The Spanish Risorgimento in the Western Mediterranean and Italy 1707–1748

I

The first half of the eighteenth century was a momentous period in the history of Spain and the Spanish Monarchy. The last Spanish Habsburg king, Charles II, died in 1700, and was succeeded by the first Spanish Bourbon, Louis XIV’s grandson, Philip V; a struggle for the succession then brought war to the heart of the peninsula in a way unknown for more than two hundred years. Philip won that struggle, retaining Spain and Spanish America, and abolishing the quasi autonomy which the territories of the Crown of Aragon – which had recognized Philip’s rival for the throne, the Austrian Habsburg ‘Charles III’ – had enjoyed since the creation of ‘Spain’ by Ferdinand and Isabella at the end of the fifteenth century. ¹ In marked contrast, Philip lost the territories which had been ruled by Spain in Flanders and Italy, in some cases for over two centuries. ² Philip’s African inheritance – a handful of fortified posts, or presidios, along the north African coast opposite Spain ³ – also shrank, when Oran was lost (1708); nor could Philip relieve Ceuta, under siege since 1694.

Yet, despite these remarkable developments, and a spate of publications in recent years, triggered in part by the tercentenary of Philip V’s accession, ⁴ his reign remains relatively obscure. It occupies virtually the whole of the first half of the eighteenth century, but historians still focus overwhelmingly on the succeeding half century. The war of succession has, certainly, attracted great interest, ⁵ but other important developments have not gained the attention they merit; these include a remarkable Spanish resurgence in the western Mediterranean between 1713 and 1748 in north Africa and, above all, in Italy.

This risorgimento, as it was described in 1725 in his end of mission relazione by the Venetian ambassador to Spain, Daniele Bragadin, ⁶ was part of a revival evident in many theatres, as Philip V sought to overturn the peace settlement of 1713–14. Anglophone historians have understandably privileged the transatlantic revanchist aspirations which culminated in the ‘War of Jenkin’s Ear’. Nevertheless, while the defence of Spain’s Indies was important, they were rarely seriously threatened in this period and were valued in Madrid primarily for the resources they supplied for the pursuit of Spanish ambitions in the Mediterranean. ⁷ In Italy, Philip wished to recover the territories lost to his erstwhile rival for the Spanish throne, ‘Charles III’, now the Austrian Habsburg Emperor Charles VI, and to Victor Amadeus II of Savoy, now king of Sicily. ⁸ Philip’s second marriage in 1714, to Isabel Farnese modified these priorities. Since Philip had two sons by his first marriage, it was unlikely that Isabel’s sons would succeed in Spain; she therefore sought for them the Italian duchies on which she had claims: Parma, Piacenza and Tuscany. ⁹

Philip V’s interventions in north Africa, which have attracted far less attention than his Italian adventures, ¹⁰ had very different origins – a mix of the religious and the secular. ¹¹ It has become almost a commonplace that the influence of religion on the foreign policy of most sovereigns declined after 1648, but this view is increasingly being questioned. ¹² A revisionist approach is particularly appropriate in the case of Philip, who was personally devout, ¹³ and also faced an ongoing aggressive Islamic jihad. ¹⁴ Some around Philip, including, in 1714, cardinal Belluga, one of his leading supporters among the Castilian clergy in the succession struggle, and in 1717 his chief minister, Giulio Alberoni, urged the king to give priority not to Italy but to Africa. ¹⁵ Nevertheless, on both occasions, Philip preferred to pursue his quarrel with his Christian, Catholic rival in Italy. However, the first Bourbon, like his Habsburg predecessors, could not ignore the threat, or the possibilities represented by north Africa.

Whatever the inspiration, these concerns underpinned that Spanish resurgence in the Mediterranean which historians have been singularly reluctant to recognize. Following Philip V’s recovery of Aragon, Valencia, Catalonia, Majorca and Ibiza from 1707, ¹⁶ his forces conquered Sardinia in 1717. ¹⁷ In 1718, 36,000 Spanish troops invaded Sicily. ¹⁸ This threat to the settlement of 1713–14 prompted an armed intervention by the Quadruple Alliance, which, after the destruction of the Spanish fleet off Sicily (1718), Philip reluctantly joined in 1720. ¹⁹ Many of the Spanish troops which then evacuated Sardinia and Sicily were redeployed to Ceuta, obliging the Moors to end their near thirty year siege. ²⁰ A new phase of activity began in 1731 when, in accordance with the treaty of Seville (1729), ²¹ an Anglo-Spanish expeditionary force carried Philip’s eldest son by his second wife, the Infante Don Carlos, to Italy where he was installed in Tuscany, Parma and Piacenza. ²² Having re-established a significant Spanish presence in central Italy, Philip again turned to Africa, where in 1732, 30,000 Spanish troops retook Oran. ²³

