did stimulate some trade and industry, but the trading opportunities encountered were limited Matters began to change in the s with the large scale extraction of silver from the rich deposits of Mexico's Guanajuato region, but it was the opening of the silver mines in Mexico's Zacatecas and Potosí in Upper Peru modern day Bolivia in that became legendary During the th century, Spain held the equivalent of US$ trillion terms in gold and silver received from New Spain Ultimately, however, these imports diverted investment away from other forms of industry and contributed to inflation in Spain in the last decades of the th century I learnt a proverb here , said a French traveler in Everything is dear in Spain except silver This situation was aggravated by the loss of much of the commercial and artisan classes with the expulsions of the Jews and Moriscos The vast imports of silver ultimately made Spain overly dependent on foreign sources of raw materials and manufactured goods citation needed The wealthy preferred to invest their fortunes in public debt juros , which were backed by these silver imports, rather than in production of manufactures and the improvement of agriculture This helped perpetuate the medieval aristocratic prejudice that saw manual work as dishonorable long after this attitude had started to decline in other west European countries The silver and gold whose circulation helped facilitate the economic and social revolutions in the Low Countries, France and England and other parts of Europe helped stifle them in Spain The problems caused by inflation were discussed by scholars at the School of Salamanca and arbitristas but they had no impact on the Habsburg government citation needed The Habsburg dynasty spent the Castilian and American riches in wars across Europe on behalf of Habsburg interests, defaulted on their debt several times, and left Spain bankrupt several times These problems led to a number of revolts across his empire, notably that of Castilian rebels in the Revolt of the Comuneros, but these rebellions were put down The Habsburgs' political goals were several Access to the resources of the Americas gold, silver, sugar and products of Asia porcelain, spices, silk Undermining the power of France and containing it in its eastern borders Maintaining Catholic Habsburg hegemony in Germany, defending Catholicism against the Protestant Reformation Charles attempted to quell the Reformation at the Diet of Worms but Martin Luther refused to recant his 'heresy ' However, Charles's piety could not stop his mutinying troops from plundering the Holy See in the Sacco di Roma Defending Europe against Islam, notably the Ottoman Empire To spread religion to the unconverted souls of the new world With conflict between Catholics and Protestants raging in Europe, the new world was an ideal place for more Catholics to be recruited The Pillars of Hercules with the motto Plus Ultra as symbol of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in the Town Hall of Seville th century Spanish intervention in Europe edit Struggles of Charles V for Italy edit See also Italian Wars With the ascent of the king Charles I in and his election as sovereign of the Holy Roman Empire in , Francis I of France found himself surrounded by Habsburg territories, invaded the Spanish possessions in Italy in , and inaugurated the second war of Franco Spanish conflict The war was a disaster for France, which

suffered defeat at the Battle of Biccoca , the Battle of Pavia , at which Francis was captured , and the Battle of Landriano before Francis relented and abandoned Milan to Spain The Battle of Pavia King Charles I Charles V Holy Roman Emperor achieved victory at the Battle of Pavia in and surprised many Italians and Germans and elicited concerns that Charles would endeavor to gain ever greater power citation needed Pope Clement VII switched sides and now joined forces with France and prominent Italian states against the Habsburg Emperor, resulting in the War of the League of Cognac Charles grew exhausted with the pope's meddling in what he viewed as purely secular affairs In , Charles' army of mercenaries in northern Italy, underpaid and desiring to plunder the city of Rome, mutinied, advanced southward toward Rome, and sacked the city The sack of Rome, while unintended by Charles, embarrassed the papacy sufficiently enough that Clement, and succeeding popes, were considerably more circumspect in their dealings with secular authorities citation needed In , Clement's refusal to annul the first marriage of King Henry VIII of England to Catherine of Aragon may have been partly or entirely motivated by his unwillingness to offend the emperor and have his capital sacked for perhaps a second time The Peace of Barcelona, signed between Charles V and the Pope in , established a more cordial relationship between the two leaders Spain was effectively named the protector of the Catholic cause and Charles was crowned as King of Italy Lombardy in return for Spanish intervention in overthrowing the rebellious Florentine Republic In , the great admiral Andrea Doria allied with the Emperor to oust the French and restore Genoa's independence, opening the prospect for financial renewal marks the first loan from Genoese banks to Charles In , the king of France Francis I announced his unprecedented alliance with the Islamic sultan of the Ottoman, Suleiman the Magnificent, by occupying the Spanish controlled city of Nice in concert with Ottoman forces Henry VIII of England, who bore a greater grudge against France than he held against the Emperor for standing in the way of his divorce, joined Charles V in his invasion of France Although the Spanish were defeated at the Battle of Ceresole in Savoy the French army was unable to seriously threaten Spanish controlled Milan, whilst suffering defeat in the north at the hands of Henry, thereby being forced to accept unfavourable terms The Austrians, led by Charles's younger brother Ferdinand, continued to fight the Ottomans in the east Charles went to take care of an older problem the Schmalkaldic League Religious conflicts in the Holy Empire edit A map of the dominion of the Habsburgs following the abdication of Charles V as depicted in The Cambridge Modern History Atlas Habsburg lands are shaded green From the lands in a line from the Netherlands, through to the east of France, to the south of Italy and the islands were retained by the Spanish Habsburgs The Schmalkaldic League had allied itself to the French, and efforts in Germany to undermine the League had been rebuffed Francis's defeat in led to the annulment of the alliance with the Protestants, and Charles took advantage of the opportunity He first tried the path of negotiation at the Council of Trent in , but the Protestant leadership, feeling betrayed by the stance taken by the Catholics at the council, went to war, led by the Saxon elector Maurice In response, Charles invaded Germany at the head of a mixed Dutch–Spanish army, hoping to restore the Imperial authority The emperor personally inflicted a decisive defeat on the Protestants at the historic Battle of Mühlberg in In , Charles signed the Peace of Augsburg with the Protestant states and restored stability in Germany on his principle of cuius regio, eius religio, a position unpopular with Spanish and Italian clergymen Charles's involvement in Germany would establish a role for Spain as protector of the Catholic, Habsburg cause in the Holy Roman Empire the precedent would lead, seven decades later, to involvement in the war that would decisively end Spain as Europe's leading power Defeat of France edit Charles V's only legitimate son, Philip II of Spain r – parted the Austrian possessions with his uncle Ferdinand Philip treated Castile as the foundation of his empire, but the population of Castile was never great enough to provide the soldiers needed to support the Empire When he married Mary Tudor, England was allied to Spain The celebrations following the Peace of Cateau Cambrésis between Spain and France Spain was not yet at peace, as Henry II of France came to the throne in and immediately renewed conflict with Spain Charles's successor, Philip II, aggressively prosecuted the war against France, crushing a French army at the Battle of St Quentin in Picardy in and defeating Henry again at the Battle of Gravelines The Peace of Cateau Cambrésis, signed in , permanently recognized Spanish claims in Italy In the celebrations that followed the treaty, Henry was killed by a stray splinter from a lance France was stricken for the next thirty years by chronic civil war and unrest see French Wars of Religion and, during this period, removed from effectively competing with Spain and the Habsburg family in European power games Freed from effective French opposition, Spain saw the apogee of its might and territorial reach in the period – The opening for the Genoese banking consortium was the state bankruptcy of Philip II in , which threw the German banking houses into chaos and ended the reign of the Fuggers as Spanish financiers The Genoese bankers provided the unwieldy Habsburg system with fluid credit and a dependably regular income In return the less dependable shipments of American silver were rapidly transferred from Seville to Genoa, to provide capital for further ventures European conflicts at the time of Philip II edit The time for rejoicing in Madrid was short lived In , Calvinist led riots in the Netherlands prompted the Duke of Alba to march into the country to restore order In , William of Orange, better known as William the Silent, led a failed attempt to drive Alba from the Netherlands These battles are generally considered to signal the start of the Eighty Years' War that ended with the independence of the United Provinces The Spanish, who derived a great deal of wealth from the Netherlands and particularly from the vital port of Antwerp, were committed to restoring order and maintaining their hold on the provinces According to Luc Normand Tellier, It is estimated that the port of Antwerp was earning the Spanish crown seven times more revenues than the Americas In , a band of rebel Dutch privateers known as the watergeuzen Sea Beggars seized a number of Dutch coastal towns, proclaimed their support for William and denounced the Spanish leadership Otto van Veen The Relief of Leiden after the Dutch had broken their dykes in the Eighty Years' War For Spain, the war became an endless quagmire, sometimes literally In , the Spanish army under Luis de Requeséns was repulsed from the Siege of Leiden after the Dutch broke the dykes, thus causing extensive flooding In , faced with the bills from his , man army of occupation in the Netherlands, the cost of his fleet that had won at Lepanto, together with the growing threat of piracy in the open seas reducing his income from his American colonies, Philip was forced to accept bankruptcy The army in the Netherlands mutinied not long after, seizing Antwerp and looting the southern Netherlands, prompting several cities in the previously peaceful southern provinces to join the rebellion The Spanish chose to negotiate, and pacified most of the southern provinces again with the Union of Arras in In response, the Netherlands created the Union of Utrecht, as an alliance between the northern provinces, later that month They officially deposed Philip in when they enacted the Act of Abjuration Under the Arras agreement the southern states of the Spanish Netherlands, today in Belgium and the Nord Pas de Calais and Picardy régions in France, expressed their loyalty to the Spanish king Philip II and recognized his Governor General, Don Juan of Austria In , this gave King Philip the opportunity to strengthen his position when the last member of the Portuguese royal family, Cardinal Henry of Portugal, died Philip asserted his claim to the Portuguese throne and in June sent the Duke of Alba with an army to Lisbon to assure his succession Though the Duke of Alba and the Spanish occupation, however, was little more popular in Lisbon than in Rotterdam, the combined Spanish and Portuguese empires placed into Philip's hands almost the entirety of the explored New World along with a vast trading empire in Africa and Asia In , when Philip II moved his court back to Madrid from the Atlantic port of Lisbon where he had temporarily settled to pacify his new Portuguese kingdom, the pattern was sealed, in spite of what every observant commentator privately noted Sea power is more important to the ruler of Spain than any other prince wrote a commentator, for it is only by sea power that a single community can be created out of so many so far apart A writer on tactics in observed, The might most suited to the arms of Spain is that which is placed on the seas, but this matter of state is so well known that I should not discuss it, even if I thought it opportune to do so The defense of Cádiz, by Zurbarán Portugal required an extensive occupation force to keep it under control, and Spain was still reeling from the bankruptcy In , William the Silent was assassinated by a half deranged Catholic, and the death of the popular Dutch resistance leader was hoped to bring an end to the war It did not In , Queen Elizabeth I of England, sent support to the Protestant causes in the Netherlands and France, and Sir Francis Drake launched attacks against Spanish merchants in the Caribbean and the Pacific, along with a particularly aggressive attack on the port of Cadiz In , hoping to put a stop to Elizabeth's intervention, Philip sent the Spanish Armada to attack England Unfavourable weather, plus heavily armed and manœuvrable English ships, and the fact that the English had been warned by their spies in the Netherlands and were ready for the attack resulted in defeat for the Armada However, the failure of the Drake–Norris Expedition to Portugal and the Azores in marked a turning point in the on off – Anglo–Spanish War The Spanish fleets became more effective in transporting greatly increased quantities of silver and gold from the Americas, while English attacks suffered costly failures The Spanish Armada leaving the Bay of Ferrol Spain had invested itself in the religious warfare in France after Henry II's death In , Henry III, the last of the Valois lineage, died at the walls of Paris His successor, Henry IV of Navarre, the first Bourbon king of France, was a man of great ability, winning key victories against the Catholic League at Arques and Ivry Committed to stopping Henry of Navarre from becoming King of France, the Spanish divided their army in the Netherlands and invaded France in This proved a disaster The pacification at the time of Philip III edit Faced with wars against France, England and the Netherlands, each led by capable leaders, the bankrupted empire found itself competing against two strong adversaries Continuing piracy against its shipping in the Atlantic and the costly colonial enterprises forced Spain to renegotiate its debts in The crown attempted to reduce its exposure to the different conflicts, first signing the Treaty of Vervins with France in , recognizing Henry IV since a Catholic as king of France, and restoring many of the stipulations of the previous Peace of Cateau