Philip II of Spain
Philip II ruled the largest empire in the world from a desk and lost the Netherlands and an armada. Born at Valladolid in 1527, the son of Charles V, he was Spanish by upbringing where his father had been Burgundian, and he governed by paper: he read and annotated state documents for hours daily, and his officials complained of delays measured in years. He inherited Spain, the Netherlands, Naples, Milan and the Americas in 1556, and added Portugal and its empire in 1580 by inheritance and invasion, which briefly united the whole Iberian world. He was married four times, including to Mary I of England from 1554 to 1558, which made him king consort of England. His fleet under his half-brother Don John destroyed the Ottoman navy at Lepanto in 1571. The Netherlands were the disaster. His attempt to enforce Catholic uniformity and centralised taxation on a wealthy, partly Protestant and highly privileged set of provinces provoked revolt from 1566. The Duke of Alba's Council of Troubles executed over a thousand people and made compromise impossible, and the war ran for eighty years. He sent the Armada against England in 1588 to end Elizabeth's support for the Dutch. It was broken by fireships, gunnery and weather. American silver arrived in enormous quantities and financed nothing durable; he declared bankruptcy four times. He built the Escorial, a palace, monastery, library and mausoleum in one, and worked in a small cell within it. He died there of cancer in 1598 after weeks of agony.
- Lived: 1527 CE – 1598 CE
- Nationality: Spanish
- Roles: king, head_of_state