This was Philip V’s last African expedition. Henceforth Spanish efforts focused on Italy, Philip despatching troops there in 1733 at the start of the War of the Polish Succession. These forces collaborated with those already in the central Italian duchies to conquer Naples and Sicily (1734–35), ²⁴ which Philip promptly ceded to Don Carlos. But Philip and Isabel were disappointed in their hopes of expelling the Austrian Habsburgs from Italy, and of installing in Mantua and Milan another son, the Infante Philip. ²⁵ The War of the Austrian Succession saw a final bid to reconstruct Spanish Italy. ²⁶ Spanish intervention, in alliance with Louis XV of France, Don Carlos (Naples) and later the republic of Genoa, enjoyed remarkable initial success: by the end of 1745 Bourbon forces occupied the duchy of Savoy ²⁷ – alarming the Protestant Swiss ²⁸ – much of Piedmont, Parma and Piacenza, and Milan, which the Infante Philip entered in December of that year. ²⁹ But this was the peak of Spanish fortunes south of the Alps. Maria Theresa abandoned the struggle for Silesia, prioritizing that for Italy. The Bourbon forces were expelled from Milan and Parma, and suffered crushing defeat at Piacenza, setbacks which may have contributed to the death of Philip V in July 1746. ³⁰ But enough had been done to secure Parma and Piacenza for the Infante Philip at the peace (1748) which ended the generation-long cycle of Spanish intervention in Italy. ³¹

II

The relative neglect of this cycle of activity is easily explained. For one thing, the rise of Prussia in central Europe seems more noteworthy than an incomplete Spanish resurgence further south. Indeed, Spain was apparently in long-term decline, with the collapse of both empire and antiguo régimen looming in the early nineteenth century, such that the later eighteenth century, and the failure of Charles III – Don Carlos of Naples – to save the Bourbon monarchy in a bout of ‘Enlightened Despotism’ seems more noteworthy than the preceding reigns. ³² This is not to deny the importance attached by many commentators to Philip V’s reign as witnessing the first steps towards the creation of a modern, centralized, unitary and national Spain, exemplified by the suppression of Aragonese particularism, ³³ and significant administrative reform both at the centre – the eclipse of the Habsburg councils ³⁴ – and in the localities – the appearance of French style intendentes. ³⁵ Philip’s foreign adventures have been criticized as an irrelevant distraction from this modernizing agenda, having nothing to do with Spanish interests, and with Spanish resources being squandered, or sacrificed on behalf of Isabel Farnese’s sons. ³⁶ Indeed, a powerful historiographical tradition, echoing contemporary opinion, sees Philip as dominated by his wives, ³⁷ and Isabel Farnese as exploiting her hold on the king to lead him into adventures in Italy. It has even been suggested that there was a ‘feminization’ of politics in Spain in this period for precisely this reason. ³⁸ Criticism of Spanish Mediterranean policy in this period also reflects the view of some historians that empire had been a burden which many Spaniards willingly surrendered in 1713. ³⁹ The fact that Spanish ministers turned their backs on Italy after 1748, focusing instead on what many Spaniards then and later thought a proper national concern, the better exploitation of the resources of the Indies, appears to offer a final damning verdict on Philip’s Mediterranean adventures. ⁴⁰

However, the claims regarding the influence of Isabel Farnese understate Philip V’s own preoccupation with both Italy and Africa and his achievement there. Philip was, certainly, unusual among early modern monarchs in his uxoriousness, but we must recognize his own concern to recover Spain’s former Italian territories before his second marriage; nor do his wife’s rather different Italian ambitions explain Philip’s concern with north Africa. ⁴¹ As for his achievement, the future of Italy in 1713 seemed to lie with the Austrian Habsburgs and the House of Savoy, ⁴² yet by 1748 two Spanish Bourbon dynasties were entrenched there – one in the south, the other in the north – and remained there until the creation of the kingdom of Italy. The military successes which underpinned this outcome, particularly those in the War of the Polish Succession, represented a reversal of Spanish military fortune abroad after decades of apparent failure, and echoed the victories of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of Charles V. As for north Africa, the Catholic King had re-asserted himself and recovered lost ground; a stronger Spanish presence there was also a counterweight to British Gibraltar; ⁴³ and, as occurred earlier under Ferdinand of Aragon, enhanced the possibilities of intervention in Italy. ⁴⁴