Cambrésis The Kingdom of England, suffering from a series of repulses at sea and from an endless guerrilla war by Catholics in Ireland, who were supported by Spain, agreed to the Treaty of London, , following the accession of the more tractable Stuart King James I Castile provided the Spanish crown with most of its revenues and its best troops The plague devastated Castilian lands between and , causing the deaths of some , people A great number of Castilians went to America or died in battle In , the great majority of the Morisco population of Spain was expelled It is estimated that Castile lost about % of its population between and Such a dramatic drop in the population meant the basis for the Crown's revenues was dangerously weakened in a time when it was engaged in continuous conflict in Europe Peace with England and France gave Spain an opportunity to focus its energies on restoring its rule to the Dutch provinces The Dutch, led by Maurice of Nassau, the son of William the Silent and perhaps the greatest strategist of his time, had succeeded in taking a number of border cities since , including the fortress of Breda Following the peace with England, the new Spanish commander Ambrogio Spinola, a general with the ability to match Maurice, pressed hard against the Dutch and was prevented from conquering the Netherlands only by Spain's latest bankruptcy in In , the Twelve Years' Truce was signed between Spain and the United Provinces At last, Spain was at peace – the Pax Hispanica Spain made a fair recovery during the truce, putting its finances in order and doing much to restore its prestige and stability in the run up to the last truly great war in which she would play a leading part Philip II's successor, Philip III, was a man of limited ability, uninterested in politics and preferring to delegate management of the empire to others citation needed His chief minister was the capable Duke of Lerma The Surrender of Breda to Ambrogio Spinola, by Velázquez This victory came to symbolize the renewed period of Spanish military vigour in the Thirty Years' War The Duke of Lerma and to a large extent Philip II had been uninterested in the affairs of their ally, Austria In , the king replaced him with Don Baltasar de Zúñiga, a veteran ambassador to Vienna Don Balthasar believed that the key to restraining the resurgent French and eliminating the Dutch was a closer alliance with Habsburg Austria In , beginning with the Defenestration of Prague, Austria and the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand II, embarked on a campaign against the Protestant Union and Bohemia Don Balthasar encouraged Philip to join the Austrian Habsburgs in the war, and Spinola, the rising star of the Spanish army in the Netherlands, was sent at the head of the Army of Flanders to intervene Thus, Spain entered into the Thirty Years' War The road to Rocroi edit In , Philip III was succeeded by the considerably more religious Philip IV The following year, Don Balthasar was replaced by Gaspar de Guzmán, Count Duke of Olivares, a reasonably honest and able man After certain initial setbacks, the Bohemians were defeated at White Mountain in , and again at Stadtlohn in The war with the Netherlands was renewed in with Spinola taking the fortress of Breda in The intervention of Christian IV of Denmark in the war threatened the Spanish position, but the victory of the Imperial general Albert of Wallenstein over the Danes at Dessau Bridge and again at Lutter both in , eliminated that threat There was hope in Madrid that the Netherlands might finally be reincorporated into the Empire, and after the defeat of Denmark the Protestants in Germany seemed crushed France was once again involved in its own instabilities the famous Siege of La Rochelle began in , and Spain's eminence seemed clear The Count Duke Olivares stridently affirmed, God is Spanish and fights for our nation these days Olivares realized that Spain needed to reform, and to reform it needed peace, first and foremost with the United Provinces However, Olivares aimed for peace with honour which meant in practice a peace settlement which would have restored to Spain something of its predominant position in the Netherlands This was unacceptable to the United Provinces and the inevitable consequence of that was the constant hope that one more victory would after all lead to peace with honour – perpetuating the ruinous war which Olivare had wanted to avoid to begin with To illustrate the precarious economic situation of Spain at the time, it is sufficient to recall that it was actually Dutch bankers who financed the East India merchants of Seville during the truce, presumably At the same time, everywhere in the world Dutch entrepreneurship and colonists were undermining Spanish and Portuguese hegemony Spain badly needed time and peace to repair its finances and to rebuild its economy While Spinola and the Spanish army were focused on the Netherlands, the war seemed to go in Spain's favor But saw the collapse of the Castilian economy The Habsburgs had been debasing their currency to pay for the war and prices exploded, just as they had in previous years in Austria Until , parts of Castile operated on a barter economy owing to the currency


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jeanie-marie-sullivan jean-jennings jeanna-fine jeannie-pepper jenna-jameson jenna-jane jenna-presley jenna-wells jennifer-haussmann jennifer-janes jennifer-jordan jennifer-morante jennifer-noxt jennifer-stewart jennifer-welles jennifer-west jenny jenny-feeling jenny-fields jenny-wings jersey-jaxin jesie-st-james jesse-capelli jessica-bangkok jessica-bogart jessica-darlin jessica-fiorentino jessica-gabriel jessica-laine jessica-may jessica-road jessica-wylde jessi-foster jill-ferari jill-kelly joana-redgrave joan-devlon joanna-storm joanna-sweet jody-maxwell joelle-lequement joelle-petinot johnni-black jordana-james jordan-green jordan-nevaeh jordan-star josephine-carrington joslyn-james julia-chanel julia-dal-fuoco juliana-grandi julia-paes julia-parton julia-perrin julia-swen julia-thomas julie-meadows julie-rage julie-simone juliet-anderson juliet-graham juliette-carelton kacey-jordan kagney-linn-karter kaitlyn-ashley kalena-rios kami-andrews kamila-smith kandee-licks kandi-barbour 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kristina-king kristina-klevits kristina-soderszk kristine-heller kristin-steen krisztina-ventura krystal-de-boor krystal-steal kylee-karr kylee-nash kylie-brooks kylie-channel kylie-haze kylie-wylde kym-wilde kyoto-sun lachelle-marie lacy-rose lady-amanda-wyldefyre lady-stephanie laetitia-bisset lana-burner lana-cox lana-wood lara-amour lara-roxx lara-stevens lataya-roxx latoya laura-clair laura-lazare laura-lion laura-may laura-orsolya laura-paouck laura-zanzibar lauren-black laurence-boutin lauren-montgomery laurien-dominique laurien-wilde laurie-smith lauryl-canyon lauryn-may leah-wilde lea-magic lea-martini leanna-foxxx lee-caroll leigh-livingston leilani lenora-bruce leslie-winston lesllie-bovee letizia-bruni lexi-lane lexi-matthews lezley-zen lia-fire liliane-gray liliane-lemieuvre lili-marlene lily-gilder lily-labeau lily-rodgers lily-valentine linda-shaw linda-vale linda-wong linnea-quigley lisa-bright lisa-de-leeuw lisa-k-loring lisa-lake lisa-melendez lisa-sue-corey lise-pinson little-oral-annie liza-dwyer liza-harper lizzy-borden logan-labrent lois-ayres lola-cait long-jean-silver loni-bunny loni-sanders loona-luxx lorelei-lee lorelei-rand lorena-sanchez lori-alexia lori-blue lorrie-lovett luci-diamond lucie-doll lucie-theodorova lucy-van-dam lydia-baum lynn-franciss lynn-lemay lynn-ray lynn-stevens lynx-canon lysa-thatcher madelina-ray madison-parker magdalena-lynn maggie-randall mai-lin mandi-wine mandy-bright mandy-malone mandy-may mandy-mistery mandy-starr marcia-minor maren margit-ojetz margitta-hofer margo-stevens margot-mahler mariah-cherry marianne-aubert maria-tortuga marie-anne marie-christine-chireix marie-christine-veroda marie-claude-moreau marie-dominique-cabannes marie-france-morel marie-luise-lusewitz marie-sharp marilyn-chambers marilyne-leroy marilyn-gee marilyn-jess marilyn-martyn marilyn-star marina-hedman marion-webb marita-ekberg marita-kemper marlena marlene-willoughby marry-queen martine-grimaud martine-schultz maryanne-fisher mary-hubay mary-ramunno mary-stuart mascha-mouton maud-kennedy mauvais-denoir maxine-tyler maya-black maya-france megan-leigh megan-martinez megan-reece mei-ling melanie-hotlips melanie-scott melba-cruz melinda-russell melissa-bonsardo melissa-del-prado melissa-golden melissa-martinez melissa-melendez melissa-monet mercedes-dragon mercedes-lynn merle-michaels mesha-lynn mia-beck mia-lina mia-smiles michele-raven michelle-aston michelle-ferrari michelle-greco michelle-maren michelle-maylene michelle-monroe micki-lynn mika-barthel mika-tan mikki-taylor mimi-morgan mindy-rae ming-toy miranda-stevens miss-bunny miss-meadow miss-pomodoro missy missy-graham missy-stone missy-vega misti-jane mistress-candice misty-anderson misty-dawn misty-rain misty-regan mona-lisa mona-page moni monica-baal monica-swinn monika-peta monika-sandmayr monika-unco monique-bruno monique-cardin monique-charell monique-demoan monique-gabrielle monique-la-belle morgan-fairlane morrigan-hel moxxie-maddron mulani-rivera mysti-may nadege-arnaud nadia-styles nadine-bronx nadine-proutnal nadine-roussial nadi-phuket nanci-suiter nancy-hoffman nancy-vee natacha-delyro natalia-wood natalli-diangelo natascha-throat natasha-skyler naudia-nyce nessa-devil nessy-grant nesty nicki-hunter nicky-reed nicole-berg nicole-bernard nicole-black nicole-grey nicole-london nicole-parks nicole-scott nicole-taylor nicolette-fauludi nicole-west nika-blond nika-mamic niki-cole nikita-love nikita-rush nikki-charm nikki-grand nikki-king nikki-knight nikki-randall nikki-rhodes nikki-santana nikki-steele nikki-wilde niko nina-cherry nina-deponca nina-hartley nina-preta oana-efria obaya-roberts olesja-derevko olga-cabaeva olga-conti olga-pechova olga-petrova olivia-alize olivia-del-rio olivia-flores olivia-la-roche olivia-outre ophelia-tozzi orchidea-keresztes orsolya-blonde paige-turner paisley-hunter pamela-bocchi pamela-jennings pamela-mann pamela-stanford pamela-stealt pandora paola-albini pascale-vital pat-manning pat-rhea patricia-dale patricia-diamond patricia-kennedy patricia-rhomberg patrizia-predan patti-cakes patti-petite paula-brasile paula-harlow paula-morton paula-price paula-winters pauline-teutscher penelope-pumpkins penelope-valentin petra-hermanova petra-lamas peyton-lafferty phaedra-grant pia-snow piper-fawn pipi-anderson porsche-lynn porsha-carrera precious-silver priscillia-lenn purple-passion queeny-love rachel-ashley rachel-love rachel-luv rachel-roxxx rachel-ryan rachel-ryder racquel-darrian rane-revere raven reagan-maddux rebecca-bardoux regan-anthony regine-bardot regula-mertens reina-leone reka-gabor renae-cruz renee-foxx renee-lovins renee-morgan renee-perez renee-summers renee-tiffany rhonda-jo-petty rikki-blake riley-ray rio-mariah rita-ricardo roberta-gemma roberta-pedon robin-byrd robin-cannes robin-everett robin-sane rochell-starr rosa-lee-kimball rosemarie roxanne-blaze roxanne-hall roxanne-rollan ruby-richards sabina-k sabre sabrina-chimaera sabrina-dawn sabrina-jade sabrina-johnson sabrina-love-cox sabrina-mastrolorenzi sabrina-rose sabrina-scott sabrina-summers sacha-davril sahara sahara-sands sai-tai-tiger samantha-fox samantha-ryan samantha-sterlyng samantha-strong samueline-de-la-rosa sandra-cardinale sandra-de-marco sandra-kalermen sandra-russo sandy-lee sandy-pinney sandy-reed sandy-samuel sandy-style sandy-summers sara-brandy-canyon sara-faye sarah-bernard sarah-cabrera sarah-hevyn sarah-mills sarah-shine sara-sloane sasha sasha-hollander sasha-ligaya sasha-rose satine-phoenix satin-summer savannah-stern savanna-jane scarlet-scarleau scarlet-windsor seka selena serena serena-south severine-amoux shana-evans shanna-mccullough shannon-kelly shannon-rush shantell-day sharon-da-vale sharon-kane sharon-mitchell shaun-michelle shawna-sexton shawnee-cates shay-hendrix shayne-ryder sheena-horne sheer-delight shelby-star shelby-stevens shelly-berlin shelly-lyons sheri-st-clair sheyla-cats shonna-lynn shyla-foxxx shy-love sierra-sinn sierra-skye sigrun-theil silver-starr silvia-bella silvia-saint silvie-de-lux silvy-taylor simone-west sindee-coxx sindy-lange sindy-shy siobhan-hunter skylar-knight skylar-price skyler-dupree smokie-flame smoking-mary-jane solange-shannon sonya-summers sophia-santi sophie-call sophie-duflot sophie-evans sophie-guers stacey-donovan stacy-lords stacy-moran stacy-nichols stacy-silver stacy-thorn starla-fox starr-wood stefania-bruni stella-virgin stephanie-duvalle stephanie-rage stephanie-renee stevie-taylor summer-knight summer-rose sunny-day sunset-thomas sunshine-seiber susan-hart susanne-brend susan-nero susi-hotkiss suzanne-mcbain suzan-nielsen suzie-bartlett suzie-carina suzi-sparks sweet-nice sweety-pie sybille-rossani sylvia-benedict sylvia-bourdon sylvia-brand sylvia-engelmann syreeta-taylor syren-de-mer syvette szabina-black szilvia-lauren tai-ellis taija-rae taisa-banx talia-james tamara-lee tamara-longley tamara-n-joy tamara-west tami-white tammy tammy-lee tammy-reynolds tania-lorenzo tantala-ray tanya-danielle tanya-fox tanya-foxx tanya-lawson tanya-valis tara-aire tasha-voux tatjana-belousova tatjana-skomorokhova tawnee-lee tawny-pearl tayla-rox taylor-wane teddi-austin teddi-barrett tera-bond tera-heart tera-joy teresa-may teresa-orlowski teri-diver teri-weigel terri-dolan terri-hall tess-ferre tess-newheart thais-vieira tia-cherry tianna tiara tiffany-blake tiffany-clark tiffany-duponte tiffany-rayne tiffany-rousso tiffany-storm tiffany-towers tiffany-tyler tiger-lily tigr timea-vagvoelgyi tina-blair tina-burner tina-evil tina-gabriel tina-loren tina-marie tina-russell tish-ambrose tommi-rose tonisha-mills topsy-curvey tori-secrets tori-sinclair tori-welles tracey-adams traci-lords traci-topps traci-winn tracy-duzit tracy-love tracy-williams tricia-devereaux tricia-yen trinity-loren trisha-rey trista-post trixie-tyler ultramax ursula-gaussmann ursula-moore uschi-karnat valentina valerie-leveau valery-hilton vanessa-chase vanessa-del-rio vanessa-michaels vanessa-ozdanic vanilla-deville velvet-summers veri-knotty veronica-dol veronica-hart veronica-hill veronica-rayne veronica-sage veronika-vanoza via-paxton vicky-lindsay vicky-vicci victoria-evans victoria-gold victoria-knight victoria-luna victoria-paris victoria-slick victoria-zdrok viper virginie-caprice vivian-valentine vivien-martines wendi-white wendy-divine whitney-banks whitney-fears whitney-wonders wonder-tracey wow-nikki xanthia-berstein yasmine-fitzgerald yelena-shieffer yvonne-green zara-whites zsanett-egerhazi zuzie-boobies

