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realms.The Spanish Empire refer to territories formerly colonized by Spain. It was also one of the largest global empire in history.

In the 15th century and 16th century centuries Spain was in the vanguard of European global exploration and colonial expansion and the opening of trade routes across the oceans, with trade flourishing across the Atlantic Ocean between Spain and the Americas and across the Pacific Ocean between Asia-Pacific and Mexico via the Philippines. Conquistadors toppled the Aztec, Inca Empire, and Maya civilization civilizations, and laid claim to vast stretches of land in North America and South America. For a time, the Spanish Empire dominated the oceans with its experienced Spanish navy, was the foremost global power, and ruled the European battlefield with its fearsome and well trained infantry, the . Spain enjoyed a Spanish Golden Age in the 16th and 17th centuries.

From the middle of the 16th century silver and gold from the American mines increasingly financed the military capability of Habsburg Spain in its long series of European and North African wars. In the 17th and 18th centuries the Spanish empire maintained the largest territory in the world, although it suffered fluctuating military and economic fortunes from the 1640s. Confronted by the new experiences, difficulties and suffering created by empire-building, Spanish thinkers formulated some of the first Modernity thoughts on natural law, sovereignty, international law, war, and economics — they even questioned the legitimacy of imperialism — in related schools of thought referred to collectively as the School of Salamanca.

Constant contention with rival powers caused territorial, commercial, and religious conflict that contributed to the slow decline of Spanish power from the mid-17th century. In the Mediterranean, Spain warred constantly with the Ottoman Empire; on the European continent, France became comparably strong. Overseas, Spain was initially rivaled by Portugal, and later by the England and Dutch Republic. In addition, English-, French-, and Dutch-sponsored piracy, overextension of Spanish military commitments in its territories, increasing government corruption, and economic stagnation caused by military expenditures ultimately contributed to the empire's weakening.

Spain's European empire was finally undone by the Peace of Utrecht (1713), which stripped Spain of its remaining territories in Italy and the Low Countries. Spain's fortunes improved thereafter, but it remained a second rate power in continental European politics.

However, Spain maintained and enlarged its vast overseas empire until the 19th century, when the shock of the Peninsular War sparked declarations of independence in Quito (1809), Colombia (1810), Venezuela and Paraguay (1811) and successive revolutions that split away its territories on the mainland (the Spanish Main) of America. Spain retained significant fragments of its empire in the Caribbean (Cuba and Puerto Rico); Asia (Philippines), and Oceania (Guam, Micronesia, Palau, and Northern Marianas) until the Spanish-American War of 1898. Spanish participation in the Scramble for Africa was minimal: Spanish Morocco was held until 1956 and Spanish Guinea and the Spanish Sahara were held until 1968 and 1975 respectively. The Canary Islands, Ceuta, Melilla are administrative divisions that have remained part of Spain and, Isla de Alborán, Isla Perejil, Islas Chafarinas, Peñón de Alhucemas, and Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera are territories which have remained part of Spain. And according to the UN "Spanish Sahara/Western Sahara," is still under Spanish Administration.

Definition The Spanish Empire generally refers to Spain's overseas colonies in America, Asia-Pacific, and Africa. However, no consensus exists among historians as to what is to be counted as part of the Spanish Empire, making it difficult to determine some of its territories in Europe. For instance, traditionally, territories such as the Low Countries were included as they were part of the possessions of the King of Spain, governed by Spanish officials, and defended by Spanish troops. However, authors like the British historian Henry Kamen contend that these territories were never integrated into a "Spanish" state and instead formed part of the wider Habsburg estate. Because of this, many historians use "Habsburg" and "Spanish" almost interchangeably when referring to the dynastic inheritance of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor or Philip II of Spain.

Similarly, it seems to be a matter of preference whether one counts as "Spanish" the House of Bourbon Kingdom of Naples in the 18th century, which, while dynastically and military aligned with Spain, remained a constitutionally separate state. The problem is compounded by the evolving definition of "Spain" itself, which, though unified by the crown, was still in some sense a collection of separate kingdoms, namely Castile, Aragon, and Navarre.