These developments have not been completely neglected; Baudrillart’s monumental study of Philip V and the French Court is the most striking proof of this. ⁴⁵ Nevertheless, the War of the Polish Succession, in which the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy came close to collapse, and in consequence of which southern Italy passed to a Spanish cadet, has been relegated to secondary importance, ⁴⁶ as has the Italian theatre in the War of the Austrian Succession. Spanish ambitions there could have important implications elsewhere: in 1745, for example, when Philip anticipated having some 70,000 men in north Italy, Spanish ministers expected this to influence the impending election of the Holy Roman Emperor. ⁴⁷ As it was, by 1748, Philip and his successor, Ferdinand VI, had succeeded in forcing a revision of the peace settlement of 1713–14. Until this Spanish resurgence is given its proper due, relations between the European powers between the conclusion of the War of the Spanish Succession and that of the War of the Austrian Succession will not be properly understood. ⁴⁸ Spanish ambitions in the Mediterranean, and the response of other powers to them, also calls into question the commonplace – in some respects reinvigorated by the recent upsurge of interest in the ‘Atlantic world’ – that that sea was a backwater in this period. ⁴⁹

While emphasizing the international significance of the Spanish revival, and acknowledging the importance of non-Spanish factors in explaining Spain’s success, we cannot ignore the contribution of Spain’s own resources and the impact of that revival on Spain. These decades saw important changes within Spain which cannot be separated from the demands of Philip’s Mediterranean ambitions: these moulded Spanish state and society for a generation. These changes – affecting all aspects of the state’s operations: army, ⁵⁰ navy, ⁵¹ finances ⁵² and administration – have certainly attracted attention. However, the degree to which the ambitions of Philip and his queen represented a challenge, and how monarchs and ministers responded, has not been fully addressed: Philip’s Spain is inexplicably absent, for example, from a recent Anglophone collection on the eighteenth-century ‘fiscal-military state’. ⁵³ The existence of opposition within the elite to Philip and Isabel’s Italian policies – exemplified by the existence of a so-called ‘Spanish party’ – has long been a commonplace among historians, ⁵⁴ but the extent to which the state’s demands threatened to undermine the ‘construction of loyalty’ achieved in the War of the Spanish Succession, ⁵⁵ particularly during the Austrian succession conflict has been largely ignored.

Philip V’s Mediterranean policy did in fact have some domestic support and did represent the pursuit of broader Spanish interests, as Antonio Bethencourt Massieu has suggested. ⁵⁶ Bethencourt’s insight is salutary, and his appreciation of Jose Patiño, one of the architects of Spanish success, has rescued from relative obscurity an unjustly neglected contemporary of Walpole and Fleury, but Bethencourt does not sufficiently explore the domestic mobilization of resources necessitated by this policy. ⁵⁷ Just what constituted a national policy and ‘Spanishness’ is also an issue which – contentious in contemporary Spain – has barely been addressed apart from the Aragonese experience; the possibility that there might be a lingering supranational sense of identity, inherited from Habsburg Spain and shared by some Spaniards and some Italians has hardly been acknowledged.

As for modernization, here too caution is needed, ⁵⁸ not least because Philip V’s objective – the preservation and/or reconstruction of Spanish north Africa and Italy – was essentially backward-looking, indicating important elements of continuity across the change of dynasty in 1700, ⁵⁹ rather than the sense of fracture which informs most writing on the transition from Habsburg to Bourbon Spain. ⁶⁰ But the Bourbon state had even greater affinities with its predecessor: Philip not only sought to resurrect the Spanish Habsburg Mediterranean, but in doing so he also made greater use of older institutions and practices than has been recognized, an oversight in part due to the fact that historians tend to work on either Habsburg Spain or Bourbon Spain, rarely both. What follows represents a preliminary attempt to address some of these issues, and to re-assess the extent of the efforts which underpinned the Spanish resurgence in the Mediterranean after 1713 and their impact on Spain, not least in underpinning the re-creation of a Spanish ‘fiscal-military state’. ⁶¹

III

Contemporaries frequently saw Spanish policy as erratic, and as preferring war – and the threat of it – to diplomacy. In fact, the Spanish Court did seek negotiated solutions, ⁶² but success and – where diplomacy failed – military operations required that Philip V have an army at his disposal. The loss of Flanders and Italy in the succession struggle was accompanied by that of Habsburg Spain’s two key fighting units – both stationed outside Spain – the Army of Flanders and that of Lombardy. ⁶³ This was one reason why Philip had depended so much on Louis XIV. ⁶⁴ Thereafter, too, the most spectacular Spanish successes occurred in alliance with France, in the 1730s and 1740s. However, allies could not always be depended upon. Philip, therefore, needed an army entirely at his own disposal. Philip’s adventures involved the mobilization of large forces with his army fluctuating in size depending on the extent of is involvement in Italy and Africa. ⁶⁵ Those adventures also meant that the important changes in the way the Spanish forces were organized and armed and which were effected during the War of the Spanish Succession, ⁶⁶ were by no means the end of the process of reform.

