant impact on the Austrian Habsburg lands. This ambitious project to manage a united empire based round the “heterogeneous elements”Footnote ⁴ of Central Europe, together with complex colonies in the Americas, was a Spanish Habsburg reconquista of Central Europe. It allowed methods and means of government developed in one Habsburg territory to permeate continental Europe and be used consciously in the management of peoples and lands.

When King Charles (Carlos) II Habsburg of Spain died without issue in November 1700, his will named as his successor the 17-year-old Philip Bourbon, grandson of Charles's sister Maria Theresa of Spain, as his successor, and not his godson the 14-year-old Archduke Charles.Footnote ⁵ The feeble Charles II had fought to prevent his Spanish empire from falling victim to political intrigue and had decided on Philip Bourbon, duke of Anjou, to succeed him. Both Bourbon and Habsburg houses had a legal claim to the throne of Spain. Philip had the better claim; his grandmother and great-grandmother were older than Leopold's and took precedence. However, the Austrian branch of the Habsburg family claimed that Philip's grandmother had renounced the Spanish throne for her descendants as part of her marriage contract. This claim was countered by the French branch's own claim that it was predicated on a dowry that had never been paid. With the dauphin's support, it was agreed that Philip would ascend the Spanish throne but would forever renounce his claim to the French crown for himself and his descendants.

For some European powers, French support for Philip of Anjou in his claims as Philip V of Spain was greatly alarming. England, despite Bourbon assurances, was disturbed by the prospect of a trans-Pyrenees alliance of the crowns between France and Spain; and this fear helped to precipitate the War for the Spanish Succession (1705–1713). In the early stages of the war, Aragon, Barcelona and Valencia supported the Habsburg cause and invited English troops to assist them in their anti-Bourbon actions; Barcelona became a base for the pro-Austrian camp, supporting Archduke Charles in his claims as king of Spain.Footnote ⁶ It would not have been easy to predict the outcome of the war. After the cessation of hostilities, under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), England was granted Gibraltar, Minorca, and trade concessions in the Spanish Indies (most notably the asciento). Additional negotiations granted the Spanish Netherlands and Spain's Italian possessions to Austria. Only on 11 September 1714 did Barcelona surrender to the Bourbon army under the leadership of Philip, an event that led to deep resentment toward the Catalan cause on the part of future Bourbon kings.Footnote ⁷

In Vienna, in the earliest phase of the interregnum and in an act provoked by the earlier arrival of Philip Bourbon in Madrid in 1701, Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I and his first-born son (and later emperor) Joseph, ceded their rights to the crown of Spain in favor of Archduke Charles. He was proclaimed king of Spain on 12 September 1703, and a “pacta familiae et reservata” was sworn between Leopold and Joseph in favor of Charles.Footnote ⁸ In the ceremony, the 19-year-old Charles promised to “conserve the rights and privileges of all kingdoms and provinces, communes and regions, within the Spanish dominions,” in a statement that recalled the promise of the previous Habsburg king of Spain, Charles II. When he departed Vienna for Spain in 1704, Charles's claims to the crown of Spain would institute not just civil unrest in the kingdom, but an international war that would affect the European balance of power and heralded the end of Habsburg hegemony in two empires.

With the support of his father and of England and the United Provinces, and accompanied by the English ambassador George Stepney, by Prince Anton of Liechtenstein, and a large retinue, Charles of Austria departed Vienna for the United Provinces in February 1704, on the first leg of an arduous journey to Spain.Footnote ⁹ Prior to leaving Vienna, Charles had visited the site of Marian pilgrimage in Styria, Mariazell, and had sent his baggage train ahead of him on the circuitous route to the Low Countries, via Prague, Franconia, and Düsseldorf, denied access as he was to the much easier route through the Italian lands because of the 1701 French invasion. In many respects, Charles's actions recall those of Emperor Charles V, for he travelled more than any other emperor since his sixteenth-century antecedent. At Düsseldorf, Charles met with the Duke of Marlborough and, a little thereafter, entered the United Provinces and held an audience with the provincial assembly of Holland and of the Estates General.

Charles continued in the direction of London where he was received with exceptional cordiality by Queen Anne at Windsor: Anne and Charles played cards and she presented him with a gift of 150,000 pounds sterling to aid his cause in Spain. Boarding a vessel of the English navy, Charles embarked for Portugal, where he arrived, amidst grand celebrations, on 6 March 1704. He was made most welcome at the court of King Pedro II in Lisbon between March 1704 and 23 July 1705. It was here that Charles first held court in exile, receiving many of the leading nobles of Spain, including the Count of Cardona and Cardinal Álvaro of Cienfuegos, who now declared themselves for the Austrian cause against the Bourbon, and it was also in Lisbon that Charles heard news of his father's death on 5 May 1705.