crisis, and the government was unable to collect any meaningful taxes from the peasantry and had to depend on revenue from its colonies The Spanish armies, like others in German territories, resorted to paying themselves on the land Battle of Nördlingen Decisive victory for the Catholic Imperial army and Spain over the Swedes Olivares had backed certain taxation reforms in Spain pending the end of the war, but was blamed for another embarrassing and fruitless war in Italy The Dutch, who during the Twelve Years' Truce had made increasing their navy a priority, which showed its maturing potency at the Battle of Gibraltar , managed to strike a great blow against Spanish maritime trade with the capture by captain Piet Hein of the Spanish treasure fleet on which Spain had become dependent after the economic collapse Spanish military resources were stretched across Europe and also at sea as they sought to protect maritime trade against the greatly improved Dutch and French fleets, while still occupied with the Ottoman and associated Barbary pirate threat in the Mediterranean In the meantime the aim of choking Dutch shipping was carried out by the Dunkirkers with considerable success In a Spanish Portuguese fleet, under Admiral Fradique de Toledo, regained the strategically vital Brazilian city of Salvador da Bahia from the Dutch Elsewhere, the isolated and undermanned Portuguese forts in Africa and the Asia proved vulnerable to Dutch and English raids and takeovers or simply being bypassed as important trading posts In , Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, one of history's most noted commanders, landed in Germany and relieved the port of Stralsund, the last continental stronghold of German forces belligerent to the Emperor Gustavus then marched south and won notable victories at Breitenfeld and Lützen, attracting more Protestant support with every step he took The situation for the Catholics improved with Gustavus's death at Lutzen in , and a key victory at Nordlingen was won in From a position of strength, the Emperor approached the war weary German states with a peace offering in many accepted, including the two most powerful, Brandenburg and Saxony But then France entered the war, and diplomatic calculations were once again thrown into confusion The Battle of Rocroi , the symbolic end of Spain's grandeur Cardinal Richelieu of France had been a strong supporter of the Dutch and Protestants since the beginning of the war, sending funds and equipment in an attempt to stem Habsburg strength in Europe Richelieu decided that the recently signed Peace of Prague was contrary to French interests and declared war on the Holy Roman Emperor and Spain within months of the peace being signed In the war that followed, the more experienced Spanish forces scored initial successes Olivares ordered a lightning campaign into northern France from the Spanish Netherlands, hoping to shatter the resolve of King Louis XIII's ministers and topple Richelieu In the année de Corbie , , Spanish forces advanced as far south as Corbie, and such was the threat to Paris that the war came close to a conclusion on Spanish terms After , however, Olivares halted the advance, fearful of provoking another crown bankruptcy The hesitation in pressing home the advantage proved fateful French forces regrouped and pushed the Spanish back towards the border The Spanish army would never again penetrate so far At the Battle of the Downs in a Spanish fleet carrying troops was destroyed by the Dutch navy, and the Spanish found themselves unable to supply and reinforce their forces adequately in the Netherlands The Army of Flanders, which represented the finest of Spanish soldiery and leadership, faced a French assault led by Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé in northern France at Rocroi in The Spanish, led by Francisco de Melo, were beaten by the French After a closely fought battle the Spanish were forced to surrender on honorable terms As a result, while the defeat was not a rout, the high status of the Army of Flanders was ended at Rocroi The defeat at Rocroi also led to the dismissal of the embattled Olivares, who was confined to his estates by the king's order and died two years later, broken and mad The Last Spanish Habsburgs edit Main article Habsburg Spain in the seventeenth century Traditionally, historians mark the Battle of Rocroi as the end of Spanish dominance in Europe but the war was not finished and after a severe setback, more Spanish victories followed Supported by the French, the Catalans, Neapolitans, and Portuguese rose up in revolt against the Spanish in the s With the Spanish Netherlands caught between the tightening grip of French and Dutch forces after the Battle of Lens in , the Spanish made peace with the Dutch and recognized the independent United Provinces in the Peace of Westphalia that ended both the Eighty Years' War and the Thirty Years' War The meeting of Philip IV of Spain and Louis XIV of France on July at Pheasant Island War with France continued for eleven more years Although France suffered from a civil war from to see Wars of the Fronde , Spain had been exhausted by the Thirty Years' War and the ongoing revolts of Portugal, Catalonia and Naples With the war against the United Provinces at an end in , the Spanish drove the French out of Naples that year and Catalonia in , recaptured Dunkirk and occupied several northern French forts that they held until peace was made but the war came to an end soon after the Battle of the Dunes where the French army under Viscount Turenne retook Dunkirk Spain agreed to the Peace of the Pyrenees in that ceded to France the Spanish Netherlands territory of Artois and the northern Catalan county of Roussillon Portugal had rebelled in under the leadership of John of Braganza, a pretender to the throne He had received widespread support from the Portuguese people, and Spain—which had to deal with rebellions elsewhere, along with the war against France – was unable to respond adequately John mounted the throne as King John IV of Portugal and the Spanish and Portuguese co existed in a de facto state of peace from to When John died in , the Spanish attempted to wrest Portugal from his son Alfonso VI of Portugal but were defeated at Ameixial and Montes Claros , leading to Spain's recognition of Portugal's independence in Spain still had a huge overseas empire, but France was now the dominant power in Europe and the United Provinces were in the Atlantic The Great Plague of Seville – killed up to % of Seville's population citation needed Sevilla, and indeed the economy of Andalucía, would never recover from so complete a devastation Altogether Spain was thought to have lost , people, out of a population of slightly fewer than , , , or nearly % of its entire population Historians reckon the total cost in human lives due to these plagues throughout Spain, throughout the entire th century, to be a minimum of nearly million The regency of the young Spanish king Charles II was incompetent in dealing with the War of Devolution that Louis XIV of France prosecuted against the Spanish Netherlands in – , losing considerable prestige and territory, including the cities of Lille and Charleroi In the Franco Dutch War of – , Spain lost still more territory when it came to the assistance of its former Dutch enemies, most notably Franche Comté In the Nine Years' War – Louis once again invaded the Spanish Netherlands French forces led by the Duke of Luxembourg defeated the Spanish at Fleurus , and subsequently defeated Dutch forces under William III of Orange, who fought on Spain's side The war ended with most of the Spanish Netherlands under French occupation, including the important cities of Ghent and Luxembourg The war revealed to Europe how vulnerable the Spanish defenses and bureaucracy were Also, the ineffective Spanish Habsburg government took no action to improve them The final decades of the th century saw utter decay and stagnation in Spain while the rest of Western Europe went through exciting changes in government and society – the Glorious Revolution in England and the reign of the Sun King in France – Spain remained adrift The Spanish bureaucracy that had built up around the charismatic, industrious, and intelligent Charles I and Philip II demanded a strong and hardworking monarch the weakness and lack of interest of Philip III and Philip IV contributed to Spain's decay Charles II was mentally retarded and impotent He was therefore childless, and in his final will he left his throne to a French prince, the Bourbon Philip of Anjou, rather than to a fellow Habsburg, albeit from Austria This resulted in the War of the Spanish Succession Africa and the Mediterranean edit By the th century, the Ottomans had become an existential threat to Europe Ottoman conquests in Europe made significant gains with a decisive victory at Mohács Charles had preferred to suppress the Ottomans through a considerably more maritime strategy, hampering Ottoman landings on the Venetian territories in the Eastern Mediterranean The coastal villages and towns of Spain, Italy and the Mediterranean islands were frequently attacked by Barbary pirates from North Africa the Formentera was even temporarily left by its population and long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants The most famous corsair was the Turkish Barbarossa Redbeard According to Robert C Davis, between million and million Europeans were captured by North African pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the th and th centuries The reign of Charles V saw a decline in the presence of Spain in the North of Africa, even if Tunis and its port, La Goleta, were taken in One after the other, most of the Spanish possessions were lost Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera , Santa Cruz de Mar Pequeña , Algiers , Tripoli , Bujia , and La Goleta and Tunis Only in response to Barbary pirates' raids on the eastern coast of Spain did Charles lead attacks against Tunis and Algiers The Battle of Lepanto , marked the end of the Ottoman naval supremacy in the Mediterranean Sea In , the Spanish defeated an Ottoman landing on the strategic island of Malta, defended by the Knights of St John Suleiman the Magnificent's death the following year and his succession by his less capable son Selim the Sot emboldened Philip, and he resolved to carry the war to the sultan himself In , Spanish and Venetian warships, joined by volunteers across Europe, led by Charles's illegitimate son Don John of Austria annihilated the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto, in what is perhaps the most decisive battle in modern naval history citation needed The battle ended the threat of Ottoman naval hegemony in the Mediterranean This mission marked the height of the respectability of Spain and its sovereign abroad as Philip bore the burden of leading the Counter Reformation The Ottomans recovered soon They reconquered Tunis in , and they helped to restore an ally, Abu Marwan Abd al Malik I Saadi, in the throne of Morocco, in The death of the Persian shah, Tahmasp I was an opportunity for the Ottoman sultan to intervene in that country, so, in was agreed a truce in the Mediterranean with Philip II Nonetheless, the Spanish at Lepanto eliminated the best sailors of the Ottoman fleet, and the Ottoman Empire would never recover in quality what they could in numbers Lepanto was the decisive turning point in control of the Mediterranean away from centuries of Muslim control to European control, initiated by the Spanish Empire and its allies In the first half of the th century, Spanish ships attacked the Anatolian coast, defeating larger Ottoman fleets at the Battle of Cape Celidonia and the Battle of Cape Corvo Larache and La Mamora, in the Moroccan Atlantic coast, and the island of Alhucemas, in the Mediterranean, were taken, but during the second half of the th century, Larache and La Mamora were also lost The New World edit Explorers and conquistadors edit After Columbus, the Spanish colonization of the Americas was led by a series of warrior explorers called conquistadors The Spanish forces, in addition to significant armament and equestrian advantages, exploited the rivalries between competing indigenous peoples, tribes, and nations, some of which were willing to form alliances with the Spanish in order to defeat their more powerful enemies, such as the Aztecs or Incas—a tactic that would be extensively used by later European colonial powers The Spanish conquest was also facilitated by the spread of diseases e g smallpox , common in Europe but never present in the New World, which reduced the indigenous populations in the Americas This sometimes caused a labour shortage for plantations and public works and so the colonists informally and gradually, at first, initiated the Atlantic slave trade see Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas Emperor Atahualpa is shown surrounded on his palanquin at the Battle of Cajamarca One of the most accomplished conquistadors was Hernán Cortés, who leading a relatively small Spanish force but with local translators and the crucial support of thousands of native allies, achieved the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in the campaigns of – This territory later became the Viceroyalty of New Spain, present day Mexico Of equal importance was the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire by Francisco Pizarro, which would become the Viceroyalty of Peru After the conquest of Mexico, rumours of golden cities Quivira and Cíbola in North America and El Dorado in South America motivated several other expeditions Many of those returned without having found their goal, or finding it much less valuable than was hoped Indeed, the New World colonies only began to yield a substantial part of the Crown's revenues with the establishment of mines such as that of Potosí Bolivia and Zacatecas Mexico both started in By the late th century, silver from the Americas accounted for one fifth of Spain's total budget Eventually the world's stock of precious metal was doubled or even tripled by silver from the Americas Official records indicate that at least % of the silver was taken across the Atlantic to Spain and no more than % across the Pacific to China Some modern researchers argue that due to rampant smuggling about % went to China In the th century perhaps , Europeans entered American ports Further Spanish settlements were progressively established in the New World New Granada in the s later in the Viceroyalty of New Granada in and present day Colombia , Lima in as the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru, Buenos Aires in later in the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in , and Santiago in Cristóbal de Olid leads Spanish soldiers with Tlaxcalan allies in the conquests of Jalisco, From Lienzo de Tlaxcala Spanish settlements in Chile before the Destruction of the Seven Cities in , all settlements south Biobío River except those in Chiloé had fallen Florida was colonized in by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés when he founded Saint Augustine and then promptly defeated an attempt led by the French Captain Jean Ribault and of his countrymen to establish a French foothold in Spanish Florida territory Saint Augustine quickly became a strategic defensive base for the Spanish ships full of gold and silver being sent to Spain from its New World dominions The Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan died while in the Philippines commanding a Castilian expedition in which was the first to circumnavigate the globe The Basque commander Juan