Although Spain and Portugal were united in a "personal union" between 1580 and 1640, a period now referred to as the Iberian Union, the crowns of Portugal and Spain were kept separate: Philip was Philip II of Spain and Philip I of Portugal. Portugal remained a separate stateHenry Kamen, Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492-1763, p.403 and the Portuguese empire was administered separately from the Spanish EmpireJames Maxwell Anderson, The History of Portugal, p.103James Lockhart, Stuart B. Schwartz, Early Latin America: A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil, p.250Donald F. Lach, Edwin J. Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe, p.9.

The origins of the Empire (1402–1521) .Three instances of powers that were to play an important part in the Spanish empire are to be recognized in the Aragonese Empire, the Burgundian Empire and the Portuguese Empire empires. Meanwhile, during the last 250 years of the Reconquista era, the List of Castilian monarchs, tolerated the small Moorish taifa client state of Granada in the south-east by exacting tributes of gold, the parias, and, in so doing, ensuring that gold from the Niger region of Africa entered Europe. Castile also intervened in Northern Africa itself, competing with the Portuguese Empire, when Henry III of Castile began the colonization of the Canary Islands in 1402, authorizing under feudal agreement to Normandy noblemen Jean de Béthencourt. The conquest of Canary Islands, inhabited by Guanche people, was only finished when the own armies of the Crown of Castille won in long and bloody wars, the islands of Gran Canaria (1478-1483), La Palma (1492-1493) and Tenerife (1494-1496).

The marriage of the Catholic Monarchs (Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile) created a personal union, each with their own administrations, but ruled by a common monarchy. According to Henry Kamen, Spain was created by the Empire, rather than the Empire being created by Spain.

's king in the presence of the Catholic Kings.In 1492, Spain drove out the last Moorish king of Granada. After their victory, the Spanish monarchs negotiated with Christopher Columbus, a Genoa sailor attempting to reach Cipangu by sailing west. Castile was already engaged in a Age of Exploration with Portugal to reach the Far East by sea when Columbus made his bold proposal to Isabella. Columbus instead inadvertently "discovered" Americas, inaugurating the Spanish colonization of the Americas. The Indies were reserved for Castile. taking possession of La Española.The claims of Spain to these lands was solidified by the Inter caetera papal bull of 1493, and by the immediately following Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494, in which the globe was divided into two hemispheres between Spanish and Portuguese claims. These actions gave Spain exclusive rights to establish colonies in all of the New World from History of Alaska to Cape Horn (except Brazil), as well as the westernmost parts of Asia. The Castilian Empire was the result of a period of rapid colonial expansion into the New World, as well as the Philippines and colony in Africa: Melilla was captured by Castile in 1497 and Oran in 1509.

The Catholic Monarchs decided to support the Aragonese house of Naples against Charles VIII of France in the Italian Wars from 1494. As king of Aragon, Ferdinand had been involved in the struggle against France and Republic of Venice for control of Italy; these conflicts became the center of Ferdinand's foreign policy as king. In these battles, which established the supremacy of the Spanish infantry against French knights, Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba would forge the nearly invincible Spanish army of the 16th century and early 17th century centuries. at the Battle of Ravenna (1512)

After the death of Queen Isabella, Ferdinand as Spain's sole monarch adopted a more aggressive policy than he had as Isabella's husband, enlarging Spain's sphere of influence in Italy and against France. Ferdinand's first investment of Spanish forces came in the War of the League of Cambrai against Republic of Venice, where the Spanish soldiers distinguished themselves on the field alongside their French allies at the Battle of Agnadello (1509). Only a year later, Ferdinand became part of the Catholic League (Italian) against France, seeing a chance at taking both Milan — to which he held a dynastic claim — and Navarre. The war was less of a success than that against Venice, and in 1516, France agreed to a truce that left Milan in her control and recognized Spanish control of Upper Navarre.