While in Portugal, Charles declared his irrevocable rights to the throne of Spain and announced his intention to liberate Spaniards from the tyranny of the Duke of Anjou. Reacting to Charles's arrival on the peninsula and his recent pronouncements, Philip Bourbon, from his base in Madrid, proclaimed a state of war on 30 April 1704 and called for Spanish-French forces to mobilize along the Portuguese border. From this moment, the conflict in the Iberian peninsula became international. It did not only involve Spain (particularly Castile) and France and the Portuguese allies of Charles Habsburg, but also the Anglo-Dutch flotilla harbored off the coast of Cádiz. The Earl of Galway, Henri de Masseur, Marquis de Ruvigny, had been named commander of English troops in Portugal; he faced the Bourbon Spanish army, under the command of the Duke of Berwick, on the Portuguese frontier.Footnote ¹⁰ (It is worth contemplating the international dimension to the conflict at this early stage in events: Galway was a French Huguenot who had served with William of Orange and earned his title on campaign in Ireland, whereas Berwick was a natural son of James II who had been named captain general of the combined Franco-Spanish army.) After a number of exchanges, the Bourbon army was forced to withdraw and Philip V retired to Madrid, Berwick being replaced by Marshall Tessé.

Most especially, representatives from Catalonia travelled to meet the Austrian king, declaring themselves for the monarch whom they now saw as the new Count of Barcelona, King of Aragon and King Charles III of Spain. On 23 July 1705, Charles and his retinue set sail from the port of Lisbon aboard the Gran Bretaña. The Anglo-Dutch flotilla arrived at Gibraltar on 2 August and the Valencian port of Altea—one of the first cities to declare for Charles—on 10 August, whence they travelled to Denia, where Charles and his party disembarked briefly before continuing on to Barcelona. Mustering support for his candidature along the way, Charles wrote to the Valencians on 15 August seeking that they support their new king.Footnote ¹¹ Support was forthcoming, especially from the “Maulets” or “Austriacistas,” who opposed Philip Bourbon in his claim to the title Philip IV of Valencia. These supporters were growing in number in Catalonia, Majorca, and Valencia, joining the ranks of the “vigatans” and “regenerationists” who sought economic, political, and social independence for Catalonia, under a Habsburg king and who welcomed Charles all along the eastern Spanish coast.Footnote ¹² On his arrival at Barcelona, Charles was welcomed into the city as a hero. Crowds in the streets greeted him with song, seeing him as a virtuous and good leader come to restore their rights. They hailed him as their king “Carlos Tercer.”Footnote ¹³

Archduke Charles's reputation in Spain was not universally positive, despite his rapturous reception in Catalonia.Footnote ¹⁴ Warfare, a difficult diplomatic situation, and financial mismanagement made the viability of continued Austrian government in Spain a disappointing prospect for many Spaniards to envisage.Footnote ¹⁵ When Charles began to rule as King Charles III of Spain after 1705, his Spanish administration was deeply worried, recognizing, as it did, the need to reform government in Spain and to correct the great economic and diplomatic decline that popular opinion attributed to Habsburg mismanagement and that marked the end of the Spanish golden age.

There was a danger, however, that many of the proposed administrative reforms would create more enemies than supporters at this crucial time in the effort to win hearts and minds to the Habsburg cause. Charles saw a possibility to use some of the monies available in Catalan coffers to create allies by rewarding loyal supporters with favors and rewards. Some believed that these Habsburg expenditures were distributed thoughtlessly and that they were characteristic of Habsburg sumptuary expenditure in a time of war.Footnote ¹⁶ Despite some misgivings, supporters were liberally rewarded with monies and with honors. Charles issued a disproportionately high number of patents of honorable citizenship of Barcelona, when compared with the preceding and succeeding years: Charles awarded eighty-two ciutadanias in the years 1705–1714 and ennobled a total of 182 men, the second-highest average number of patents per annum (20.0) in the entire period 1558–1838.Footnote ¹⁷ Charles and his party knew that only through a full reform of the administration in Spain and the Spanish colonies could he prove his suitability for the position as rey d'España.Footnote ¹⁸ In an attempt to win popular support, Charles commenced a comprehensive reform of government in 1705.

It is striking that a great number of the reforms later credited to the Bourbon monarchs—the “Bourbon reforms” beginning in 1714—were first conceived of during the government of Archduke Charles in Spain. There was an evident reforming orientation in the period of government of the last Habsburg in Spain.Footnote ¹⁹ The kingdom was habituated to foreign generals and administrators who knew more than many Spaniards about matters in the wider European arena. Habsburg and Bourbon were not dynastic or ideological concepts but represented real and significant interests and aspirations. Spaniards also knew that the war with France threatened the unity of the Spanish empire on three fronts: in the Low Countries, in Italy, and in the Atlantic. These essential components to Spain's universal monarchy were now threatened by war, no longer by diplomatic posturing alone.Footnote ²⁰