Sebastián Elcano would lead the expedition to success Therefore, Spain sought to enforce their rights in the Moluccan islands, which led a conflict with the Portuguese, but the issue was resolved with the Treaty of Zaragoza , settling the location of the antimeridian of Tordesillas, which would divide the world into two equal hemispheres Thenceforth, maritime expeditions led to the discovery of several archipelagos in the South Pacific as the Pitcairn Islands, the Marquesas, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands or New Guinea On April , the first permanent Spanish settlement in the Philippines was founded by Miguel López de Legazpi and the service of Manila Galleons was inaugurated The Manilla Galleons shipped goods from all over Asia across the Pacific to Acapulco on the coast of Mexico From there, the goods were transshipped across Mexico to the Spanish treasure fleets, for shipment to Spain The Spanish trading post of Manila was established to facilitate this trade in The control of Guam, Mariana Islands, Caroline Islands, and Palau was later, from the end of the th century, and remained under Spanish control until Organization and administration edit From the beginning of the exploration and conquest of the Indies, the Crown assumed the control of the venture turning away the Columbus family In the Casa de Contratación House of Trade was founded to control migration to the New World, which was restricted to old Christians especially families and women In addition, the Casa de Contratación took charge of the fiscal organization, and of the organization and judicial control of the trade with the Indies The system of government in Spain was constituted by a polisynodial system of Councils which advised the monarch and made decisions on his behalf about specific matters of government In it was established the Council of the Indies, based in Castile, with the assignment of the governance of the Indies, thus it was responsible for drafting legislation, proposing the appointments to the King and pronouncing judicial sentences as maximum authority in the ultramarine territories, the Council of The Indies took over both the institutions in the Indies as the defense of the interests of the Crown and of the aborigens The Laws of the Indies resulted in the Laws of Burgos, – , which were the first codified set of laws governing the behavior of Spanish settlers in the Americas, particularly with regards to treatment of native Indians They forbade the maltreatment of natives, and endorsed the Indian Reductions with attempts of conversion to Catholicism Upon their failure, they were replaced by the New Laws founding of Santiago de Chile Spain passed some laws for the protection of the indigenous peoples of its New World colonies, the first such in the legal thought behind them was the basis of modern international law citation needed Taking advantage of their extreme remoteness, the European colonists revolted when they saw their power being reduced, forcing a partial revoking of these New Laws Later, weaker laws were introduced to protect the indigenous peoples but records show their effect was limited citation needed The restored Encomenderos increasingly used native Indian workforce The politics of implantation of the royal authority opposite to Columbus caused the suppression of the unit of government of the Indies and the appearance of governorates under royal authority These governorates, also called as provinces, were the basic circumscriptions of the territorial government of the Indies, and arose as the territories were conquered and colonized To carry out the expedition entrada , which entailed exploration, conquest, and initial settlement of the territory, the king, as owner of the Indies, agreed capitulación an itemized contract with the specifics of the conditions of the expedition in a particular territory The individual leaders of expeditions adelantados assumed the expenses of the venture and in return received as reward the grant from the government of the conquered territories and in addition, they received instructions about treating the aborigens After the end of the period of conquests, it was necessary to manage extensive and different territories with a strong bureaucracy In the face of the impossibility of the Castilian institutions to take care of the New World affairs, other new institutions were created As the basic political entity it was the governorate, the governors exercised judicial ordinary functions of first instance, and prerogatives of government legislating by ordinances To these political functions of the governor, it could be joined the military ones, according to military requirements, with the rank of Captain general The office of captain general involved to be the supreme military chief of the whole territory and he was responsible for recruiting and providing troops, the fortification of the territory, the supply and the shipbuilding Beginning in in the newly conquered Mexico, government units in the Spanish Empire, from viceroyalties down to governorships provinces , had a royal treasury controlled by a set of officiales reales royal officials There were also sub treasuries at important ports and mining districts The officials of the royal treasury at each level of government typically included two to four positions a tesorero treasurer , the senior official who guarded money on hand and made payments a contador accountant or comptroller , who recorded income and payments, maintained records, and interpreted royal instructions a factor, who guarded weapons and supplies belonging to the king, and disposed of tribute collected in the province and a veedor overseer , who was responsible for contacts with native inhabitants of the province, and collected the king's share of any war booty The veedor, or overseer, position quickly disappeared in most jurisdictions, subsumed into the position of factor Depending on the conditions in a jurisdiction, the position of factor veedor was often eliminated, as well The treasury officials were appointed by the king, and were largely independent of the authority of the viceroy, audencia president or governor On the death, unauthorized absence, retirement or removal of a governor, the treasury officials would jointly govern the province until a new governor appointed by the king could take up his duties Treasury officials were supposed to be paid out of the income from the province, and were normally prohibited from engaging in income producing activities The impossibility of the physical presence of the monarch was replaced by viceroys, the post of viceroy the direct representation of the monarch The functions of the viceroy were governor, captain general, president of the Audiencia, superintendent of the Royal Treasury and vicepatronage of the Church Thus, the territories of the viceroyalties emerged to affirm the authority of the king in a specific territory The territory which comprised the viceroyalty was divided in provinces —also called governorates— headed by the governor In the th century the Spanish overseas territories were divided in two viceroyalties New Spain for North America, Antilles, the Philippines and Venezuela, and Peru for South America, which was divided in the th century Audiencias, the High Courts edit On the other hand, the Audiencias were constituted as a key administrative institution due to receive the confidence of the Crown as depositaries of an impartial authority opposite to conquerors and settlers Their main function was that of being a court of justice of second instance —court of appeal— in penal and civil matters, but also the Audiencias were courts the first instance in the city where it had its headquarters, and also in the cases involving the Royal Treasury Besides court of justice, the Audiencias had functions of government as counterweight the authority of the viceroys, since they could communicate with both the Council of the Indies and the king without the requirement of requesting authorization from the viceroy This direct correspondence of the Audiencia with the Council of The Indies made possible that the Council gave to the Audiencia all kinds of orientations about general aspects of government The fact that the presidents were not habitually either magistrates or lawyers, but men clad in sword and cape, caused that they did not have any vote in court cases, and the court did not submit to their authority, but in representation that of the king Thus, the authority of the president, when he was not a magistrate, was void in judicial matter and merely signed the verdicts The Audiencias chaired by the viceroy were called viceregal Audiencias, and the chaired ones by a governor captain general were the pretorial Audiencias As the pretorial Audiencias were chaired by a governor captain general, this situation caused to appear the post of president governor of major districts, with direct rule over a province and superior control of other provinces included inside the territorial district of the Audiencia, so that they exercised functions similar to the viceroys Thus, another administrative division appeared while the territories in charge of a governor were the minor provinces, the juridisdiccional scope of the Audiencias constituted the major provinces Former Viceregal Palace and seat of the Audiencia of Mexico, nowadays, the National Palace The members oidores of the Audiencia met with the president in a committee called royal agreement real acuerdo , to take measurements for the government concerning the review of bylaws, appointments of commissioners jueces pesquisidores , or retention of bulls, but the advice did not correspond to the Audiencia as institution but to its members as reputable people The decisions of the royal agreement were established in the concerted writs autos acordados , nevertheless, there were matters as dispatching the issues of government, in which the Audiencia could not interfere either with the viceroy or the president governor This way, the control of the Audiencias over the viceroys enabled to the Crown to control the functions of government of the viceroys While the viceregal and pretorial Audiencias were chaired by men clad in sword and cape, the presidents of the subordinated Audiencias were magistrates, so that, in the juridisdiccional scope of the subordinated Audiencias, the functions of government, Treasury and war belonged to the viceroy Therefore, in these sections of the viceroyalties there were no governors captains general but Audiencias, and the presidency gave them the name, for example in Charcas and Quito Although there were accumulated in the same person the offices of viceroy, governor, captain general and president of the Audiencia, each of them had different jurisdictional areas The jurisdiction of the viceregal Audiencia, whose president was the viceroy, ended face up to the jurisdiction of other Audiencias inside the same viceroyalty as the pretorial Audiencias chaired by a governor captain general, who had administrative, political and military authority, as the subordinated Audiencias, whose president did not have this administrative, political and military authority Therefore, as governor, the direct administration of the province where was placed the viceregal capital belonged to the viceroy nevertheless, with respect to the other governorates of the viceroyalty, his function was mere oversight or general inspection over the management of political affairs The imprecision in defining the powers of the viceroy and those of the provincial governors allowed the Crown to control their officials In the viceroyalty of New Spain, the Audiencia of Mexico, chaired by the viceroy, ended its jurisdiction face up to the jurisdiction of other Audiencias of Guatemala – , of Manila – , of Guadalajara established in Compostela in and transferred in to Guadalajara and that of Santo Domingo The viceroy of New Spain as governor only had jurisdiction over a more reduced governorate of New Spain, and as captain general his authority did not comprise either the captaincies of Yucatán or the New Kingdom of León, but it comprised the military command over the governorate of Nueva Galicia, which was a territory under the jurisdiction of the Audiencia of Guadalajara, until in the captaincy general was attached to the governor of this province of Nueva Galicia In the viceroyalty of Peru, the viceroy presided the Audiencia of Lima , and the jurisdiction of this Audiencia ended face up to the jurisdictions of the pretorial Audiencias of Panama – – , of Santa Fe de Bogotá , of Santiago de Chile in Concepción between and , and in Santiago de Chile since , and that of Buenos Aires – , whose presidents were also both governors and captains general, and in addition to these Audiencias, the viceroyalty comprised the subordinated Audiencias of Charcas La Plata and Quito Cabildos or town councils edit The settlers came from Spain had to settle in towns, where the local government belonged to the Cabildo The Cabildo was composed by a variable number of aldermen regidores , around a dozen, depending on the size of the town, also two municipal judges alcaldes menores , who were judges of first instance, and also other officials as police chief, inspector of supplies, court clerk, and a public herald They were in charge of distributing land to the neighbors, establishing local taxes, dealing with the public order, inspecting jails and hospitals, preserving the roads and public works such as irrigation ditchs and bridges, supervising the public health, regulating the festive activities, monitoring market prices, or the protection of Indians Since the end of the reign of Philip II, the municipal offices, including the aldermen, were auctioned to alleviate the need for money of the Crown, even the offices could also be sold, which became hereditary, so that the government of the cities went on to hands of urban oligarchies In order to control the municipal life, the Crown ordered the appointment of corregidores and alcaldes mayores to exert greater political control and judicial functions in minor districts Their functions were governing the respective municipalities, administering of justice and being appellate judges in the alcaldes menores?' judgments, but only the corregidor could preside over the cabildo However, both charges were also put up for sale freely since the late th century The Spanish Empire reform and recovery – edit Under the Treaties of Utrecht April , the European powers decided what the fate of Spain would be, in terms of the continental balance of power The French prince Philippe of Anjou, grandchild of Louis XIV of France, became the new Bourbon king Philip V He retained the Spanish overseas empire, but ceded the Spanish Netherlands, Naples, Milan, and Sardinia to Austria Sicily and parts of Milan to the Duchy of Savoy and Gibraltar and Minorca to the Kingdom of Great Britain Moreover, Philip V granted the British the exclusive right to slave trading in Spanish America for thirty years, the so called asiento, as well as licensed voyages to ports in Spanish colonial dominions, openings, as Fernand Braudel remarked, for both licit and illicit smuggling Brudel