Charles IV of Spain
Charles IV ruled Spain from 1788 to 1808 and presided over the collapse of the monarchy his father had strengthened. Born in Naples in 1748, the son of Charles III, he was good-natured, devout and incurious, preferring hunting and clockmaking to government, and left policy to others throughout his reign. He inherited within months of the French Revolution, and the reforming ministers of his father's reign were dismissed as the crown recoiled from anything associated with French ideas. From 1792 he governed through Manuel Godoy, a guards officer in his twenties who rose with extraordinary speed and was widely believed to be the queen's lover. Godoy took Spain to war against revolutionary France in 1793, lost, and then reversed the alliance entirely by the Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1796, binding Spain to France against Britain. The consequences were severe. The British destroyed Spanish naval power at Cape St Vincent in 1797 and, with the French, at Trafalgar in October 1805, which cut Spain off from its American colonies and their revenue. The finances collapsed into repeated bankruptcies. Godoy agreed to a joint invasion of Portugal in 1807, which brought large French armies into Spain that then did not leave. In March 1808 a rising at Aranjuez forced Charles to dismiss Godoy and abdicate in favour of his son Ferdinand. Napoleon summoned both to Bayonne, obtained abdications from each, and installed his brother Joseph — which triggered the Peninsular War. He spent his remaining years in exile in France and Rome, and died in Naples in 1819. Goya's group portrait of his family is famously unflattering.
- Lived: 1748 CE – 1819 CE
- Nationality: Spanish
- Roles: king, head_of_state