Catalonia, the heartland of Charles's power, had not been alienated by previous years of Habsburg government to the same extent as Castile.Footnote ²¹ For Catalans, the War of Spanish Succession was an opportunity to exploit the principality's position; Catalan support for Archduke Charles was neither spontaneous nor popular in origin. Rather, that support expressed the political objectives of the ruling interest group. Crystallizing in the program of reform instituted in the 1560s by Philip II, Catalan society had grown increasingly embittered with encroaching royal authority, which left a deep impression on local attitudes in the seventeenth century.Footnote ²² Catalonia, as the home of a cohesive urban elite, had seen a revival in its economy from the 1680s.Footnote ²³ Such economic developments were expressed in the writings of the Catalan lawyer Narcís Feliu de la Penya, who called for a reorientation of Catalan trade from traditional markets in the Mediterranean toward America and Atlantic trade. De la Penya believed a greater role for Catalan traders and merchants in Spanish Atlantic trade could be best served by a Habsburg on the Spanish throne.Footnote ²⁴ Such opinions fed Charles's ambitions and encouraged him to believe that, from a strong Catalan base, he could win the hearts and minds of the Spanish people and win the crown of Spain. Charles's reception in Valencia and Catalonia made him hopeful about gaining the crown of Aragon, but not of Castile; he realized he needed to work hard to win Castilians to his side.Footnote ²⁵

Charles's innermost thoughts on the method and means by which he could govern Spain, her colonies abroad, and his continental European lands were expressed in his correspondence with Bohemian vice-chancellor Johann Wenzel Graf Wratislaw. Charles wrote to Wratislaw of the growing dilemma facing him and of his ambitions to govern both monarchies as his forefather Charles V had done. He would struggle, he wrote, to understand the “method and system” of Spain and would fight the lack of desire to understand the country so evident in Vienna. The German lands and Spain must be considered equal and “should seek to be united under one ruler.” Only by bringing Germans to Spain and Spaniards to Germany, he believed, would both places grow closer and more understanding of each other. Charles noted that it would be necessary to travel frequently between both places to facilitate this mutual understanding, so that “there should be no difference between nations.”Footnote ²⁶ These were insightful words for a 25-year-old man, isolated from familial support in Vienna, exiled from his royal capital in Spain and yet desirous of a system that might restore the old empire of Charles V. Charles's use of “nations” is also telling, respecting the distinctive natures of the naciones of Spain while also acknowledging the multiethnic composition of the Habsburg monarchy in similar terms, at a territorial-acquisitive time for the Austrian Habsburgs in Central Europe.

Charles greatest initial difficulty was to win international recognition for his claims to the crown of Spain. He pushed for papal recognition of his title as Catholic Majesty, or at the very least for the pope to send him a nuncio in recognition of his claims to the crown.Footnote ²⁷ Pope Clement XI agreed to recognize Charles as king, but this did little to sway international opinion; indeed, his allied Grand Alliance was predominantly non-Catholic and Charles's association with “Protestants” afforded his enemies, and particularly France, much ammunition in their propaganda war against him. For the French state, the Protestant origins of many of the soldiers in the Grand Alliance who supported Charles's claim highlighted that the Austrian pretender was a heretic, a claim that could only be balanced by the very real religiosity of the person of Charles.Footnote ²⁸ Diplomatic recognition of his claim was less forthcoming and would dominate Franco-Spanish relations for over twenty years. Just as Philip of Anjou was determined in his refusal to address Charles with the title “King of Spain,” until the Peace of Vienna of 1725, Charles refused to recognize Philip V as king of Spain, but rather referred to him as a “usurper.”Footnote ²⁹ Throughout the 1720s, Charles continued to use the title D. Carlos por la gracia de Dios Emperador de los Romanos, siempre Augusto Rey de Germania y de Castilla….Footnote ³⁰

Charles was well aware that the international interests of his Grand Alliance allies far outweighed any expedient demands he had concerning his claims to the Spanish crown. He also knew that his allies would allow Spain and the American colonies to fall into “enemy hands” if it served their own interests.Footnote ³¹ His ministers in Vienna also reminded him of the possibility of a territorial settlement that would necessitate the sacrifice of one or more of his territorial possessions for the greater good in treaty negotiations. Count Wratislaw reminded Charles that “negotiations will not be without difficulty, as the sea powers [England and the Dutch Republic] will certainly sacrifice Italy and perhaps also Spain and the Indies . . . so that one must consider whether, in such dire straits, we wish to retain Italy or Spain, or Spain and the American colonies, or Italy…”Footnote ³² The overseas possessions remained at the forefront of Charles's mind, for he realized that a long-term reorganization of his administration would be possible only with revenue amassed from Atlantic trade. He was also aware that the influential support of Catalan mercantile interests would remain with him only as long as he could guarantee overseas trade for Catalan merchants.

Charles's plans for America considered the mode and means by which the American colonies might be reintegrated into a united, Spanish-Austrian empire.Footnote ³³ The Consejo of the Indies, with a president and two administrative secretaries, dealt with the immense territories in the New World and controlled commerce between Spain and the Americas.Footnote ³⁴ The Austrian party did not have any real experts on the Americas, and so the Consejo served an educational purpose for Charles. Educating Charles in colonial matters and training him in the pacific maintenance of Spain's Atlantic trade routes, the Consejo also served as a repository for cartographic, cosmographic, and scientific knowledge, just as it has done in Madrid.Footnote ³⁵ Critically, Charles also knew that Britain's attitude was changing. Britain was no longer in favor of supporting a union of monarchies that would potentially challenge its aspiration to dominate the Atlantic. Why support a Habsburg Empire that might, in more bellicose times, present a real and significant danger to English interests in Europe and in the Americas?Footnote ³⁶

