fme_523270 - PAYS-BAS ESPAGNOLS - COMTÉ DE FLANDRE - PHILIPPE IV Médaille, Paix des pyrénées

SPANISH NETHERLANDS - COUNTY OF FLANDERS - PHILIP IV

(1621-1665)

Philip IV of Spain (1605-1665) is the son of Philip III and Margaret of Austria. He became king on the death of his father in 1621, the year he married Elisabeth of France (1602-1644), the daughter of Henri IV and Marie de Médicis. He is the brother of Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII, and the father of Marie-Thérèse, wife of Louis XIV. Most of his reign will be spent fighting against France. From 1635, Spain entered the Thirty Years War. After the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the war continued between France and Spain and did not end until the Peace of the Pyrenees in 1659. France definitively lost Catalonia, but acquired Roussillon and Cerdagne. Mazarin and Anne of Austria arrange the Spanish marriage of Louis XIV to the Infanta Marie-Thérèse, whom he married at Saint-Jean-de-Luz in 1660. Widowed, Philippe IV remarried Marie-Anne of Austria, the sister of Leopold I to whom a sick son was born, the future Charles II of Spain (1665-1700), origin of the War of Spanish Succession.