Upon the settlement of Hispanola which was successful in the early 1500s, the colonists began searching elsewhere to begin new settlements. Those from the less prosperous Hispaniola were eager to search for new success in a new settlement. From there Juan Ponce de León conquered Puerto Rico and Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar took Cuba. The first settlement on the mainland was Darien in Panama, settled by Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1512.

In 1513, Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama, and led the first European expedition to see the Pacific Ocean from the west coast of the New World. In an action with enduring historical import, Balboa claimed the Pacific Ocean and all the lands adjoining it for the Spanish Crown.

The coastal villages and towns of Spain, Italy and List of islands in the Mediterranean were frequently attacked by Barbary pirates from North Africa, the Formentera was even temporarily left by its population and long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants. The most famous corsair was the Turkish Hayreddin Barbarossa ("Redbeard"). According to Robert Davis between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by North African pirates and sold as Arab slave trade in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 16th century and 19th century. When Europeans were slaves: Research suggests white slavery was much more common than previously believed

The Golden Age of Spain (1521–1643) with the motto "Plus Ultra" as symbol of the Emperor Charles I of Spain in the Town Hall of Seville (16th century)

The 16th century and 17th century centuries are sometimes called "the Golden Age of Spain" (in Spanish language, ). As a result of the marriage politics of the , their grandson Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor inherited the Castilian empire in America, the Aragonese Empire in the Mediterranean (including a large portion of modern Italy), as well as the crown of the Holy Roman Empire and of the Low Countries and Franche-Comté. Thus this Empire was constituted from the inheritance of territories, and not through conquest. After his defeat of the Castilian rebels in the Castilian War of the Communities, Charles became the most powerful man in Europe, his rule stretching over an empire in Europe unrivalled in extent until the Napoleonic era. It was often said during this time that it was The empire on which the sun never sets. The unwieldy empire of this Golden Age was controlled, not from distant inland Madrid, but from Seville.

Commercially this Castilian Empire abroad was initially a disappointment. It did stimulate some trade and industry. In the 1520s the large scale extraction of silver from the rich deposits of Mexico's Guanajuato began, but it was not until the opening of the silver mines in Mexico's Zacatecas and Peru's Potosi in 1546 that the large shipments of silver became the fabled source of wealth of legend. During the sixteenth century, Spain held the equivalent of USD1.5 trillion (1990 terms) in gold and silver received from New Spain. Ultimately, however, these imports diverted investment away from other forms industry and contributed to price revolution in Spain in the last decades of the 16th century. This situation was aggravated by the loss of many of the commercial and artisan classes with the expulsions of the Jews and Moriscos. The vast imports of silver ultimately made Spain overly dependent on foreign sources of raw materials and manufactured goods.

The wealthy preferred to invest their fortunes in public debt (juros), which were backed by these silver imports, rather than in production of manufactures and the improvement of agriculture. This helped perpetuate the medieval aristocratic prejudice that saw manual work as dishonorable long after this attitude had started to decline in other west European countries. The silver and gold whose circulation helped facilitate the economic and social revolutions taking place in the Low Countries, France and England and other parts of Europe helped stifle them in Spain. The problems caused by inflation were discussed by scholars at the School of Salamanca and arbitristas but they had no impact on the Habsburg government.

The Habsburg dynasty squandered the American and Castilian riches in wars across Europe for Habsburg interests, defaulted on their debt several times, and left Spain bankrupt (with the tensions between the Empire and the people of Castile exploding in the popular rebellion of the Castilian War of the Communities (1520–1522). The Habsburg political goals were several:

• Access to Americas (gold, silver, sugar) and Asian products (porcelain, spices, silk)
• Undermining the power of France and containing it in its eastern borders.
• Maintaining Catholic Habsburg hegemony in Germany, defending Catholicism against the Reformation. Charles attempted to quell the Protestant Reformation at the Diet of Worms but Martin Luther refused to recant his heresy. However, Charles's piety could not stop his mutinying troops from plundering the Holy See in the Sacco di Roma.
• Defending Europe against Islam, notably the Ottoman Empire.