Unexpectedly, occident and orient collided for Charles in the spring of 1711. The death of Charles's brother, the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I, on 17 April 1711, aged only 33 years, had the effect of seriously destabilizing the government in Vienna and casting doubt on the exiled Charles's commitment to the House of Habsburg in Austria. Unrest in Hungary, led by Ferenc II Rákóczi in Transylvania, was coming to an end; but negotiations between the Austrian and Hungarian forces were at a delicate and crucial stage. Events were not made any easier by the death of the Emperor Joseph. “Sad news,” Charles wrote in his diary on 1 May 1711 in Spain, “my brother the emperor Joseph died of the pox on 17 April. From our House, only I remain, all falls to me.”Footnote ³⁷

Charles was heir apparent to the imperial title, but he had not been elected “King of the Romans,” the title awarded to the chosen successor of the reigning emperor after consultation with the imperial electors. For this reason, the Habsburg claim to the imperial crown lapsed. Charles's mother, the dowager empress Eleanor, was prevailed upon to head up a regency. At the same time, senior servants of the crown wrote to Charles in Barcelona urging him to return to Vienna with utmost haste and secure both his position and the defense of Austria and the empire. Unsure of his future in Spain, Charles delayed his return to Vienna. Leaving Elizabeth Christine as his regent in Barcelona, where she remained until April 1713, he set out for Italy, arriving at Genoa on 12 October.Footnote ³⁸ Charles made overland for Germany and was duly elected and crowned emperor in Frankfurt am Main on 22 December, without the feared opposition to his candidature. He finally arrived in Vienna on 26 January 1712.Footnote ³⁹ News of his coronation as emperor was slow to reach Spain as corsairs at Argel captured the ship carrying word of the coronation.Footnote ⁴⁰

At the start of his rather unexpected reign as emperor, Charles now found himself exiled—albeit briefly, as he believed—from his Spanish kingdom. Although he was now based in Vienna and his advisers at court had accompanied him from Spain to Austria, Charles's life would remain dominated by his struggle for the restoration of his lost Spanish and American lands. The large number of Spanish emigrants who accompanied him to Vienna would be a constant reminder of his lost lands and lost potential income from the Americas, to which he had dedicated his formative years to maintain.Footnote ⁴¹ Charles insisted that he could gain at least Mexico and Peru in any negotiated settlement with the House of Bourbon. He therefore rejected Article VI of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713; this article placed the House of Savoy before the Habsburgs in the Spanish order of succession, in the event that the Bourbon line failed.Footnote ⁴²

In fact, it would take Charles over a year to accept the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht.Footnote ⁴³ His court at Vienna, urged on by the large number of exiled Catalans and Spaniards—perhaps exceeding 16,000 throughout Charles's Habsburg lands and including some 2,784 officials—opposed the Bourbon government of Spain. Names such as Perlas, Romeo, Stella, and Cardona were constant reminders of the Spanish claim; and Charles never forgot the hard fight to hold Barcelona in the face of a Franco-Spanish siege. In his diary entry for 12 May 1736, he recalled the crucial date, writing “Barcelona thirty years ago today.” The anniversary of the lifting of the 1706 siege of Barcelona was, by order of Charles, to be celebrated with a Te Deum in the cathedral of Saint Stephan.Footnote ⁴⁴ Stella and Perlas, in particular, exercised great influence over Charles.Footnote ⁴⁵ The influence of Spaniards at court was such that some even pushed for an immediate truce with the archenemy of Christian Europe, the Turks, favoring an all-out effort against the new real enemy, Bourbon Spain.Footnote ⁴⁶ These difficulties continued for at least ten years. It took a Dutchman, one of Spanish extraction and a convert to Catholicism, to offer a possible solution to the problem of Austrian government of Spain.

Johann Wilhelm, Baron Ripperda, had come to Spain to make his fortune as superintendent of the royal factory at Guadalajara. He quickly rose to head of all royal factories and was made secretary of Marine and of the Indies.Footnote ⁴⁷ Having grandiose plans for the thorough reform of Spain and seeing himself as the Olivares of the eighteenth century, Ripperda promised that the empire of Charles V could be recreated and convinced Charles VI to commit to his plans.Footnote ⁴⁸ Charles acceded to Ripperda's suggestions and, as part of this long-term plan, he was now willing to accept Spain's overtures for peace; an entente cordiale with Spain was achieved in 1725. Charles's period of imperial government was beset by more immediate, yet very familiar, problems: that of paucity of finances and the need to establish overseas trading companies in his largely land-locked empire.