Like most early modern armies, Philip’s included many foreigners: Flemings and Italians from the lost territories, Irish exiles and the ubiquitous Swiss. Philip’s foreign adventures ensured that this element remained substantial, but he also mobilized large numbers of his own subjects. These were recruited in various ways. Historians have focused on the move towards compulsion. ⁶⁷ This is understandable, although it risks underestimating the extent to which – as in Habsburg Spain – men continued to volunteer, ⁶⁸ or were recruited by private individuals. ⁶⁹ But Philip’s need for military manpower did necessitate resort to Habsburg-style impressment of the rootless poor, ⁷⁰ and imposed levies, often known as quintas. Districts were allocated quotas which they were expected to fill from among the single adult male population, recruits being found by drawing lots – the sorteo de quinta. More striking was Philip’s reform of the militia – in part inspired by French models, but also refurbishing an older Spanish institution – which had important consequences for the adult male population. ⁷¹ Thus in January 1734, following Spain’s entry into the War of the Polish Succession – it was no coincidence – Philip ordered the creation of 33 new militia regiments, totalling over 23,000 men. ⁷² In the War of the Austrian Succession, the militia was increasingly used to recruit the regular forces in Italy. ⁷³

Operations abroad raised major logistical problems. The challenge was not always successfully met, ⁷⁴ but the Spanish forces benefitted from the services of some very able administrators. These included a succession of future chief ministers each of whom made or enhanced his reputation on one or more of Philip V’s Mediterranean expeditions: José Patiño, José Campillo and the marquis of Ensenada. Apart from the elaboration of a cadre of administrators of this sort, there were no major innovations in the way the army was provided for in this period, not least because the Spanish army had largely been overhauled between 1700 and 1713. As for the debate which had taken place in the Habsburg era about whether the state or the private sector should supply the armed forces, ⁷⁵ this was no longer an issue: Philip V’s state was, like that of the Habsburgs, emphatically a ‘contractor state’. However, some refinement within this broad structure was possible. In 1743, the intendente of the army in Savoy, Ensenada, demonstrated his reforming credentials, by delegating to individual units the contracting of their uniforms, on the grounds that they could be trusted to ensure good quality, to the benefit of the men, the army as fighting unit, and the royal finances. ⁷⁶

IV

The Spanish resurgence in the western Mediterranean also depended upon sea power. As on land, before and after 1713, the first Bourbon’s successes were most marked when in alliance with France, ⁷⁷ but Philip V also greatly improved Spain’s naval strength. In 1718 the Sicilian expeditionary force totalled over 400 vessels: while the vast majority of these were transports, they also included 40 warships of various types. ⁷⁸ As for the Oran expedition of 1732, it is thought to have comprised more than 600 sails, again mainly transports. ⁷⁹ Intervention in Italy from 1733, and again from 1741, meant a further deployment of Spanish naval power in the Mediterranean (as well as the Atlantic). ⁸⁰ At its peak, in the late 1730s, Philip V’s fleet totalled about 60 vessels; in 1746 it still amounted to 37. ⁸¹

The size and firepower of the Spanish fleet could not compare – or compete – with those of Britain and France, but it played a crucial role in successive African and Italian expeditions. In 1717, the landing in Sardinia was made under cover of the guns of ships and galleys; ⁸² and in 1734 and 1735 the appearance of the Spanish fleet off the coasts of Naples and Sicily contributed to the decision of those territories to declare for Spain. ⁸³ In fact, however, combat was never the most important function of the fleet. More important – as before 1700 ⁸⁴ – was its role in transporting and convoying men, horses, supplies and munitions from Spain to Africa and to Italy. Most of those expeditions involved an initial desembarco, or ‘descent’, a combined operation necessitating an impressive mobilization of shipping – warships and transports – and thereafter a continual passage to and fro of vessels of all sorts. ⁸⁵ During the War of the Austrian Succession, a major seaborne supply operation preceded the successful 1745 campaign. ⁸⁶

That Philip V had a sizeable fleet was all the more striking given the losses Spain sustained, off Sicily in 1718 and off Toulon in 1744. These losses were made good by having ships constructed in Spain and America: in 1731, Don Carlos sailed to Italy with five ships newly built at Santander. ⁸⁷ In Spain, galleys were built at Cartagena and at Barcelona. ⁸⁸ To ensure supplies of timber for shipbuilding, Philip relied upon a system of forest regulation inherited from the Habsburgs, which was not significantly revised until 1748; the timing of the reform was no doubt influenced by the experience of the War of the Austrian Succession. ⁸⁹ Alternative sources of ships – especially if they were needed urgently – included the hire, purchase or seizure of Spanish and foreign merchant ships: half of the 12 Spanish vessels engaged off Toulon in 1744 had been diverted from the Indies trade. ⁹⁰

