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Philip V of Spain: The King Who Reigned Twice

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Philip V of Spain: The King who Reigned Twice
Henry A.F. Kamen
New Haven and London: The Yale University Press, 2001
ISBN-10: 0300087187
ISBN-13: 978-0300087185

Review by Reverend Brian Van Hove, S.J.
Alma, Michigan
Published in the Josephinum Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 1 (Winter/Spring 2003): 158-160

Some years ago it was fashionable to write psycho-history, but that era has passed. Nonetheless Henry Kamen has given us today a well documented history which depends upon a specific psychological interpretation of Philip V, the French-born Bourbon King of Spain, who ruled there for forty-six years. The life of the king and the country was dominated by the bipolar disorder or manic depression from which the Philip suffered all his life. With the aging process, the monarch's behavior became only more bizarre and uncontrollable in the eighteenth century before our knowledge of contemporary medication. On page 190 we read, "For the better part of 1732, the king had not been governing Spain." Again on page 214, "In August that year (1738) Keene reported that when the king `retires to dinner, he sets up frightful howlings'." The illness was crippling for him and consequently for the affairs of state when Spain, still with the largest empire on earth, was entering into a period of gradual decline.
Were it not for his attentive wives--he was married twice--perhaps he might not have achieved anything at all. "Perhaps the most impressive achievement of Philip V's regime had been its efficiency in finding revenue to meet its needs. Government income had risen dramatically after the War of Succession [1704-1715], and the expeditions to Sardinia and Sicily had taken place without generating any financial crisis." (page 208) Some courtiers accused him of giving to much time to conjugal relations, though marital bliss seemed to help his spirits. For much of his reign only the care of his wife and the preparations for war seemed to lift the depression and bring him up into his hyperactive phase, but even then not consistently. During his first reign the War of the Spanish Succession occupied his youthful energies. He and his grandfather collaborated on strategy. The king loved both the war and his wife, Marie Louise, upon whom he depended for everything. But when the war was finally over not even his wife could keep him from sinking into deep depression.
After 1737 the king did finally find an effective therapy in the beautiful singing voice of the Italian castrato Carlo Broschi, known as Farinelli, who was even incorporated into the royal household. Unfortunately this took place toward the end of Philip's life which came suddenly at two in the afternoon on July 9, 1746, when he was just sixty-two years old.
Kamen wrote this biography to correct the record. Previous authors had portrayed the king in a negative way, making of him a kind of fool and failure at the beginning of the Age of Reason. Instead, we now learn from the best sources which have survived that Philip V was both lucid and intellectually coherent, though a very sick man who spent weeks and even months in bed. The charge that he was under the control of his wives is demonstrated to be false when we understand that they were doing their duty to "cover" for him when he was too dysfunctional to speak for himself. "When he was seriously indisposed, she forbade any access to him, which inevitably irritated both diplomats and members of the government." (page 206) Though after 1727 Elizabeth Farnese had the powers of governor and even directed foreign policy, she never made major decisions independently of her royal husband (page 162). Generally, Philip's wives promoted only his policies, not their own, as did also his faithful ministers whom Kamen goes to some length to introduce to us. Sadly, the fire in the Alcázar of Madrid on December 24, 1734, destroyed a great deal of what might have been quite useful for the present study.
As a very young man Philip, then the duke of Anjou, was required to renounce his claim to the throne of France if he were to rule Spain. He had a Spanish grandmother and a French grandfather, though he always felt French by culture. For political reasons this grandfather, the Sun King Louis XIV who had married the daughter of Philip IV of Spain in 1660, fully concurred in this decision for the felicity and peace of Europe (page 5). The last Habsburg king of Spain had died on November 1, 1700, and so after some negotiations Philip accepted the throne of Spain. Yet the dream of returning to rule France never completely left Philip. At times he also supported the claim of his son to succeed to the throne of France.
To complicate the story, Philip abdicated the Spanish monarchy to pursue with his wife the eternal salvation of their souls. Probably this religious zeal was in response to his illness or a pious front to hide the real reason. But even before and after that decision he had tried several times in the midst of serious depression to abdicate secretly though in an irrational and disorderly way. Government must be rational, and a variety of factors must be recognized for a peaceful transition to take place. Therefore his illness was not to be allowed to control the succession in Spain. Once he was barely stopped by the intervention of his second wife Elizabeth who in 1728 managed to have a nobleman seize a document of abdication and destroy it. While in major depression he kept trying to abdicate in such a frantic manner over a period of years.
Kamen's subtitle, "The King who Reigned Twice", refers to the formal and legal abdication which was at last approved through the proper organs of government and international diplomacy. Philip's son Ferdinand, the prince of Asturias, became King Luis I of Spain on February 9, 1724. This was a relief for some who had always desired a Spanish-born ruler. However, the young successor to Philip unexpectedly died on August 31, 1724, having named his father his universal heir. Philip therefore reascended the Spanish throne, again with the understanding he would not try to take two crowns by claiming his rightful dynastic succession in France. This explains how it happened that Philip "reigned twice". Despite his illness Philip V was a patron of the arts and a pious man who sincerely sought the best interests of his adoptive empire.
This book is a delight for readers of Henry Kamen's earlier studies, such as his biography of Philip II, Philip of Spain. Any student of Spanish history, or the history of the early eighteenth century in Europe, would greatly profit from reading the clear and bright English of Kamen's work on Philip V.