The realization, tacit or explicit, that Spain and the Spanish Americas were lost came with Charles's removal from Barcelona. It was now necessary to remake Spain and the colonies wherever Charles found himself. Shortly after his arrival in Vienna, the new emperor instituted significant social and economic changes. Remembering the success of his Valencian and Catalan port cities, Charles instructed the development, at his personal cost, of the port cities of Trieste and Fiume. Again from his own purse, he built a lazaretto for travelers at Fiume. He viewed both ports as his points of access to the Mediterranean and by extension to the wide Atlantic.Footnote ⁴⁹ Next, Charles established an Eastern Trading Company, modeled on the Western Trading Company (Compagnie de las Indias), to monopolize trade with the East and to capture a future expanding Balkan trade.Footnote ⁵⁰ Plans for an East India Company had been floated as early as 1698, but it was not until the Treaty of Utrecht that Charles claimed the right to establish such a company at Ostend.Footnote ⁵¹

At one point, colonies were even proposed for the Solomon Islands and Tobago, with trading ventures considered in Bengal and Madagascar.Footnote ⁵² In 1715, even before the signing of the Third Barrier Treaty between the Dutch Republic and Charles, a ship at Ostend was fitted out to sail to Asia. Charles had issued the captain with a letter of marque and the vessel flew his imperial flag.Footnote ⁵³ The Third Barrier Treaty had not been very popular with Charles; after the Battle of Belgrado (1717), he felt strong enough to take on the Dutch Republic. He ordered several new expeditions to Asia in 1717; and the following year, when the Quadruple Alliance agreed that Charles swap Sicily for Sardinia, Habsburg entrepreneurs established factories at Cabelon (Covelong, present-day Kovalam) on the Coromandel Coast (1719), and the most prized factory of all, Banquibazar (Bankibazar, Ichapur), in Bengal (1720).Footnote ⁵⁴

Charles grew more confident in his actions and, undoubtedly as a result of his observation of trade and trade companies in operation in Catalonia, he grew determined further to cultivate overseas trade and to confront the rival maritime powers. In 1721, one John Colebrook was sent to Vienna to convince the emperor that trade from Ostend to Asia was highly profitable. This was pleasing to Charles; consequently, recalling the Consejo de Indias, he granted permission for the founding of the Société Impériale et Royale des Indes as part of the Generale Keizerlijke en Koninklijke Indische Compagnie gevestigd in de Oostenrijkse Nederlanden (GIC), commonly called the “Ostend Company.” The Société des Indes was granted her charter on 19 December 1722, and in early 1724 the first ships set sail to Asia. Between 1715 and 1723, thirty-four such ships, among them the Charles III, were outfitted at Ostend for trade with Asia. Charles retained a personal interest in the activities and protection of the company, which enjoyed the right to trade with the East and West Indies and the coasts of Africa “on both this and the other side of the Cape of Good Hope.” Despite English and Dutch opposition, Charles and his Company had, briefly, the upper hand of the maritime powers.Footnote ⁵⁵ Under the terms of the agreement of 1725 with Spain, ships of Charles's Ostend Company were given free access to Spanish ports, as well as the right to trade as Spanish vessels in the East Indies. Charles had, it seemed, won access to the Atlantic, which he had long wanted when in Barcelona; and his seamen were, he believed, on the same most favored footing as those of the greater maritime powers. His trading aspirations knew no end; he empowered the company directors to equip expeditions to the whaling grounds of Greenland and to open trade relations with the West Indies and to build more factories on the Coromandel coast and in Bengal.Footnote ⁵⁶

Charles believed that the maritime powers would not react to his encroachment on their Asian trade, but this proved a misjudgment on his part.Footnote ⁵⁷ Popular English publications were irate at Charles's attempts to gain a hold on Atlantic trade. The author of the Importance of the Ostend Company Considered demanded the London government “Destroy this cockatrice whilst young” and wrote of the rise of “the Austrian and popish interest” in a trade that was rightly the preserve of the Protestant powers.Footnote ⁵⁸ In the Dutch Republic, the directors of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) were not impressed by Charles's actions and did not value the new competition in the Indian Ocean. They lobbied with the States General, the highest executive body in the Dutch Republic, to stop this unwanted and, from their perspective, unlawful competition. Dutch jurists advocated that these extra-European activities emanating from the Habsburg Netherlands were prohibited under the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) and constituted an attempt to use imperial, no longer relevant, Spanish Habsburg trading rights to sanction Austrian Habsburg trade in the Indian Ocean and potentially beyond. Lengthy legal arguments resulted about the rights of “Castilians” trading from Austrian territories under Charles VI's flag.Footnote ⁵⁹ Here, again, was evidence of Charles's determination to reinstate united Habsburg rights at a time when international law of trade and war had limited those historic rights. Charles chose to transfer what he saw as his Spanish-Habsburg rights to trade and explore overseas to his Austrian-Habsburg territories. International opposition would not permit this to happen.

The States General put ever more pressure on Vienna, and on Charles's representatives in Brussels, to withdraw the GIC's charter. In 1727, Dutch patience came to an end; and in November, the States General ordered that the army be prepared for an invasion of the Austrian Netherlands with the purpose of occupying the port of Ostend. Charles was forced to back down, principally because he was embroiled in detailed negotiations about succession. He needed the support of the Dutch Republic for the Pragmatic Sanction, granting his daughter Maria Theresa rights to succeed him after his death. Charles withdrew his support for the company and, in return, in the Second Treaty of Vienna (March 1731), Great Britain and the Dutch Republic guaranteed the Pragmatic Sanction. Charles revoked the charter of 1722 and thereby terminated the GIC.Footnote ⁶⁰

Turning away from maritime trade, building on these qualified successes, which placed hoped-for global influence behind local geopolitical necessities, Charles instructed his jurists to compose terms whereby the claims of the nobles to their estates in lands recently liberated from the Ottoman Empire in Central and South Central Europe might be rejected. These lands should be, by right of conquest, the booty property of the king.Footnote ⁶¹ In these areas, Charles maintained a right completely different from that respectful attitude to historic rights that restrained Habsburg policy elsewhere.Footnote ⁶² A Subdelegation in Neoacquisitis was established to administer these areas, and many of its first overseers were experienced Spanish administrators.