Large numbers of men were also needed, to crew the ships and move the galleys: in 1718 the 29 ships on the Sicilian expedition had crews totalling 10,110 men, and in 1744 the 12 Spanish ships engaged off Toulon 8,450 men. ⁹¹ Seamen were recruited in various ways. As with soldiers, there were volunteers, ⁹² and the king also received offers to recruit seamen at the recruiter’s own cost, in return for some favour. ⁹³ When volunteers could not be found, impressment was used, as in the past: in March 1733, for example, the Savoyard minister to the Spanish Court reported the seizure of men in the night in Seville, Cadiz, and other ports in Andalucia. ⁹⁴

A refinement of this method was a tried and tested system of imposing quotas on coastal communities. ⁹⁵ The most striking development in this respect – a maritime equivalent of the reform of the militia – was the introduction of a compulsory registration scheme, the so-called matrícula de mar in 1726, ⁹⁶ which was reformed in October 1737, in the closing stages of the War of the Polish Succession, and again in 1751, after the experience of the Austrian Succession. ⁹⁷ In echoing the French maritime classes, the matrícula seems to demonstrate the extent to which the eighteenth-century Spanish Bourbon fiscal-military state constructed by Philip V imitated the innovations of seventeenth-century Bourbon France. Yet it also represented the revival of an older Spanish institution, dating back to the reign of Philip IV. Clearly war in the 1730s and 1740s forced the pace of change. The system embodied in the order of 1737 offered various privileges to all those who registered to serve with the royal navy. ⁹⁸ This was a typically antiguo régimen solution to a problem: trading service for new privilege and further fragmenting jurisdiction. As with the imposition of military service, the new obligation was not always welcome, but it is possible that historians focus too much on resistance and the weaknesses of institutions of this sort, which did produce men: within two years, 39,000 men had registered under the new scheme. ⁹⁹ If all else failed in Spain, seamen might be recruited abroad. ¹⁰⁰ Too often there were insufficient men to crew all vessels: in 1744, Navarro was obliged to leave in port three of his ships for this reason. This was a major factor in Spain’s weakness at sea in the War of the Austrian Succession. However, we should not ignore the success of the matricula and – more broadly – the contribution of the fleet to what was achieved between 1713 and 1748.

The galleys, too, needed manning, between 250 and 300 oarsmen per galley. Oarsmen had long been recruited from Spain’s convict population, the so-called forzados, such that the needs of the galleys continued – as before 1700 – to influence penal policy. In February 1734, following Spain’s entry into the War of the Polish Succession, Philip V decreed new penalties for those committing robberies in and around Madrid. Offenders aged over 17 would receive the death penalty, those aged between 15 and 17 200 lashes and 10 years in the galleys; the latter penalty was also to be applied to receivers of stolen goods. ¹⁰¹ Convicts continued to supply most of the oarsmen: in September 1744 forzados contributed 160 of those manning the oars aboard the galley San José. ¹⁰² The final substantial source of oarsmen was (Moorish) slaves: as in the past, these were either captured in war or purchased at markets around the Mediterranean. ¹⁰³

Supplying the fleet was a major logistical challenge, one which – as with the army and as before 1700 – was met by resorting to private contractors. ¹⁰⁴ The most important developments in this respect were the emergence of a secretariat of state responsible for the navy, the creation of the naval departments in 1726, and to a lesser extent that of the short-lived Admiralty, or Almirantazgo (1737–48). ¹⁰⁵ The latter represented in large part simply the establishment of an appanage for the Infante Philip, hiving off jurisdiction for naval affairs to his advantage. In that respect, it represented a retrograde step in terms of centralization and uniformity. Ensuring that the conclusion of the War of the Austrian Succession provided for the establishment of the Infante in Parma and Piacenza was thus of some importance since it facilitated the suppression of the Almirantazgo. ¹⁰⁶

V

The fleet was one of the most costly items of Spanish expenditure in Philip V’s reign, underlining the fact that the effort to re-establish Spain as a significant power in the western Mediterranean after 1713 was very expensive. Indeed, it seems likely that Philip’s Mediterranean adventures may have contributed to the epoch-making shift in Spanish financial administration from tax farming to the administration of tax revenues by state officials, which took off during and after the War of the Austrian Succession. ¹⁰⁷

Spending as a whole rose throughout Philip V’s reign, from an annual average of just over 230 million reales between 1714 and 1720 to more than 325 million between 1741 and 1750. ¹⁰⁸ This growth was fuelled by various demands, including the cost of a larger royal family, ¹⁰⁹ but war and its instruments were the driving force. Most striking is the extent to which Philip’s African and Italian adventures prompted significant hikes in spending: the years between 1717 and 1720, those between 1732 and 1735/37, and above all those between 1742 and 1748, saw sharp increases in total expenditure, all at a higher plateau of spending than before. ¹¹⁰

