CARLOS, DON (CARLOS MARIA ISIDRO) (1788-1855), the first of the Carlist claimants of the throne of Spain, was the sec ond surviving son of King Charles IV. and his wife, Louisa Maria of Parma. He was born on Mar. 29, 1788. From 1808 till 1814, he was a prisoner of Napoleon in France. Returning to Madrid, he married, in 1816, Maria Francesca de Asis, daughter of King John VI. of Portugal, and sister of the second wife of his elder brother King Ferdinand VII. Though he took no part in the Gov ernment, except to hold a few formal offices, Don Carlos was known for his religious orthodoxy and his firm belief in the di vine right of kings. During the revolutionary troubles of 182o 23 he was threatened by the extreme radicals, but no attack was made on him. Towards the close of Ferdinand's reign Don Carlos was forced into the position of a party leader, for when Ferdinand endeavoured to alter the law of succession in order to secure the crown for his daughter Isabella, the Spanish clericals banded to protect the rights of Don Carlos, and he might easily have placed himself at the head of an insurrection had he not considered re bellion a sin. In Mar. 1833, Don Carlos went to Portugal to sup port Don Miguel, then regent. While there he was called upon by Ferdinand to swear allegiance to the infanta Isabella, of ter wards queen, but he refused to renounce his rights and those of his sons. On the death of his brother in Sept. 1833, he was shut off from Spain by the civil war in Portugal, and could do noth ing to direct the Spaniards who rose on his behalf and proclaimed him king as Charles V. When the Miguelite party was beaten in Portugal, Don Carlos escaped in a British warship to England in June 1834, and, crossing to France, joined his partisans at Elizon do in the valley of Bastan, in the western Pyrenees. On Oct. 27, 1834, he was deprived of his rights as infante by a royal decree, confirmed by the Cortes on Jan. 15, 1837. Don Carlos remained in Spain till the defeat of his party, and then escaped to France in Sept. 1839. The def eat of his cause, which had many chances of success, was due to his want of capacity and apathy. His first wife having died in England, Don Carlos married her elder sis ter, the princess of Beira, in Oct. 183 7. He abdicated his pre tensions in May 1845, took the title of count of Molina, and died at Trieste on Mar. Io, By his first marriage, Don Carlos had three sons, Charles (1818 61) , John (1822-87) and Ferdinand (1824-61). Charles suc ceeded to the claims of his father, and was known to his partisans as Don Carlos VI., but more commonly as the count of Monte molin. In 1846, when the marriage of queen Isabella was being negotiated, the Austrian Government endeavoured to arrange an alliance between the two, but as Charles insisted on the complete recognition of his rights, the Spanish Government refused the alliance. In April 186o he and his brother Ferdinand landed at San Carlos de la Rapita, at the mouth of the Ebro, but no Carlist rising took place, and the princes only saved their lives by an ab ject surrender of their claims. Later at Cologne, the count of Montemolin publicly retracted his renunciation on June 15 on the ignominious ground that it had been extorted by fear. Both princes died in Jan. 1861 without issue.
The third brother, John, who had advanced his own claims be fore his brother's retraction, now came forward as the representa tive of the Carlist cause. On Oct. 3, 1868, he made a formal re nunciation in favour of his son Charles, Don Carlos VII. (q.v.).
See H. Baumgarten, Geschichte Spaniens (Leipzig, 1860 ; H. Butler Clarke, Modern Spain (Cambridge, 1906), which contains a useful bibliography.