p The Battle of Cape Passaro, August Spain's economic and demographic recovery had begun slowly in the last decades of the Habsburg reign, as was evident from the growth of its trading convoys and much more rapid growth of illicit trade during the period, though this growth was slower than in its northern rivals who had gained increasing illicit access to its empire's markets Critically, this recovery was not translated into institutional improvement because of the incompetent leadership of the unfortunate last Habsburg This legacy of neglect was reflected in the early years of Bourbon rule in which the military was ill advisedly pitched into battle against the Quadruple Alliance – Following the war, the new Bourbon monarchy would take a much more cautious approach to international relations, built upon a family alliance with Bourbon France, and continuing to follow a program of institutional renewal Bourbon Reforms edit Main article Bourbon Reforms At the beginning of his reign, due to French influence and the War of the Spanish Succession, king Philip V, initiated organizational reforms headed for a government more executive, giving priority to the direct decision of the monarch, opposite to the deliberative way of the polisynodial system of Councils The 'so called Spanish Bourbons' broadest intentions were to break the power of the entrenched aristocracy of the Criollos in America locally born colonials of European descent , and, eventually, loosen the territorial control of the Society of Jesus over the virtually independent theocracies citation needed of Guarani Misiones the Jesuits were expelled from Spanish America in In addition to the established consulados of Mexico City and Lima, firmly in the control of local landowners, a new rival consulado was set up at Vera Cruz Immediately, Philip's government set up a ministry of the Navy and the Indies and created first a Honduras Company , a Caracas company, the Guipuzcoana Company and—the most successful one—a Havana Company In – , the structures for governing the Indies, the Consejo de Indias and the Casa de Contratación that governed investments in the cumbersome escorted fleets were transferred from Seville to Cádiz, which became the one port for all Indies trading see flota system Individual sailings at regular intervals were slow to displace the old habit of armed convoys, but by the s there were regular packet ships plying the Atlantic between Cádiz and Havana and Puerto Rico, and at longer intervals to the Río de la Plata, where an additional viceroyalty was created in The contraband trade that was the lifeblood of the Habsburg empire declined in proportion to registered shipping a shipping registry having been established in Two upheavals registered unease within Spanish America and at the same time demonstrated the renewed resiliency of the reformed system the Tupac Amaru uprising in Peru in and the rebellion of the comuneros of New Granada, both in part reactions to tighter, more efficient control th century prosperity edit San Felipe de Barajas Fortress Cartagena de Indias In the Spanish defeated a vast British invasion fleet and army from this fortress in present day Colombia during the Battle of Cartagena de Indias The th century was a century of prosperity for the overseas Spanish Empire as trade within grew steadily, particularly in the second half of the century, under the Bourbon reforms Spain's crucial victory in the Battle of Cartagena de Indias against a massive British fleet and army in the Caribbean port of Cartagena de Indias, one of a number of successful battles, helped Spain secure its dominance of America until the th century With a Bourbon monarchy came a repertory of Bourbon mercantilist ideas based on a centralized state, put into effect in America slowly at first but with increasing momentum during the century Rapid shipping growth from the mid s until the Seven Years' War – , reflecting in part the success of the Bourbons in bringing illicit trade under control With the loosening of trade controls after the Seven Years' War, shipping trade within the empire once again began to expand, reaching an extraordinary rate of growth in the s The ending of Cádiz's trade monopoly with America brought about a rebirth of Spanish manufactures Most notable was the rapidly growing textile industry of Catalonia which by the mid s saw the first signs of industrialisation This saw the emergence of a small, politically active commercial class in Barcelona This isolated pocket of advanced economic development stood in stark contrast to the relative backwardness of most of the country Most of the improvements were in and around some major coastal cities and the major islands such as Cuba, with its plantations, and a renewed growth of precious metals mining in America On the other hand, most of rural Spain and its empire, where the great bulk of the population lived, lived in relatively backward conditions by th century West European standards, reinforced old customs and isolation Agricultural productivity remained low despite efforts to introduce new techniques to what was for the most part an uninterested, exploited peasant and labouring groups Governments were inconsistent in their policies Though there were substantial improvements by the late th century, Spain was still an economic backwater Under the mercantile trading arrangements it had difficulty in providing the goods being demanded by the strongly growing markets of its empire, and providing adequate outlets for the return trade Overseas expansion edit A Spanish army captures British Pensacola in In the Treaty of Paris returns all of Florida to Spain for the return of the Bahamas The Bourbon institutional reforms were to bear fruit militarily when Spanish forces easily retook Naples and Sicily from the Austrians in during War of the Polish Succession, and during the War of Jenkins' Ear – thwarted British efforts to seize the strategic cities of Cartagena de Indias and Santiago de Cuba by defeating a massive British army and navy led by Edward Vernon, which ended Britain's ambitions in the Spanish Main Moreover, though Spain was severely defeated during the invasion of Portugal and lost some territories to British forces towards the end of the Seven Years' War – , she was to recover these losses and seize the British naval base in the Bahamas during the American Revolutionary War – The greater part of what is the territory of today's Brazil had been claimed as Spanish when exploration began with the navigation of the length of the Amazon River in – by Francisco de Orellana Many Spanish expeditions explored large parts of this vast region, especially those close to Spanish settlements During the th and th centuries, Spanish soldiers, missionaries and adventurers also established pioneering communities, primarily in Paraná, Santa Catarina, and São Paulo, and forts on the northeastern coast threatened by the French and Dutch As Portuguese Brazilian settlement expanded, following in the trail of the Bandeirantes exploits, these isolated Spanish groups were eventually integrated into Brazilian society Only some Castilians who were displaced from the disputed areas of the Pampas of Rio Grande do Sul have left a significant influence on the formation of the gaucho, when they mixed with Indian groups, Portuguese and blacks who arrived in the region during the th century The Spanish were barred by their laws from slaving of indigenous people, leaving them without a commercial interest deep in the interior of the Amazon basin The Laws of Burgos and the New Laws had been intended to protect the interests of indigenous people While in spirit they were often abused, as through forced exploitative labour of locals, they did prevent widespread formal enslavement of indigenous people in Spanish territories The Portuguese Brazilian slavers, the Bandeirantes, had the advantage of access from the mouth of the Amazon River, which was on the Portuguese side of the line of Tordesillas One famous attack upon a Spanish mission in resulted in the enslavement of about , indigenous people In time, there were in effect a self funding force of occupation By the th century, much of the Spanish territory was under de facto control of Portuguese Brazil This reality was recognised with the legal transfer of sovereignty in of most of the Amazon basin and surrounding areas to Portugal in the Treaty of Madrid This settlement sowed the seeds of the Guarani War in The California mission planning was begun in The Nootka Crisis – involved a dispute between Spain and Great Britain about the British settlement in Oregon to British Columbia In , the king of Spain gave Alessandro Malaspina an order to search for a Northwest Passage Spanish territorial claims in the West Coast of North America, th century Spanish Empire at its greatest extent The Spanish empire had still not returned to first rate power status, but it had recovered considerably from the dark days at the beginning of the th century when it was, and particularly in continental matters, at the mercy of other powers' political deals The relatively more peaceful century under the new monarchy had allowed it to rebuild and start the long process of modernizing its institutions and economy The demographic decline of the th century had been reversed It was a middle ranking power with great power pretensions that could not be ignored But time was to be against it The growth of trade and wealth in the colonies caused increasing political tensions as frustration grew with the improving but still restrictive trade with Spain Malaspina's recommendation to turn the empire into a looser confederation to help improve governance and trade so as to quell the growing political tensions between the élites of the empire's periphery and centre was suppressed by a monarchy afraid of losing control All was to be swept away by the tumult that was to overtake Europe at the turn of the th century with the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars Twilight of the Global Empire – edit Churruca's Death, oil on canvas about the Battle of Trafalgar by Eugenio Álvarez Dumont, Prado Museum The Second of May The Charge of the Mamelukes, by Francisco de Goya The first major territory Spain was to lose in the th century was the vast and wild Louisiana Territory, which stretched north to Canada and was ceded by France in under the terms of the Treaty of Fontainebleau The French, under Napoleon, took back possession as part of the Treaty of San Ildefonso in and sold it to the United States Louisiana Purchase, The destruction of the main Spanish fleet, under French command, at the Battle of Trafalgar undermined Spain's ability to defend and hold on to its empire The British invasions of the Río de la Plata attempt to seize the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in The viceroy retreated hastily to the hills when defeated by a small British force However, the Criollos militias and colonial army eventually repulsed the British The later intrusion of Napoleonic forces into Spain in see Peninsular War cut off effective connection with the empire But it was internal tensions that ultimately ended the empire in the Americas Napoleon's sale in of the Louisiana Territory to the United States caused border disputes between the United States and Spain that, with rebellions in West Florida and in the remainder of Louisiana at the mouth of the Mississippi, led to their eventual cession to the United States, along with the sale of all of Florida in the Adams–Onís Treaty In Baron Nikolai Rezanov attempted to negotiate a treaty between the Russian American Company and Viceroyalty of New Spain but his unexpected death in ended any treaty hopes In , Napoleon forced the abdication of the Spanish King Abdications of Bayonne and placed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, on the throne, however this provoked an uprising from the Spanish people and a grinding guerrilla warfare, which Napoleon dubbed his ulcer the Peninsular War, famously depicted by the painter Goya

ensued, followed by a power vacuum lasting up to a decade and turmoil for several decades, civil wars on succession disputes, a republic, and finally a liberal democracy Resistance coalesces around juntas, emergency ad hoc governments A Supreme Central and Governing Junta of the Kingdom, ruling in the name of Ferdinand VII, is created on September to coordinate efforts among the various juntas Spanish American independence edit In North America, Mexico, led by Agustin de Iturbide and Vicente Guerrero, declared its independence in The Battle of Ayacucho, December The defeat of the Spanish army at Ayacucho in Peru signaled the end of Spain's empire in South America Main articles Spanish American wars of independence and Junta Peninsular War Juntas emerged in Spanish America as a result of Spain facing a political crisis due to the abdication of Ferdinand VII and Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion Spanish Americans reacted in much the same way the Peninsular Spanish did, legitimizing their actions through traditional law, which held that sovereignty retroverted to the people in the absence of a legitimate king The majority of Spanish Americans continued to support the idea of maintaining a monarchy under Ferdinand VII, but did not support retaining absolute monarchy citation needed Spanish Americans wanted self government The juntas in the Americas did not accept the governments of the Europeans – neither the government set up for Spain by the French nor the various Spanish Governments set up in response to the French invasion The juntas did not accept the Spanish regency, isolated under siege in the city of Cadiz – They also rejected the Spanish Constitution of although the Constitution gave Spanish citizenship to natives of the territories that had belonged to the Spanish monarchy in both hemispheres The Constitution of recognised indigenous peoples of the Americas as Spanish citizens But the acquisition of citizenship for any casta of Afro American peoples of the Americas was through naturalization – excluding slaves A long period of wars followed in America from to In South America this period of wars led to the freedom and independence of Argentina , Paraguay and Uruguay , but subsequently ruled by Brazil until José de San Martín campaigned for independence in Chile and in Peru Further north, Simón Bolívar led forces that won independence between and for the area that became Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Perú and Bolivia then Alto Perú In North America, a free thinking secular priest, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, declared Mexican freedom in in the Grito de Dolores Independence actually won in by royalist army officer turned insurgent, Agustín de Iturbide, in alliance with insurgent Vicente Guerrero and under the Plan of Iguala The conservative Catholic hierarchy in New Spain supported Mexican independence largely because the liberal Spanish Constitution of was abhorrent to it Central America became independent via Mexico's independence in and joined Mexico for a brief time – , but chose their own path when Mexico became a republic Panama declared independence