Revenue fluctuated according to commitments, rising sharply in 1717–20, 1733–38, and from 1741, when Philip V was engaged in Italy (and America). ¹¹¹ Philip could seek to fund these interventions by cutting other spending, as a Junta de Medios established in 1737, in the wake of Spanish participation in the War of the Polish Succession, sought to do; ¹¹² by maximizing the ordinary revenues and by other, extraordinary means. Measures to maximize the ordinary revenues included eradicating fraud, pursuing tax arrears, ¹¹³ and increasing advances from tax farmers, echoing Spanish Habsburg practice and that elsewhere in Europe. There was, certainly, a discernible shift from tax farming to public administration, especially marked in the 1740s, but there was also movement in the other direction. The determining factor was not ideology but pragmatism – what yielded most. ¹¹⁴ Thus, at the end of 1745, there were reports that Philip – desperate for funds for the army in Italy – hoped to reverse the recent trend away from tax farming, in order to secure a large advance which could be remitted to Italy, but was thwarted by a lack of bidders for the farm. ¹¹⁵

The reign did see the exploitation of new sources of revenue, including those extracted from Aragon, Valencia and Catalonia, ¹¹⁶ and those resulting from the pruning of ecclesiastical exemptions conceded in the Concordat of 1737, which was agreed – not coincidentally – towards the close of the War of the Polish Succession. ¹¹⁷ Like his predecessors, Philip V passed on the burden to the localities in various ways. These included the resumption and sale, from 1737, of wastes, or baldios, and royal lands, or realengas, to the detriment of the finances of local communities. ¹¹⁸ Radical, too, was an unprecedented 10 per cent levy on incomes decreed in 1741, although the local elites managed to have it turned into a more generalized levy, which was less damaging to their own pockets. ¹¹⁹ Not entirely successful either were efforts during the Austrian Succession struggle to exact the full value of tax rather than the sum for which communities compounded; this provoked rioting in at least one community in Granada in 1746. ¹²⁰ Philip also resorted to requests for donativos – supposedly ‘free gifts’ – but did not exploit this device as much as had the Habsburgs in the seventeenth century.

Among those asked for donativos were the merchant communities of Seville and Cadiz, ¹²¹ tapping that distinctive contribution to Spanish finances, the Indies. Nevertheless, it is important not to exaggerate the importance of Philip V’s American revenues: Castile remained the financial core, as under the Habsburgs. Having said that, and despite the inability to fully realize the Spanish monopoly of the wealth of the Indies – as is seen in the (continued) decline of the Habsburg system of convoys, the flotas and galeones, ¹²² Philip benefitted from a revival of mining in America and of trade between the Indies and Spain. The figures are not always easy to interpret, but one breakdown of royal revenues, prepared in 1737, put those derived from the Indies at 40,000,000 reales a year on average, almost 20 per cent of the total. ¹²³ Equally important, and often obscured by the practice of computing American revenues in five-yearly totals, was the fact that remittances from the Indies were irregular and that a substantial consignment might arrive just when an expedition was being prepared and money was most needed. ¹²⁴

When these and a wide range of other extraordinary measures, including venality, ¹²⁵ failed to bridge the gap between spending and income, Philip V, again like his Habsburg predecessors – as well as most contemporary sovereigns, relied on credit. Philip successfully reduced the funded juro debt, ¹²⁶ but on the other hand he accumulated a considerable short-term, unfunded debt – arrears of pensions, salaries and so on – above all in the 1730s and 1740s when he was most active in Africa and Italy. ¹²⁷ In March 1739, there was nothing for it but to declare bankruptcy, following the recent involvement in Italy and at the start of the ‘War of Jenkin’s Ear’. This was, in effect, as before 1700, a rescheduling of debts which released funds in the short term, for war. ¹²⁸

VI

The mobilization of men, munitions, ships and money, inevitably affected Spain’s administration, which was transformed under Philip V. The replacement of government by council with government by secretariat of state on the French model, and along with it the disappearance of some councils – Aragon, Flanders and Italy – is familiar enough, as is the fact that a succession of what were in effect chief ministers – Alberoni, Ripperda, Patiño, Campillo and Ensenada – blurred the new departmental distinctions. ¹²⁹ However, we are less familiar with how the new system was tested and embedded in its first decades by Philip’s Mediterranean adventures. ¹³⁰ We may, in fact, exaggerate conciliar decline. Those councils which survived could still play an important role. This was especially true of the council of Castile, which continued to liaise between Crown and ministers and local communities. It remained the premier council, and one with real clout given the demands made of those communities for war and its role as tribunal, guarantor of justice and constitutional watchdog, as well as royal instrument. ¹³¹