Philip V is a king who is more often talked about than subjected to scholarly inquiry. His role in the war of Spanish Succession and his subsequent career on the throne and his second marriage have been the subject of numerous rumors and speculation. Henry Kamen's book rights a great wrong and restores Philip to the modern reader by subjecting his career and mental history to a modern sensibility. Philip's probable bi-polar disorder expalins a great deal about Philip's behavior Kamen's book is not only useful to the reader interested in Spain, but in 17th century European history in general.

Was the King Crazy?

Mr. Kamen's book is not really a biography of the Spanish king. Rather, it is a diatribe against other historians who described Philip V as weak, mentally disturbed and a disaster for this country. The author does not see it that way.

Mr. Kamen explains that Philip suffered from manic depression and bipolar disorder. Could that be another expression for mentally unfit? While the king spent days and weeks in bed, screaming loud and messing up himself and his surroundings, the author claims that he was still of a composed mind and absolutely lucid. Philip's second wife, Elizabeth Farnese, took over the command of the kingdom, saying that she only acted on the instructions of her husband. Do we want to believe her? What we can believe is that, during Philip?s first marriage to Marie Louise of Savoy and even beyond, the affairs of Spain were run by the king's grandfather, King Louis XIV of France. Under Elizabeth Farnese, the French influence lessened and was supplanted by an Italian hegemony.

Given this very strong foreign influence, and the considerable power still exercised by the Spanish grandees, one could question whether or not it really mattered that much if Philip was always lucid or bipolar. Mr. Kamen may have lost the basis for his argument.

As a history of the founding of the Boubon dynasty in Spain, I like this book. It's informative about the blood relationships of contenders for the crowns of Aragon and Castille a little more than a century after the Moors were defeated by Ferdinand and Isabella. The author describes the effect of Phillip's mental illness on political power, on family relationships, and on the formation of a centralized, Spanish administration. This is not a thriller of a book, but it teaches details one never hears about in school, for instance, about the role of marriages on treaties, territorial sovereignty and national identity, or about local versus centralized taxation to support royalty and nobility. It's a good thing that Phillip married strong, politically savvy and devoted women both times.

Kamen makes a fruitless attempt to "rehabilitate" the first Bourbon king of Spain, known as Philip V.
No matter how he might try, the author offers very little that could convince a reader that this man contributed anything of value that would obliterate the sorry record of achievements of the very wealthy nation over which he ruled.
Kamen tries to generate sympathy for this man by appealing to current psychiatric babble -- claiming that he suffered from "bipolar disorder." One might generate sympathy for anyone who developed the disordered psychological system that Philip had developed, if he were to be regarded simply as a human being. How can a modern author ignore the tremendous suffering and disorder that resulted from a society being convinced that such a man should rule over a vast empire? The contents of this book does demonstrate the kind of folly into which masses of people can be led by being induced to uphold the kind of reality that allowed a man like Philip to act as a figurehead for a nation that controlled vast wealth and resources.
Kamen, however, conveniently gives little attention to the tremendous suffering of the general public which resulted from a system which allowed a man who worked from a most unusual psycholgical system to remain as a figurehead of power for a nation that controlled vast wealth. Instead, he tries to insert -- between the descriptions of Philip's blatantly unsual pychological functioning -- tidbits which are supposed to generate sympathy and to convince the reader that this man actually accomplished useful functions during his long tenure as king of Spain -- 1700-1746.
This book might have been useful as a clear cut example of how a nation's citizenry can be led to engage in extremely unproductive and, ultimately, dangerous activity if they are first convinced to accept a set of basic constructions -- "the divine right of kings," "the power of the market place," etc. This man served as the figurehead for a power structure that steered Europe -- and The Western Hemisphere -- through vastly significant events. Though a historian can hold to the premise that he/she should not engage in "what if" writing, he/she can -- I would claim -- point out how people of a particular era had been "trapped" in their constructions.