in and merged with the Republic of Gran Colombia from to Royalist guerrillas continued the war in several countries, and Spain launched attempts to retake Venezuela in and Mexico in Spain finally abandoned all plans of military re conquest at death of King Ferdinand VII in Santo Domingo likewise declared independence in and began negotiating for inclusion in Bolivar's Republic of Gran Colombia, but was quickly occupied by Haiti, which ruled it until an revolution Then after years of independence, in , Santo Domingo was again made a colony due to Haitian aggressions, yet by Santo Domingo again declared independence, making it the only territory which Spain recolonized After , then, only Cuba and Puerto Rico – and on the far side of the globe, the Philippines, Guam and nearby Pacific islands – remained in Spanish hands in the New World Changes and Reaction edit See also Spanish–American War Vizcaya explodes in the Battle of Santiago de Cuba The Spanish Empire in In devastated Spain, the post Napoleonic era created a political vacuum, broke apart any traditional consensus on sovereignty, fragmented the country politically and regionally and unleashed wars and disputes between progressives, liberals and conservatives The instability inhibited Spain's development, which had started fitfully gathering pace in the previous century A brief period of improvement occurred in the s when the capable Alfonso XII of Spain and his thoughtful ministers succeeded in restoring some vigour to Spanish politics and prestige, but this was cut short by Alfonso's early death An increasing level of nationalist, anti colonial uprisings in various colonies culminated with the Spanish–American War of , fought primarily over Cuba Military defeat was followed by the independence of Cuba and the cession, for US$ million, of Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam to the United States On June , the second expeditionary battalion Cazadores of Philippines the last Spanish garrison in the Philippines, located in Baler, Aurora, was pulled out, effectively ending around years of Spanish hegemony in the archipelago Its American and Asian presence ended, Spain then sold its remaining Pacific Ocean possessions to Germany in , retaining only its African territories Territories in Africa – edit By the end of the th century, only Melilla, Alhucemas, Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera which had been taken again in , Ceuta part of the Portuguese Empire since , has chosen to retain its links to Spain once the Iberian Union ended the formal allegiance of Ceuta to Spain was recognized by the Treaty of Lisbon in , Oran and Mazalquivir remained as Spanish territory in Africa The latter cities were lost in , reconquered in and sold by Charles IV in A map of Equatorial Guinea In , Fernando Poo Island now Bioko , adjacent islets, and commercial rights to the mainland between the Niger and Ogooué Rivers were ceded to Spain by the Portuguese in exchange for territory in South America Treaty of El Pardo In the th century, some Spanish explorers and missionaries would cross this zone, among them Manuel de Iradier In , Spanish troops conquered the Islas Chafarinas In , after the Tetuan War, Morocco ceded Sidi Ifni to Spain as a part of the Treaty of Tangiers, on the basis of the old outpost of Santa Cruz de la Mar Pequeña, thought to be Sidi Ifni The following decades of Franco Spanish collaboration resulted in the establishment and extension of Spanish protectorates south of the city, and Spanish influence obtained international recognition in the Berlin Conference of Spain administered Sidi Ifni and Western Sahara jointly Spain claimed a protectorate over the coast of Guinea from Cape Bojador to Cap Blanc, too Río Muni became a protectorate in and a colony in Conflicting claims to the Guinea mainland were settled in by the Treaty of Paris Following a brief war in , Spain expanded its influence south from Melilla Morocco and Spanish territories The empire on which the sun never sets From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The phrase the empire on which the sun never sets has been used with variations to describe certain global empires that were so extensive that there was always at least one part of their territory that was in daylight It was originally used for the Spanish Empire, mainly in the th and th centuries, and for the British Empire, mainly in the th and early th centuries Especially in the th century, the phrase usually without the word Empire has been transferred to refer to American power Georg Büchmann traces the idea to a speech in Herodotus' Histories, made by Xerxes I before invading Greece Contents hide Spain United Kingdom United States See also Notes King of Kings is a title that has been used by several monarchies and empires throughout history The title originates in the Ancient Near East It is sometimes used as the equivalent of the later title Emperor Contents hide History Religious Judaism Christianity Islam Hinduism Buddhism Rastafari Political Persian Empire Great Armenia India Hellenistic World Africa Popular culture An emperor through Old French empereor from Latin 'imperator' is a monarch, usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife empress consort , mother empress dowager , or a woman who rules in her own right empress regnant Emperors are generally recognized to be of a higher honour and rank than kings In Europe the title of Emperor was, since the Middle Ages, considered equal or almost equal in dignity to that of Pope, due to the latter's position as visible head of the Church and spiritual leader of Western Europe The Emperor of Japan is the only currently reigning monarch whose title is translated into English as Emperor Both kings and emperors are monarchs, but emperor and empress are considered the higher monarchical titles In so far as there is a strict definition of emperor, it is that an emperor has no relations implying the superiority of any other ruler, and typically rules over more than one nation Thus a king might be obliged to pay tribute to another ruler, or be restrained in his actions in some unequal fashion, but an emperor should in theory be completely free of such restraints However monarchs heading empires have not always used the title—the British sovereign did not assume the title until the incorporation of India into the British Empire, and even then used it only in a limited context For purposes of protocol, emperors were once given precedence over kings in international diplomatic relations currently, however, precedence amongst heads of state – whether they be Kings, Queens, Emperors, or Presidents – is determined by the duration of time that each one has been continuously in office Outside the European context, emperor was the translation given to holders of titles who were accorded the same precedence as European emperors in diplomatic terms In reciprocity, these rulers might accredit equal titles in their native languages to their European peers Through centuries of international convention, this has become the dominant rule to identifying an emperor in the modern era Some empires, such as the Holy Roman Empire and the Russian Empire, derived their office from the authority of the Roman Emperors translatio imperii The title was a conscious attempt by monarchs to link themselves to the institutions and traditions of the Romans as part of state ideology Historians have liberally used emperor and, especially so, empire anachronistically and out of its Roman and European context to describe any large state in the past and present sometimes even to refer to non monarchically ruled states and their spheres of influence such examples include the Athenian Empire of the late th century BC, the Angevin Empire of the Plantagenets, or the Soviet and American empires of the Cold War era However such empires did not need to be headed by an emperor Empire became identified with vast territorial holdings rather than the title of its ruler by the mid th century Contents hide Roman tradition Ancient Roman empire and Byzantine emperors Classical Antiquity Byzantine period Before the th Crusade Latin emperors After the th Crusade Ottoman Empire Holy Roman Empire Austrian Empire Emperors of Europe Bulgaria France First French Empire Elba Second French Empire Iberian Peninsula Britain England United Kingdom German Empire Russia Serbia Emperors in the Americas Pre Columbian traditions Aztec Empire Inca Empire Post Columbian Americas Brazil Haiti Mexico Persia Iran Indian subcontinent Africa Ethiopia Central African Empire East Asian tradition China Korea Japan Mongolia Vietnam Oceania Fictional uses See also Notes External links Roman tradition edit The title was first used as an honorific for a military leader in ancient Rome, meaning commander or general In the Roman tradition a large variety in the meaning and importance of the imperial form of monarchy developed in intention it was always the highest office, but it could as well fall down to a redundant title for nobility that had never been near to the Empire they were supposed to be reigning Also the name of the position split in several branches of Western tradition, see below The importance and meaning of coronation ceremonies and regalia also varied within the tradition for instance Holy Roman Emperors could only be crowned emperor by the Pope, which meant the coronation ceremony usually took place in Rome, often several years after these emperors had ascended to the throne as king in their home country The first Latin Emperors of Constantinople on the other hand had to be present in the newly conquered capital of their empire, because that was the only place where they could be granted to become emperor Early Roman Emperors avoided any type of ceremony or regalia different from what was already usual for republican offices in the Roman Republic the most intrusive change had been changing the color of their robe to purple Later new symbols of worldly and or spiritual power, like the orb, became an essential part of the imperial accessories Rules for indicating successors also varied there was a tendency towards male inheritance of the supreme office, but as well election by noblemen, as ruling empresses for empires not too strictly under salic law are known Ruling monarchs could additionally steer the succession by adoption, as often occurred in the two first centuries of Imperial Rome Of course, intrigue, murder and military force could also mingle in for appointing successors the Roman imperial tradition made no exception to other monarchical traditions in this respect Probably the epoch best known for this part of the imperial tradition is Rome's third century rule Ancient Roman empire and Byzantine emperors edit Classical Antiquity edit Main articles Roman Emperor and Imperator A statue of the dictator Julius Caesar Augustus, the first emperor of the Roman Empire When Republican Rome turned into a de facto monarchy in the second half of the st century BC, at first there was no name for the title of the new type of monarch Ancient Romans abhorred the name Rex king citation needed , and it was critical to the political order to maintain the forms and pretenses of republican rule Julius Caesar had been Dictator, an acknowledged and traditional office in Republican Rome Caesar was not the first to hold it, but following his assassination the term was abhorred in Rome citation needed Augustus, considered the first Roman Emperor, established his by collecting on himself offices, titles, and honours of Republican Rome that had traditionally been distributed to different people, concentrating what had been distributed power in one man One of these offices was princeps senatus, first man of the Senate and became changed into Augustus' chief honorific, princeps civitatis first citizen from which the modern English word and title prince is descended The first period of the Roman Empire, from BC – AD, is called the principate for this reason However, it was the informal descriptive of Imperator commander that became the title increasingly favored by his successors Previously bestowed on high officials and military commanders who had imperium, Augustus reserved it exclusively to himself as the ultimate holder of all imperium Imperium is Latin for the authority to command, one of a various types of authority delineated in Roman political thought Beginning with Augustus, Imperator appeared in the title of all Roman monarchs through the extinction of the Empire in After the reign of Augustus' immediate successor Tiberius, being proclaimed imperator was transformed into the act of accession to the head of state Other honorifics used by the Roman Emperors have also come to be synonyms for Emperor Caesar as, for example, in Suetonius' Twelve Caesars This tradition continued in many languages in German it became Kaiser in certain Slavic languages it became Tsar in Hungarian it became Császár , and several more variants The name derived from Julius Caesar's cognomen Caesar this cognomen was adopted by all Roman emperors, exclusively by the ruling monarch after the Julio Claudian dynasty had died out In this tradition Julius Caesar is sometimes described as the first Caesar emperor following Suetonius This is one of the most enduring titles, Caesar and its transliterations appeared in every year from the time of Caesar Augustus to Tsar Symeon II of Bulgaria's removal from the throne in Augustus was the honorific first bestowed on Emperor Augustus after him all Roman emperors added it to their name Although it had a high symbolical value, something like elevated or sublime , it was generally not used to indicate the office of Emperor itself Exceptions include the title of the Augustan History, a semi historical collection of Emperors' biographies of the nd and rd century Augustus had by his last will granted the feminine form of this honorific Augusta to his wife Since there was no title of Empress consort whatsoever, women of the reigning dynasty sought to be granted this honorific, as the highest attainable goal Few were however granted the title, and certainly not as a rule all wives of reigning Emperors Imperator as, for example, in Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia In the Roman Republic Imperator meant military commander In the late Republic, as in the early years of the new monarchy, Imperator was a title granted to Roman generals by their troops and the Roman Senate after a great victory, roughly comparable to field marshal head or commander of the entire army For example, in AD Germanicus was proclaimed Imperator during the reign of his adoptive father Tiberius Soon thereafter Imperator became however a title reserved exclusively for the ruling monarch This led to Emperor in English and, among other examples, Empereur in French and Mbreti in Albanian The Latin feminine form Imperatrix only developed after Imperator had taken on the connotation of Emperor Autokrator ??t????t?? or Basileus ßas??e?? although the Greeks used equivalents of Caesar ?a?sa?, Kaisar and Augustus in two forms transliterated as ?????st??, Augoustos or translated as Seßast??, Sebastos these were rather used as part of the name of