As for the intendencia, which had indigenous antecedents in the shape of provincial superintendentes dating from 1691, the development of this new institution was also shaped by the cycles of activity in the Mediterranean. ¹³² Intendentes were appointed in the Crown of Aragon before the close of the succession conflict and throughout Castile in 1718. Soon after the end of that first wave of military activity, however, the provincial intendentes were largely abolished, only those of the army and navy surviving – and they were not re-introduced until 1749. The real work-horse of royal authority in the provinces therefore remained the corregidor, the main agent of the Crown there since at least the reigns of Ferdinand and Isabella, ¹³³ and who continued to ensure the co-operation of the urban elites. ¹³⁴

In terms of careers in this developing system, it is worth emphasizing that some of Philip V’s most successful ministers played an important part in one or more of his military expeditions, obtaining invaluable experience, making useful contacts and securing royal favour. Patiño’s career is perhaps the most celebrated of these, but he was not alone. Campillo was Intendente General of the Spanish army in Italy during the War of the Polish Succession before holding the Secretaryships of Finance, War, Navy and the Indies; he made his bid for power in 1741 with a series of memoranda on how to mount another intervention in the peninsula which drew on that experience. ¹³⁵ As for the future marques of Ensenada, he served as commissary of the navy on the expeditions to Oran (1732) and Naples (1733–34), and as Intendente General of the army in Italy in the War of the Austrian Succession, before succeeding Campillo as chief minister. ¹³⁶ Others who played an administrative role in one or more Mediterranean adventures also carved out successful careers. ¹³⁷

Philip V’s Spain was clearly a ‘fiscal-military state’: war and a substantial defence establishment underpinned not only the elaboration of new obligations on the king’s subjects and new administrative arrangements but also drove up spending, revenue and the debt, as well as encouraging the advance of state control of related operations. ¹³⁸ Striking, but unsurprising, is the prevalence of essentially ad hoc expedients – of improvisation – rather than of fundamental, long-term efforts to resolve structural problems and boost income. That was beginning to change in the 1740s, but major reform was postponed until peacetime, following the conclusion of Philip’s cycle of Mediterranean adventures in 1748.

VII

The demands of war created political pressures and tensions, even opposition. Dissent had few opportunities for formal expression, not least because of Philip’s reluctance to call the Castilian Cortes, which only assembled once, very briefly, between 1713 and 1746, to swear to Philip’s son and heir in 1724. In fact, Philip continued to consult the relatively few voting towns, above all to agree to the regular renewal of the millones tax, one of the pillars of the royal finances, which continued to depend on the consent of the Cortes. ¹³⁹ For its part, the council of Castile continued, as in Habsburg Spain, to offer the king’s subjects some protection against arbitrary rule. ¹⁴⁰

But most dissent was expressed elsewhere, through other channels. ¹⁴¹ The most celebrated example was the manuscript periodical, the Duende Crítico (1735–36), whose attacks are said to have contributed to Patiño’s early death in 1736. ¹⁴² But it was not alone in purporting to reflect, and/or seeking to mobilize opinion. ¹⁴³ Ministers were not passive in the face of such criticism and adopted various approaches, for example pursuing the author of the Duende Critico. But they also sought to mould opinion by trumpeting military successes, in order to show that the effort was worth it. Thus the Gaceta de Madrid reported triumphs in Italy; ¹⁴⁴ it also reported the prizes taken by the privateers who supplemented the royal fleet in wartime. ¹⁴⁵ Success was also invariably followed by a Te Deum mass: about 20 such masses were ordered by the king in that annus mirabilis, 1745.

The true extent and depth of opposition to both Philip V’s Mediterranean policy and the burdens he imposed on his subjects to achieve it is not easy to determine, and we should not exaggerate it, or underestimate the existence of support within Spain for that policy, including from among a community of exiles who had fled Spanish Italy as it collapsed, who were often of Spanish ancestry, and who represented one strand in a body of sentiment which remained committed to the notion of a supranational Monarchy. ¹⁴⁶ However, there are hints of a growing resentment towards those demands in the War of the Austrian Succession. Some of Philip’s subjects clearly felt that his deployment of the militia to Italy breached the terms of its establishment in 1733, prompting in response a firm statement, in the preamble to a royal order on the subject in early 1745 – when Philip was sending all men possible to Italy – of the king’s right to deploy the militia where he thought fit in an emergency. ¹⁴⁷ In Galicia, the incessant demands for militiamen for Italy, and the increased tax burden prompted frequent representations to the Court, but to little effect. Indeed, at the end of 1746 there were reports of the arrest of those who had spoken or written about such topics ‘in a reflecting manner’, and of orders to the post offices to discover the guilty. ¹⁴⁸ However, monarch and ministers could not completely ignore disquiet. In perhaps the most striking example of a reversal of policy, suggesting that the Bourbon monarchy was less ‘absolute’ than some historians have argued, in 1747, following a groundswell of criticism from the Castilian towns, the new king, Ferdinand VI, ordered an end to the resumption and sale of baldíos. ¹⁴⁹ It is possible, too, that Ferdinand’s winding down of Spain’s commitment to the conflict in Italy from 1746 represented both a response to a broader hostility to a war which was pressing his subjects hard, ¹⁵⁰ and proving less successful, and a reflection of his own and his wife’s antipathy to his stepmother, Isabel Farnese. ¹⁵¹

