FERDINAND VII., king of Spain (1784-1833), eldest son of Charles IV., king of Spain, and of his wife Maria Luisa of Parma, was born at the palace of San Ildefonso near Balsam in the Somosierra hills, on Oct. 14, 1784. On March 17, 1808 he suc ceeded to the throne by the forced abdication of his father, but was shortly afterwards taken prisoner by Napoleon. He was re leased in 1814 (see SPAIN : History) and returned to find that while Spain was fighting for independence in his name a new world had been born of foreign invasion and domestic revolution. He came back to assert the ancient doctrine that the sovereign authority resided in his person only, and repudiated the imprac ticable constitution made by the cortes in 1814 without his con sent. He proved himself, however, incapable of governing or of choosing reliable advisers, and was influenced by the lowest intriguers. The autocratic powers of the Grand Alliance, though forced to support him as the representative of legitimacy in Spain, watched his proceedings with disgust and alarm. When the in evitable revolt came in 1820 he grovelled to the insurgents as he had done to his parents and was imprisoned by them until 1823. On the invasion by France in that year the revolutionary party carried Ferdinand to Cadiz, and he continued to make promises of amendment till he was free. Then, in violation of his oath to grant an amnesty, he revenged himself for three years of coercion by killing on a scale which revolted his "rescuers" and against which the duke of Angouleme, powerless to interfere, protested by refusing the Spanish decorations offered him for his services. During his declining years Ferdinand's energy abated. After his fourth marriage in 1829 with Maria Christina of Naples by whom he had two daughters, he was persuaded by his wife to confirm Charles IV.'s revocation of the Salic Law of Philip V., which gave a preference to all the males of the family in Spain. When Ferdinand died at Madrid on Sept. 29, 1833, his daughter Isabella II. was proclaimed queen, and her mother acted as regent.
King Ferdinand VII. kept a diary during the troubled years 1820-23, which has been published by the count de Casa Valencia.
See D. E. de K. Vays, Historia de la vida y reinado de Ferdinand VII. 3 vols. (1842) Minano, Histoire de la Revolution d'Espagne, 5820-23 (2 vols., 1824) ; P. Zancada, El Sentido Social de la revolu ci6n de 5820. Revista contemporenea (2903).