fjt_01489 - CHARLES VI La châtellenie du vieux bourg de Gand n.d.

CHARLES VI LE FOU ou LE BIEN AIMÉ / THE BELOVED or THE MAD

Charles VI (1/10/1685-20/10/1740) is the second son of Leopold I (1657-1705) and was initially the unfortunate competitor of Philip V to the throne of Spain (1700-1714). Emperor on the death of his brother Joseph I in 1711, he renounced Spain in 1714 at the Treaty of Rastatt, but kept the Austrian Netherlands. Charles VI had no male children. His daughter Marie-Thérèse was born in 1717. He had enacted the Pragmatic Sanction in 1713 which would allow his daughter to accede to the throne after her death and he made her marry François III of Lorraine in 1736 who renounced his duchy for the hypothetical imperial crown which he will only obtain in 1745. When Charles VI died in 1740, the War of Austrian Succession begins in order to guarantee the rights of his daughter Marie-Thérèse and his son-in-law, François de Lorraine. The war will last eight years.