When, after arriving from Barcelona, he first conquered great stretches of Central and East Central Europe from the Ottoman Empire between 1712 and 1718, Charles determined that the reconquered lands should be established as a Cameral Province. The first Governor of the region appointed by Charles, Claudius Florimund, Count Mercy, called the area “a land without lords and rulers, in which everything is puris camerale.”Footnote ⁶³ In this Central European reconquista, the land could not, indeed should not, be left in the hands of the native residents and owners. Many of the poorer Catalans and Valencians who had followed Charles from Spain to Vienna were first maintained in the city at the emperor's personal expense, but plans were drawn up to settle them in these sites of reconquista, especially in Hungary.Footnote ⁶⁴ Hungarians were guaranteed their rights, liberties and privileges, immunities, prerogatives and recognized customs by Charles III, but it did not stop the king and emperor from establishing new colonies in the kingdom, with “Új” or “New” Barcelona the biggest, settled by Catalan, Spanish, and Italian colonists who introduced mulberry trees and silk-weaving to the region.Footnote ⁶⁵ Other Catalan colonists brought vines, olives, and lemons; but their long-term success was more limited. Charles administered his European lands as if they were his Spanish lands; and the translation of vocabulary did not end with the terms of administration.

It is here worth considering the advent of a nomenclature of identification used during the reign of Charles in Central Europe. Administrators and bureaucrats promoted, through ascription, a more racialized form of ethnic identification in the region . The naciones of Spain became the Nationalitäten of the Austrian Habsburg lands, and this included all those non-Germans who were classified as different and potentially dangerous. “Nationalities” became a term, frequently of derision, which racially fixed groups as lower in this social reordering of the new Habsburg Central European ethnic hierarchy.Footnote ⁶⁶ In terms very similar to those applied to colonists in Spanish America, settlers from the heart of the empire were perceived as the best bastion against the enemy, in this terra deserta.Footnote ⁶⁷ Indeed, they were envisaged as a bulwark of Christianity, and colonization was planned with this in mind.Footnote ⁶⁸ Even the pinturas de castas of the Spanish Americas, which commented in a pseudoscientific manner on the racial qualities of different peoples, found analogous representation in the Austrian lands. The Styrian Völkertafel offered a Central European alternative to the new world method of racial stereotyping. Charles was responsible not only for the introduction of the Spanish court to Vienna, but also for a system of administration that saw his imperial, and colonial, worlds collapse.

Just as he had done in Spain after 1705, Charles began an immediate reform of the financial administration of the Austrian lands. He took it upon himself to arrest the increasing deficit his lands faced.Footnote ⁶⁹ These reforms were paralleled by the Bourbon reforms now taking place in Spain under Charles's “successor” Philip V. In fact, Charles had conceived of such changes even before leaving Spain, as is clear from correspondence with both Wratislaw and with Starhemberg, president of the Viennese court chancellery.Footnote ⁷⁰ Charles instructed that new taxes be raised, a reorganization of the administration of government was instituted with closer mechanisms for financial scrutiny, and a national effort to scale down debt was announced. A steady flow of revenue was expected, none less so than from a new tax to be placed on the Jews.Footnote ⁷¹ The role of Jews in his empire, whether in Spain or in Austria, was something that Charles had already considered while in Spain. In fact, rather dramatically, Charles had recommended the readmission of Jews into the Kingdom of Spain as early as 1709.Footnote ⁷²

Such reforming policies had their supporters at court, but they also had their opponents. In the first years of Charles's government in Vienna (1712–1720), two groups were at loggerheads: the older, established group of Bohemian and Austrian magnates and a new, so-called Spanish party that pushed for a “Spanish-style” administration. Both groups pushed for their own interests, with the Spanish party hoping for continuation of Habsburg claims to the Spanish crown. The Spanish dominions that came into the possession of the emperor under the terms of settlement with Spain and the international powers—mainly in Italy—remained the principal sites of exile for Spaniards loyal to the Austrian cause, as well as those Germans within the Spanish party at Vienna. Some 163 nobles resident in Vienna in 1703 had accompanied Charles to Spain and returned with him to the city in 1712.Footnote ⁷³ Comprised principally of Catalans and Neapolitans, and with a significant number of “Spanish priests”—Jesuits—in their number, the party formed a powerful bloc at the Viennese court. One in five nobles at Charles's court was a Spaniard or Italian, compared with fewer than one in ten at the court of Joseph I.Footnote ⁷⁴ It was said that they greatly supported Charles's retention of his Spanish mistress, whom he had first come to know in Barcelona, Marianna Pignatelli-Belriguardo (later Countess Althann, married to Charles's favorite Michael Johann Althann) and known universally as the “Spanish Althann,” as she proved a reminder of his Spanish connection.Footnote ⁷⁵ As Charles's favorite, Graf Althann had been given the “Spanish House” in Vienna, the former residence of the Spanish ambassador, a position Charles deemed unnecessary as he was rightfully Spanish king.Footnote ⁷⁶ The Spanish party was not universally loved: Graf Wratislaw commented that they caused “the greatest confusion” at court. Even so, the Spanish language was much heard in Vienna under Charles, and the still-common equivalent of “that's Greek to me,” das kommt mir Spanisch vor, is said to date from this period of linguistic confusion in the Residenzstadt.Footnote ⁷⁷

