CHARLES II. (1661-170o), king of Spain, the son of Philip IV. by his second marriage with Maria, daughter of the emperor Ferdinand III., was born on Nov. II, 1661. Weak, indolent and almost imbecile from his birth, Charles was brought up under the tutelage of his Austrian mother, who was later exiled from court by the younger Don John of Austria, a natural son of Philip IV. In 1679, Charles married Maria Louisa of Orleans, thereby satisfying French interests, which were still more ad vanced by his acceptance of the Treaty of Ratisbon, June 1684. On the death of the French princess in the stifling atmosphere of the Spanish court, Charles married Maria Ana of Neuberg in 1689, and Austrian interests were again promoted. Always de crepit in mind and body, the king, driven wild by the conflict between his wish to transmit his inheritance to "the illustrious house of Austria," his own kin, and the belief instilled into him by the partisans of the French claimant that only the power of Louis XIV. could avert the dismemberment of the empire, was at last reduced to an abject condition. Under pressure from the cardinal archbishop of Toledo, Portocarrero, he finally made a will in favour of Philip, duke of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV., thereby ending the inglorious line of the Spanish Habsburgs. He died on Nov. 1, i 700.
See M. de Villars, Lettres (1868) ; P. de Villars, Memoires de la Cour d'Espagne (1893) ; G. Maura Gamaza, Carlos II. y su Corte, 2 vols. (1915) . (For a genealogical table of the Spanish Habsburgs, see HABSBURG.)