the Emperor than as an indication of the office Instead of developing a new name for the new type of monarchy, they used a?t????t?? autokrator, only partly overlapping with the modern understanding of autocrat or ßas??e?? basileus, until then the usual name for sovereign Autokrator was essentially used as a translation of the Latin Imperator in Greek speaking part of the Roman Empire, but also here there is only partial overlap between the meaning of the original Greek and Latin concepts For the Greeks Autokrator was not a military title, and was closer to the Latin dictator concept the one with unlimited power , before it came to mean Emperor Basileus appears not to have been used exclusively in the meaning of emperor and specifically, the Roman Byzantine emperor before the th century, although it was a standard informal designation of the Emperor in the Greek speaking East After the turbulent Year of the four emperors in , the Flavian Dynasty reigned for three decades The succeeding Nervan Antonian Dynasty, ruling for most of the nd century, stabilised the Empire This epoch became known as the era of the Five Good Emperors, and was followed by the short lived Severan Dynasty During the Crisis of the rd century, Barracks Emperors succeeded one another at short intervals Three short lived secessionist attempts had their own emperors the Gallic Empire, the Britannic Empire, and the Palmyrene Empire though the latter used rex more regularly The Principate BC – AD period was succeeded by what is known as the Dominate AD – AD , during which Emperor Diocletian tried to put the Empire on a more formal footing Diocletian sought to address the challenges of the Empire's now vast geography and the instability caused by the informality of succession by the creation of co emperors and junior emperors At one point, there were as many as five sharers of the imperium see Tetrarchy In AD Constantine I defeated his rivals and restored single emperor rule, but following his death the empire was divided among his sons For a time the concept was of one empire ruled by multiple emperors with varying territory under their control, however following the death of Theodosius I the rule was divided between his two sons and increasingly became separate entities The areas administered from Rome are referred to by historians the Western Roman Empire and those under the immediate authority of Constantinople called the Eastern Roman Empire or after the Battle of Yarmouk in AD the Later Roman or Byzantine Empire The subdivisions and co emperor system were formally abolished by Emperor Zeno in AD following the death of Julius Nepos last Western Emperor and the ascension of Odoacer as the de facto King of Italy in AD Byzantine period edit Main article Byzantine Emperor Before the th Crusade edit Under Justinian I, reigning in the th century, parts of Italy were for a few decades re conquered from the Ostrogoths thus, this famous mosaic, featuring the Byzantine emperor in the center, can be admired at Ravenna Historians generally refer to the continuing Roman Empire in the east as the Byzantine Empire after Byzantium, the original name of the town that Constantine I would elevate to the Imperial capital as New Rome in AD The city is more commonly called Constantinople and is today named Istanbul Although the empire was again subdivided and a co emperor sent to Italy at the end of the fourth century, the office became unitary again only years later at the request of the Roman Senate and following the death of Julius Nepos, last Western Emperor This change was a recognition of the reality that little remained of Imperial authority in the areas that had been the Western Empire, with even Rome and Italy itself now ruled by the essentially autonomous Odoacer These Later Roman Byzantine Emperors completed the transition from the idea of the Emperor as a semi republican official to the Emperor as an absolute monarch Of particular note was the translation of the Latin Imperator into the Greek Basileus, after Emperor Heraclius changed the official language of the empire from Latin to Greek in AD Basileus, a title which had long been used for Alexander the Great was already in common usage as the Greek word for the Roman emperor, but its definition and sense was King in Greek, essentially equivalent with the Latin Rex Byzantine period emperors also used the Greek word autokrator , meaning one who rules himself , or monarch , which was traditionally used by Greek writers to translate the Latin dictator Essentially, the Greek language did not incorporate the nuances of the Ancient Roman concepts that distinguished imperium from other forms of political power In general usage, the Byzantine imperial title evolved from simply emperor basileus , to emperor of the Romans basileus ton Romaion in the th century, to emperor and autocrat of the Romans basileus kai autokrator ton Romaion in the th In fact, none of these and other additional epithets and titles had ever been completely discarded One important distinction between the post Constantine I reigned AD – emperors and their pagan predecessors was cesaropapism, the assertion that the Emperor or other head of state is also the head of the Church Although this principle was held by all emperors after Constantine, it met with increasing resistance and ultimately rejection by bishops in the west after the effective end of Imperial power in there This concept became a key element of the meaning of emperor in the Byzantine and Orthodox east, but went out of favor with in the west with the rise of Roman Catholicism The Byzantine empire also produced three women who effectively governed the state the Empress Irene and the Empresses Zoe and Theodora Latin emperors edit In Constantinople fell to the Venetians and the Franks in the Fourth Crusade Following the tragedy of the horrific sacking of the city, the conquerors declared a new Empire of Romania , known to historians as the Latin Empire of Constantinople, installing Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders, as Emperor However, Byzantine resistance to the new empire meant that it was in constant struggle to establish itself Byzantine Emperor Michael VII Palaiologos succeeded in recapturing Constantinople in The Principality of Achaea, a vassal state the empire had created in Morea Greece intermittently continued to recognize the authority of the crusader emperors for another half century Pretenders to the title continued among the European nobility until circa After the th Crusade edit With Constantinople occupied, claimants to the imperial succession styled themselves as emperor in the chief centers of resistance The Laskarid dynasty in the Empire of Nicaea, the Komnenid dynasty in the Empire of Trebizond and the Doukid dynasty in the Despotate of Epirus In , the Epirus recognized the Nicaean Emperors, who then recaptured Constantinople in The Trebizond emperor formally submitted in Constantinople in , but frequently flouted convention by styling themselves emperor back in Trebizond thereafter Ottoman Empire edit Agostino Veneziano's engraving of Ottoman emperor Suleiman the Magnificent Note the four tiers on the helmet, which he had commissioned from Venice, symbolizing his imperial power, and excelling the three tiered papal tiara This tiara was made for , ducats and offered to Suleiman by the French ambassador Antonio Rincon in This was a most atypical piece of headgear for a Turkish sultan, which he probably never normally wore, but which he placed beside him when receiving visitors, especially ambassadors It was crowned with an enormous feather Ottoman rulers held several titles denoting their Imperial status These included citation needed Sultan, Khan, Sovereign of the Imperial House of Osman, Sultan of Sultans, Khan of Khans, Commander of the Faithful and Successor of the Prophet of the Lord of the Universe, Protector of the Holy Cities of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem, Emperor of The Three Cities of Constantinople, Adrianopole and Bursa as well as many other cities and countries After the Ottoman capture of Constantinople in , the Ottoman sultans began to style themselves Kaysar i Rum Emperor of the Romans as they asserted themselves to be the heirs to the Roman empire by right of conquest The title was of such importance to them that it led them to eliminate the various Byzantine successor states — and therefore rival claimants — over the next eight years Though the term emperor was rarely used by Westerners of the Ottoman sultan, it was generally accepted by Westerners that he had imperial status Holy Roman Empire edit Main article Holy Roman Emperor The Roman of the Emperor's title was a reflection of the translatio imperii transfer of rule principle that regarded the Holy Roman Emperors as the inheritors of the title of Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, despite the continued existence of the Roman Empire in the east From the time of Otto the Great onward, much of the former Carolingian kingdom of Eastern Francia became the Holy Roman Empire The prince electors elected one of their peers as King of the Romans and King of Italy before being crowned by the Pope The Emperor could also pursue the election of his heir usually a son as King, who would then succeed him after his death This junior King then bore the title of Roman King King of the Romans Although technically already ruling, after the election he would be crowned as emperor by the Pope The last emperor to be crowned by the pope was Charles V all emperors after him were technically emperors elect, but were universally referred to as Emperor Austrian Empire edit Main article Emperor of Austria The first Austrian Emperor was the last Holy Roman Emperor Francis II In the face of aggressions by Napoleon, Francis feared for the future of the Holy Roman Empire He wished to maintain his and his family's Imperial status in the event that the Holy Roman Empire should be dissolved, as it indeed was in when an Austrian led army suffered a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz After which, the victorious Napoleon proceeded to dismantle the old Reich by severing a good portion from the empire and turning it into a separate Confederation of the Rhine With the size of his imperial realm significantly reduced, Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor became Francis I, Emperor of Austria The new imperial title may have sounded less prestigious than the old one, but Francis' dynasty continued to rule from Austria and a Habsburg monarch was still an emperor Kaiser , and not just merely a king König , in name The title lasted just a little over one century until , but it was never clear what territory constituted the Empire of Austria When Francis took the title in , the Habsburg lands as a whole were dubbed the Kaisertum Österreich Kaisertum might literally be translated as emperordom on analogy with kingdom or emperor ship the term denotes specifically the territory ruled by an emperor , and is thus somewhat more general than Reich, which in carried connotations of universal rule Austria proper as opposed to the complex of Habsburg lands as a whole had been an Archduchy since the th century, and most of the other territories of the Empire had their own institutions and territorial history, although there were some attempts at centralization, especially during the reign of Marie Therese and her son Joseph II and then finalized in the early th century When Hungary was given self government in , the non Hungarian portions were called the Empire of Austria and were officially known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council Reichsrat The title of Emperor of Austria and the associated Empire were both abolished at the end of the First World War in , when German Austria became a republic and the other kingdoms and lands represented in the Imperial Council established their independence or adhesion to other states Emperors of Europe edit Byzantium's close cultural and political interaction with its Balkan neighbors Bulgaria and Serbia, and with Russia Kievan Rus', then Muscovy led to the adoption of Byzantine imperial traditions in all of these countries Bulgaria edit In , Simeon I of Bulgaria was crowned Emperor Tsar by the Patriarch of Constantinople and imperial regent Nicholas Mystikos outside of the Byzantine capital In its final simplified form, the title read Emperor and Autocrat of all Bulgarians and Romans Tsar i samodarzhets na vsichki balgari i gartsi in the modern vernacular The Roman component in the Bulgarian imperial title indicated both rulership over Greek speakers and the derivation of the imperial tradition from the Romans, however this component was never recognised by the Byzantine court Byzantine recognition of Simeon's imperial title was revoked by the succeeding Byzantine government The decade – was spent in destructive warfare between Byzantium and Bulgaria over this and other matters of conflict The Bulgarian monarch, who had further irritated his Byzantine counterpart by claiming the title Emperor of the Romans basileus ton Romaion , was eventually recognized, as Emperor of the Bulgarians basileus ton Boulgaron by the Byzantine Emperor Romanos I Lakapenos in Byzantine recognition of the imperial dignity of the Bulgarian monarch and the patriarchal dignity of the Bulgarian patriarch was again confirmed at the conclusion of permanent peace and a Bulgarian Byzantine dynastic marriage in In the meantime, the Bulgarian imperial title may have been also confirmed by the pope The Bulgarian imperial title tsar was adopted by all Bulgarian monarchs up to the fall of Bulgaria under Ottoman rule th century Bulgarian literary compositions clearly denote the Bulgarian capital Tarnovo as a successor of Rome and Constantinople, in effect, the Third Rome It should be noted that after Bulgaria obtained full independence from the Ottoman Empire in , its monarch, who was previously styled Knyaz , i e , Prince, took the traditional title of Tsar which in Bulgarian means King citation needed and was recognized internationally as such France edit The kings of the Ancien Régime and the July Monarchy used the title Empereur de France in diplomatic correspondence and treaties with the Ottoman emperor from at least onwards The Ottomans insisted on this elevated style while refusing to recognize the Holy Roman Emperors or the Russian tsars because of their rival claims of the Roman crown In short, it was an indirect insult by the Ottomans to the HRE and the Russians The French kings also used it for Morocco and Persia First French Empire edit See also First French Empire One of the most famous Imperial coronation ceremonies was that of Napoleon, crowning himself Emperor in the presence of Pope Pius VII who had blessed the regalia , at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris The painting by David commemorating the event is equally famous the gothic cathedral restyled style Empire, supervised by the mother of the Emperor on the balcony a fictional addition, while she had not been present at the ceremony , the pope positioned near the altar, Napoleon proceeds to crown his then wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais