CHARLES HI. king of Spain, born on Jan. 20, 1716, was the first son of the second marriage of Philip V. with Elizabeth Farnese of Parma. In 1732 he was sent to rule as duke of Parma by right of his mother, and two years later, 1734, made himself master of Naples and Sicily and began there the work of internal reform which he afterwards continued in Spain. On the death of his half-brother Ferdinand VI. he became king of Spain and resigned the Two Sicilies to his third son, Ferdinand.
As king of Spain his foreign policy was disastrous. His strong family feeling and his detestation of England, which was un checked after the death of his wife, Maria Amelia, daughter of Frederick Augustus II. of Saxony, in 1760, led him into the Family Compact with France. Spain was entangled in the close of the Seven Years' War, to her great loss. In 1779 he was, somewhat reluctantly, led to join France and the American insurgents against England. His internal government was on the whole beneficial to the country. He improved sanitation, suppressed lawlessness, en couraged trade and industry, and constructed roads and canals. Although a sincere Roman Catholic, he consented to the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain, reduced the number of idle clergy, and rendered the Inquisition ineffectual. When he died on Dec. 14, I 788, Charles, the greatest of the Spanish Bourbons, left the repu tation of an enlightened monarch.