Not just Spanish personnel, but Spanish style and custom accompanied Charles to the Residenzstadt. There was a political, economic, religious, and cultural infrastructural migration to Austria, and the Habsburg court-in-exile at Barcelona was completely dismantled and transferred to Vienna. When Charles left Catalonia in the autumn of 1711, he brought with him a large following; and shortly thereafter a junta of Spanish ministers was at work in Vienna. Symbolic of the desire to recreate the Spanish court in Vienna was the celebration—the “Toison-feste”—organized for 30 November 1712 in honor of Saint Andrew, the patron saint of the Order of the Golden Fleece.Footnote ⁷⁸ This annual celebration, continued until 1739, was a loud and visible reminder of Charles's claim to the Burgundian and Spanish inheritance and was an act of defiance against the Bourbon Philip V who claimed headship of the Order. Between 1712 and 1725, two Orders of the Golden Fleece existed in parallel and of the ninety-seven knights named to the Order by Charles during this time, the largest number, thirty-one, were exiles from Spain and Spanish-Italy.Footnote ⁷⁹

In 1713, Charles established a new office in Vienna to deal with the diversity of dependencies to which he laid claim. These included not only the inherited lands in Central Europe, but also his Spanish lands in the Iberian peninsula and in Italy.Footnote ⁸⁰ Vienna became the new seat of the office of the Secretaría de Estado y del Despacho Universal del Consejo Supremo de España, whose members were almost exclusively Spaniards or Italians. Charles remained convinced that his Spanish visions could be further nurtured and his dream of universal empire could be resuscitated, emulating the actions of his hero and namesake Charles V.Footnote ⁸¹ Contemporaries were very conscious of the comparison, and Charles did much to underline how he, like Charles V, was both emperor and king of Spain. The poet Carl Gustav Heraeus wrote of the new emperor, when commemorating Joseph I, “we have a Charles, who is just like the Fifth”; and in other eulogies and poems, parallels were drawn between the new empress Elizabeth Christina and Charles V's wife and empress, also named Elizabeth.Footnote ⁸² Indeed, Charles's quest for the crown of Spain was related to his quest to father a male heir with Elizabeth Christina.Footnote ⁸³

As a consequence of his years in Spain, and in an attempt to make the court styles of both kingdoms more similar, Charles introduced the Spanish court ceremonial (Spanisches Hofzeremoniell) into Vienna, with the intention of reflecting greater imperial dignity, universality, and Catholicism.Footnote ⁸⁴ A period of Spanish-influenced architecture commenced, under the watchful eye of the emperor.Footnote ⁸⁵ In 1715, Charles charged a Hofkonferenz with the creation of a new Kammerordnung, and the emperor demanded a new court, as well as a court ceremonial.Footnote ⁸⁶ Work began on the famous Spanish Riding School and Spanish Hospital. At the same time, building further on the ambitions of his father Leopold, and the latter's ideal of a Vienna Gloriosa, Charles played a central part in the architectural enunciation of a Kaiserstil identifiable with this new ambitious Habsburg emperor-king. Fischer von Erlach the younger, Joseph Emanuel, was commissioned to build the imperial chancellery range (Hofkanzleitrakt) in the Hofburg in a style that was not only palatial, but also ambitious. The range was associated with culture in all its representative forms—the arts, religion, and learning.Footnote ⁸⁷ The elder Fischer von Erlach, Johann Bernhard, designed the imperial library in the Hofburg, begun in 1722. Drawing on Leibniz's idea for a centrally planned library, Fischer worked into his building plans the design of the Spanish royal library of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, complete with its longitudinal plan, book shelves, and open space.