VIII

These adventures inevitably affected Spanish society. The maritime matricula reinforced, for example, the mosaic of privilege which typified ancien régime Spain. More broadly, some historians have identified a degree of ‘militarization’ of Spanish government and society under Philip V and across the eighteenth century. ¹⁵² This almost certainly goes too far, ¹⁵³ but members of both elite and non-elite social groups were being drawn into military service, the former encouraged by a policy of ‘positive discrimination’ to join the officer corps of Philip’s growing army, ¹⁵⁴ and reaping various rewards. These latter included grants of hábitos and encomiendas in the Military Orders, which had been incorporated into the Crown by Ferdinand and Isabella. ¹⁵⁵ Grants of this sort were made to army officers who participated in the supposed victory at Campo Santo in Italy in 1743, and to naval officers who fought in the engagement off Toulon in 1744. ¹⁵⁶ A number of untitled lesser nobles who served the king in his Mediterranean adventures were rewarded with titles which reflected that service: admiral Jose Navarro, hero of Toulon was created marques de la Victoria. Such titles were emblematic of the extent to which Philip’s Mediterranean ambitions facilitated the emergence, or consolidation of a service nobility. Others who were ennobled included various financiers who funded the operations in Africa and Italy. ¹⁵⁷

IX

As indicated earlier, the core of the Spanish Monarchy remained Castile. However, Philip V’s military success in the War of the Spanish Succession enhanced royal authority in the Crown of Aragon, underpinned by the presence thereafter of large numbers of troops. ¹⁵⁸ Most historians of Spain discuss this development in a narrowly Iberian context, but the recovery of the Aragonese territories was also a crucial prelude to that of Spanish Italy because the ports of Catalonia and Valencia played – inevitably given their location – a key role in the despatch of men and matériel to Italy. ¹⁵⁹ This almost certainly contributed to Catalonia’s economic development in the eighteenth century. Historians have focused on other aspects of that growth, notably the development of the textile industry in the second half of the century, ¹⁶⁰ but the activity associated with the various Italian adventures involved substantial expenditure in and around Barcelona, with local contractors providing many of the services – transports, draught animals and so on ¹⁶¹ – associated with these operations. This may in turn – it must remain a reasonable hypothesis – have underpinned a greater attachment of at least some sectors of society in the Aragonese territories, above all in Catalonia, to the emerging Bourbon ‘Spanish’ fiscal-military state.

X

For a generation from 1713 onwards, Philip V’s ‘revisionist’ aspirations made Spain perhaps the single greatest threat to peace and stability in Europe. Philip did not achieve all he sought – some of his projects ended disastrously – but he was far more successful than historians have been prepared to acknowledge in re-building Spanish north Africa and Spanish Italy. In 1736, the British consul in Naples thought that the relation of that realm to Spain was much as in the days when the kingdom was part of the Spanish Monarchy, since ‘the first motion of all important Transactions [comes] from the Court of Madrid’. ¹⁶² Philip was most successful when supported by allies, but the demands made of his own subjects involved some real innovations in the ways men and money were mobilized, as a Spanish ‘fiscal-military state’ was constructed, or reconstructed. Those demands also – particularly in the years of heightened activity in Italy during the War of the Austrian Succession – generated tensions, such that Philip’s death in 1746, and the conclusion of the war two years later, may have defused a potentially explosive domestic situation. But while there was novelty – the shape and timing of reform in both Spain and the Indies was often determined by the demands of Mediterranean expeditions – the first Bourbon’s reign in Spain is equally remarkable for its conservatism. Philip was hoping, in Africa and Italy – and across the Atlantic – to turn the clock back, to restore the Monarchy he had inherited in 1700; and in seeking to do so, he relied as much on traditional institutions and practices, as on new ones, as well as on men many of whom had reached maturity under Carlos II. ¹⁶³ The persistence of older, supranational bonds and identities, in Spain but also in what had been Spanish Italy ensured some support for Philip in both the former and the latter, although there is evidence to suggest, too, that the burden may ultimately have weakened enthusiasm for Philip’s Italian project in Spain. ¹⁶⁴ However, the fact that Ferdinand VI and his ministers prioritized the Atlantic after 1748, rejecting Philip’s attempt to reconstruct a Spanish Mediterranean, should not obscure the importance of the latter.