as Empress Napoleon Bonaparte, who was already First Consul of the French Republic Premier Consul de la République française for life, declared himself Emperor of the French Empereur des Français on May , thus creating the French Empire Empire Français Napoleon relinquished the title of Emperor of the French on April and again on April Napoleon's infant son, Napoleon II, was recognized by the Council of Peers, as Emperor from the moment of his father's abdication, and therefore reigned as opposed to ruled as Emperor for fifteen days, June to July Elba edit Since May , the Sovereign Principality of Elba was created a miniature non hereditary Monarchy under the exiled French Emperor Napoleon I Napoleon I was allowed, by the treaty of Fontainebleau with April , to enjoy, for life, the imperial title The islands were not restyled an empire On February , Napoleon abandoned Elba for France, reviving the French Empire for a Hundred Days the Allies declared an end to Napoleon's sovereignty over Elba on March , and on March Elba was ceded to the restored Grand Duchy of Tuscany by the Congress of Vienna After his final defeat, Napoleon was treated as a general by the British authorities during his second exile to Atlantic Isle of St Helena His title was a matter of dispute with the governor of St Helena, who insisted on addressing him as General Bonaparte , despite the historical reality that he had been an emperor and therefore retained the title Second French Empire edit See also Second French Empire Napoleon I's nephew, Napoleon III, resurrected the title of emperor on December , after establishing the Second French Empire in a presidential coup, subsequently approved by a plebiscite His reign was marked by large scale public works, the development of social policy, and the extension of France's influence throughout the world During his reign, he also set about creating the Second Mexican Empire headed by his choice of Maximilian I of Mexico, a member of the House of Habsburg , to regain France's hold in the Americas and to achieve greatness for the 'Latin' race Napoleon III was deposed on September , after France's defeat in the Franco Prussian War The Third Republic followed and after the death of his son Napoleon IV , in during the Zulu War, the Bonapartist movement split, and the Third Republic was to last until Iberian Peninsula edit The origin of the title Imperator totius Hispaniae Latin for Emperor of All Spain is murky It was associated with the Leonese monarchy perhaps as far back as Alfonso the Great r – The last two kings of its Pérez Dynasty were called emperors in a contemporary source King Sancho III of Navarre conquered Leon in and began using it His son, Ferdinand I of Castile also took the title in Ferdinand's son, Alfonso VI of León and Castile took the title in It then passed to his son in law, Alfonso I of Aragon in His stepson and Alfonso VI's grandson, Alfonso VII was the only one who actually had an imperial coronation in The title was not exactly hereditary but self proclaimed by those who had, wholly or partially, united the Christian northern part of the Iberian Peninsula, often at the expense of killing rival siblings The popes and Holy Roman emperors protested at the usage of the imperial title as a usurpation of leadership in western Christendom After Alfonso VII's death in , the title was abandoned, and the kings who used it are not commonly mentioned as having been emperors , in Spanish or other historiography After the fall of the Byzantine Empire, the legitimate heir to the throne, Andreas Palaiologos, willed away his claim to Ferdinand and Isabella in This claim seems to have been forgotten or abandoned quietly for the last years Britain edit Main article British Emperor In the late rd century, by the end of the epoch of the barracks emperors in Rome, there were two Britannic Emperors, reigning for about a decade After the end of Roman rule in Britain, the Imperator Cunedda forged the Kingdom of Gwynedd in northern Wales, but all his successors were titled kings and princes England edit There was no set title for the king of England before and monarchs chose to style themselves as they pleased Imperial titles were used inconsistently beginning with Athelstan in and ended with the Norman conquest of England Empress Matilda – is the only British monarch commonly referred to as emperor or empress , but acquired her title through her marriage to Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor, and had little legitimacy as Queen of England During the rule of Henry VIII an Act of Parliament declared that 'this realm of England is an Empire governed by one Supreme Head and King having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial Crown of the same' This was in the context of the divorce of Catherine of Aragon and the English Reformation, to emphasize that England had never accepted the quasi imperial claims of the papacy Hence England and, by extension its modern successor state, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is according to English law an Empire ruled by a King endowed with the imperial dignity However, this has not led to the creation of the title of Emperor in England or in the United Kingdom itself United Kingdom edit George V, King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, Emperor of India In , George III rejected the title of Emperor when offered The only period when British monarchs held the title of Emperor in a dynastic succession started when the title Empress of India was created for Queen Victoria The government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, conferred the additional title upon her by an Act of Parliament, reputedly to assuage the monarch's irritation at being, as a mere Queen, notionally inferior to her own daughter Princess Victoria, who was the wife of the reigning German Emperor the Indian Imperial designation was also formally justified as the expression of Britain succeeding the former Mughal Emperor as suzerain over hundreds of princely states The title was relinquished by George VI when India became independent on August The last Empress of India was George VI's wife, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother German Empire edit Main article German Empire Wilhelm II, German Emperor and the King of Prussia Under the guise of idealism giving way to realism, German nationalism rapidly shifted from its liberal and democratic character in to Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarck's authoritarian Realpolitik Bismarck wanted to unify the rival German states to achieve his aim of a conservative, Prussian dominated Germany Three wars led to military successes and helped to convince German people to do this the Second war of Schleswig against Denmark in , the Austro Prussian War against Austria in , and the Franco Prussian War against the Second French Empire in – During the Siege of Paris in , the North German Confederation, supported by its allies from southern Germany, formed the German Empire with the proclamation of the Prussian king Wilhelm I as German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, to the humiliation of the French, who ceased to resist only days later After his death he was succeeded by his son Frederick III who was only emperor for days In the same year his son Wilhelm II became the third emperor within a year He was the last German emperor After the empire's defeat in World War I the empire ceased to exist Russia edit Empress of Russia Catherine the Great In , the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, Sophia Palaiologina, married Ivan III, grand prince of Moscow, who began championing the idea of Russia being the successor to the Byzantine Empire This idea was represented more emphatically in the composition the monk Filofej addressed to their son Vasili III After ending Muscovy's dependence on its Mongol overlords in , Ivan III began the usage of the titles Tsar and Autocrat samoderzhets His insistence on recognition as such by the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire since resulted in the granting of this recognition in by Emperor Maximilian I to Vasili III His son Ivan IV emphatically crowned himself Tsar of Russia on January The word Tsar derives from Latin Caesar, but this title was used in Russia as equivalent to King the error occurred when medieval Russian clerics referred to the biblical Jewish kings with the same title that was used to designate Roman and Byzantine rulers — Caesar On October , Peter I was proclaimed Emperor by the Senate The title used was Latin Imperator , which is a westernizing form equivalent to the traditional Slavic title Tsar He based his claim partially upon a letter discovered in written in from Maximilian I to Vasili III, in which the Holy Roman Emperor used the term in referring to Vasili A formal address to the ruling Russian monarch adopted thereafter was 'Your Imperial Majesty' The crown prince was addressed as 'Your Imperial Highness' The title has not been used in Russia since the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II on March Imperial Russia produced four reigning Empresses, all in the eighteenth century Serbia edit Main article Emperor of Serbia In , the Serbian King Stefan Uroš IV Dušan proclaimed himself Emperor Tsar and was crowned as such at Skopje on Easter by the newly created Patriarch of Serbia, and by the Patriarch of Bulgaria and the autocephalous Archbishop of Ohrid His imperial title was recognized by Bulgaria and various other neighbors and trading partners but not by the Byzantine Empire In its final simplified form, the Serbian imperial title read Emperor of Serbs and Greeks ??? ???? ? ???? in modern Serbian It was only employed by Stefan Uroš IV Dušan and his son Stefan Uroš V in Serbia until his death in , after which it became extinct A half brother of Dušan, Simeon Uroš, and then his son Jovan Uroš, claimed the same title, until the latter's abdication in , while ruling as dynasts in Thessaly The Greek component in the Serbian imperial title indicates both rulership over Greeks and the derivation of the imperial tradition from the Romans Emperors in the Americas edit Pre Columbian traditions edit The Aztec and Inca traditions are unrelated to one another Both were conquered under the reign of King Charles I of Spain who was simultaneously emperor elect of the Holy Roman Empire during the fall of the Aztecs and fully emperor during the fall of the Incas Incidentally by being king of Spain, he was also Roman Byzantine emperor in pretence through Andreas Palaiologos The translations of their titles were provided by the Spanish Aztec Empire edit The only pre Columbian North American rulers to be commonly called emperors were the Hueyi Tlatoani of the Aztec Empire – It was an elected monarchy chosen by the elite Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés slew Emperor Cuauhtémoc and installed puppet rulers who became vassals for Spain Mexican Emperor Maximilian built his palace, Chapultepec Castle, over the ruins of an Aztec one Inca Empire edit The only pre Columbian South American rulers to be commonly called emperors were the Sapa Inca of the Inca Empire – Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro, conquered the Inca for Spain, killed Emperor Atahualpa, and installed puppets as well Atahualpa may actually be considered a usurper as he had achieved power by killing his half brother and he did not perform the required coronation with the imperial crown mascaipacha by the Huillaq Uma high priest Post Columbian Americas edit Brazil edit Pedro II, Emperor of Brazil, in regalia at the opening of the General Assembly oil painting by Pedro Américo When Napoleon I ordered the invasion of Portugal in because it refused to join the Continental System, the Portuguese Braganzas moved their capital to Rio de Janeiro to avoid the fate of the Spanish Bourbons Napoleon I arrested them and made his brother Joseph king When the French general Jean Andoche Junot arrived in Lisbon, the Portuguese fleet had already left with all the local elite In , under a British naval escort, the fleet arrived in Brazil Later, in , the Portuguese Prince Regent since King João VI proclaimed the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves, as a union of three kingdoms, lifting Brazil from its colonial status After the fall of Napoleon I and the Liberal revolution in Portugal, the Portuguese Royals returned to Europe Prince Pedro of Braganza King João's older son stayed in South America acting as regent of the local kingdom, but, two years later in , he proclaimed himself Pedro I, first Emperor of Brazil He did, however, recognize his father, João VI, as Titular Emperor of Brazil —a purely honorific title—until João VI's death in The empire came to an end in , with the overthrow of Emperor Pedro II Pedro I's son and successor , when the Brazilian republic was proclaimed Haiti edit Haiti was declared an empire by its ruler, Jean Jacques Dessalines, who made himself Jacques I, in May He was assassinated the next year Haiti again became an empire from to under Faustin Soulouque Mexico edit Portrait of Maximilian I of Mexico, by Franz Xaver Winterhalter In Mexico, the First Mexican Empire was the first of two empires created After the declaration of independence on September , , it was the intention of the Mexican parliament to establish a commonwealth whereby the King of Spain, Ferdinand VII, would also be Emperor of Mexico, but in which both countries were to be governed by separate laws and with their own legislative offices Should the king refuse the position, the law provided for a member of the House of Bourbon to accede to the Mexican throne Ferdinand VII, however, did not recognize the independence and said that Spain would not allow any other European prince to take the throne of Mexico By request of Parliament, the president of the regency Agustín de Iturbide was proclaimed emperor of Mexico in July as Agustín I Agustín de Iturbide was the general who helped secure Mexican independence from Spanish rule, but was overthrown by the Plan of Casa Mata In , the invading French, under Napoleon III see above , in alliance with Mexican conservatives and nobility, helped create the Second Mexican Empire, and invited Archduke Maximilian, of the House of Habsburg Lorraine, younger brother of the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef I, to become emperor Maximilian I of Mexico The childless Maximilian and his consort Empress Carlota of Mexico, daughter of Leopold I of Belgium, adopted Agustín's grandsons Agustin and Salvador as his heirs to bolster his claim to the throne of Mexico Maximilian and Carlota made Chapultepec Castle their home, which has been the only palace in North America to house sovereigns After the withdrawal of French protection in , Maximilian was captured and executed by the liberal forces of Benito Juárez This empire led to French influence in the Mexican culture and also immigration from France, Belgium, and Switzerland to Mexico Persia Iran edit Further information Shah and King of Kings In Persia, from the time of Darius the Great, Persian rulers used the title King of Kings Shahanshah in