Charles took an active interest in the building of the Karlskirche, designed by Johann Fischer von Erlach (begun 1716, completed 1737).Footnote ⁸⁸ Charles once again allowed, indeed encouraged, his association with Spain to be commemorated, physically, allegorically, and politically.Footnote ⁸⁹ The church is dominated, externally, by two spiral, so-called Solomonic, columns that evoke the biblical temple and the pillars of Jachin and Boaz. They also evoke fortitude and constancy, considered the personal virtues of Charles, and underscored an association, much favored by Charles, with King Solomon.Footnote ⁹⁰ Fischer von Erlach also invoked the Habsburg device of the Pillars of Hercules, first taken by the Emperor Charles V as his emblem, with the motto Plus Ultra. Most associated these Herculean columns with the Straits of Gibraltar (through which Charles had passed, when sailing from Lisbon to Barcelona, in 1705), standing as they did on either side of the means of access to and departure from the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. The pillars represented the gateway to Spanish discovery and conquest. For Charles V—and now his eponymous heir—they were the emblem of a Spanish, Habsburg, world empire.Footnote ⁹¹ Charles V had incorporated the device frequently into buildings constructed during his reign, most notably at his palace in Granada.Footnote ⁹² Through these pillars, Charles was connected with the Spanish empire overseas and with a world dominion. At the Karlskirche, dedicated to the saint Charles Borromeo, Charles used these pillars as a conspicuous symbol of his universalist claims, drawing not only on the example of Charles V, but also on the twin examples of his namesakes Charlemagne and his Burgundian ancestor Charles the Bold. Perhaps more than any other building constructed during Charles's residence in Vienna, the Karlskirche asserts his desire to recall, indeed reinstate, Spain in the Residenzstadt. With its harmonization of these various allegorical and historical elements and with symbolism expressing the ideal of a universal monarchy, Charles reinstated the pietas austriaca as the signal virtue of his reign.Footnote ⁹³

Not just architecture, but Spanish music and art, too, played a great role in the reformation of artistic life in Vienna.Footnote ⁹⁴ Ferdinand Ernst Graf von Mollarth accompanied Charles from Spain to Frankfurt for his imperial election, taking responsibility for music and subsequently becoming Hof-Musik-Inspektor in Vienna.Footnote ⁹⁵ Charles brought trumpeters and a drummer from his Spanish chapel, increasing the size of the royal chapel's choir and orchestra and making it more “Spanish.”Footnote ⁹⁶

Most exemplary of this reliance on a Spanish style in Austria was the deliberate attempt to reproduce that great architectural symbol of Spanish imperial hegemony, the Escorial (the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial) in the vicinity of Vienna. At Klosterneuburg, the “Austrian Escorial,” Charles ordered that a replica of the Spanish complex be constructed, as his monastery residence. After years of planning, construction began in 1730 according to plans laid down by Donato Felice d'Allio.Footnote ⁹⁷ The device of two pillars was once again used, but in its most provocative form. The stucco ceiling of the Ecksalon of Klosterneuburg shows the pillars flanking the world, a clear sign of this dream of a global empire. The ceiling of the oratorium portrays the different coats of arms and crests of the lands ruled over by the House of Habsburg; the crest of the kingdom of Spain takes a prominent place. The complex of Klosterneuburg was to be topped with nine domes, surmounted with crowns of the House of Habsburg from Spain and Austria, to proclaim the glory of imperial majesty.Footnote ⁹⁸

Unlike his brother Joseph I, who had engaged Fischer von Erlach to design the palace of Schönbrunn as a Versailles- and étatisme-inspired building for a new age in imperial rule, Charles based his ideas for his palace at Klosterneuburg on very different historical and ideological interpretations. Schönbrunn was too French for Charles; in 1712, he gave it as a gift to his brother's widow, the empress Amalie Wilhelmine. Klosterneuburg, on the other hand, represented a physical manifestation of the coming together of the church and state, of regnum and sacerdotium, just as in the medieval partnership of ecclesiastical and secular leaders. In the Escorial, as completed under Philip II, the church took the dominant middle point in the design. In Charles's Klosterneuburg, it would alternate architecturally between residential and religious rooms. The palace and monastery of Klosterneuburg offer therefore a unique insight into Charles's personality and into his dreams and ambitions. He valued court ceremonial and formality while also valuing piety and human qualities of devotion to his family.Footnote ⁹⁹ When Charles resided at Klosterneuburg, at the feast of St. Leopold in 1739, he expressed his great affection and appreciation for his Escorial, which was at that point only partly completed. He even considered retiring to the residence, just as Charles V had retired to Juste. The Austrian Escorial would never be completed as Charles intended, but it remains as the last great architectural expression of the idea of the Holy Roman Empire. It is symbolic, then, that it remained incomplete, as the empire became increasingly secular and the relationship of state and religion so evident in the building design no longer played as great a part in the age of enlightenment.

The “dream of universal empire” proved less a vision of liberation from Babylonian exile than oneiric affirmation of the loss of the promised land. Nothing came of Charles's hopes, dreams, and ambitions, as his time was consumed by the search for sanctioned pragmatism. Haunted by his time in Barcelona, by his subsequent loss of Spain, and by his inability to reinstate a Habsburg universal empire, Charles remained a disconsolate exile, never sure where home really was. He left behind a much-altered Europe. His favored form of government, which blended practices from Spain and Central Europe, would prove to have mixed success in his Austrian heartlands. Attitudes to religion, ethnicity, the economy, state, and society were significantly influenced by Charles's Austro-Spanish experiences. Most results were only seen long after Charles's untimely death. His decline, as his earliest biographers would have us believe, was caused by food poisoning after a meal of mushrooms—“a plate of mushrooms that changed the destiny of Europe.”Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Dying painfully over seven days, it would appear that Charles had had a premonition of the end, mentioning his imminent death to the papal nuncio almost three weeks earlier.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Charles died in the early hours of 20 October 1740 very much as he had lived, thinking of Spain and an imperial life that might have been.Footnote ¹⁰² His last word, it was recounted, was not “Vienna” but “Barcelona.”