Archduke Charles of Austria (Charles VI)

Biography

The man in whose name the Grand Alliance fought the war, Archduke Charles was the younger son of Emperor Leopold I and the Habsburg candidate for the Spanish throne. He actually occupied Madrid twice (1706 and 1710) but never secured lasting Spanish loyalty — most Spaniards preferred their Bourbon king. When his brother Joseph I died in 1711 and Charles became Emperor, the entire reason for the Alliance's continued fighting evaporated: placing Charles on the Spanish throne would have re-created the dangerous union of Habsburg Spain and Austria that the war had supposedly been fought to prevent. Britain made peace, and Charles found himself negotiating rather than conquering.