Siege of Tenochtitlan and conquest of the Inca Empire (1521–1541) After Columbus, the Spanish colonization of the Americas was led by a series of warrior-explorers called the Conquistadors. The Spanish forces exploited the rivalries between competing local peoples and states, some of which were only too willing to form alliances with the Spanish in order to defeat their more-powerful enemies, such as the Aztecs or Incas - a tactic that would be extensively used by later European colonial powers. The Spanish conquest was also greatly facilitated by the spread of diseases (e.g. smallpox) common in Europe but unknown in the New World, which decimated the native American populations. This caused a labour shortage and so the colonists informally and gradually, at first, initiated the Atlantic slave trade. (see Population history of American indigenous peoples)

.

One of the most successful conquistadors was Hernán Cortés, who with a relatively small Spanish force but also crucially the support of around two hundred thousand Amerindian allies, overran the mighty Aztec empire in the campaigns of 1519–1521 to bring Mexico into the Spanish empire as the basis for the colony of New Spain. Of equal importance was the conquest of the Inca empire by Francisco Pizarro, which would become the Viceroyalty of Peru. After the conquest of Mexico, rumours of golden cities (Quivira and Cíbola in North America, El Dorado in South America) caused several more expeditions to be sent out, but many of those returned without having found their goal, or having found it, finding it much less valuable than was hoped. Indeed, the American colonies only began to yield a substantial part of the crown's revenues with the establishment of mines such as that of Potosí (1546).

The Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan died while in the Philippines commanding a Castilian expedition to Circumnavigation the earth in 1522. Juan Sebastián Elcano would lead the expedition to success.

Meanwhile, in Europe, Francis I of France, who found himself surrounded by Habsburg territories, invaded the Spanish possessions in Italy in 1521,and inaugurated a second round of Franco-Spanish conflict. The war was a disaster for France, which suffered defeat at Battle of Biccoca (1522), Battle of Pavia (1525, at which Francis was captured), and Battle of Landriano (1529) before Francis relented and abandoned Milan to Spain once more.

(1525)

Charles's victory at the Battle of Pavia, 1525, surprised many Italians and Germans and elicited concerns that Charles would endeavor to gain ever greater power. Pope Clement VII switched sides and now joined forces with France and prominent Italian states against the Habsburg Emperor, in the War of the League of Cognac. In 1527, Charles grew exhausted with the pope's meddling in what he viewed as purely secular affairs, and Sack of Rome itself, embarrassing the papacy sufficiently enough that Clement, and succeeding popes, were considerably more circumspect in their dealings with secular authorities. In 1533, Clement's refusal to annul Henry VIII of England's marriage was a direct consequence of his unwillingness to offend the emperor and have his capital sacked for perhaps a second time. The Peace of Barcelona, signed between Charles and the Pope in 1529, established a more cordial relationship between the two leaders. Spain was effectively named the protector of the Catholic cause and Charles was crowned as King of Italy (Lombardy) in return for Spanish intervention in overthrowing the rebellious Florence Republic.

In 1528, the great admiral Andrea Doria allied with the Emperor to oust the French and restore Genoa's independence, opening the prospect for financial renewal: 1528 marks the first loan from Genoese banks to Charles (Braudel 1984).

Further Spanish settlements were progressively established in the New World: Viceroyalty of New Granada (modern Colombia)in the 1530s, Lima in 1535 the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru, Buenos Aires in 1536 and Santiago, Chile in 1541.

New Laws to the Peace of Augsburg (1542–1555) Spain did pass some laws for the protection of the indigenous peoples of its American colonies, the first such in 1542; the legal thought behind them was the basis of modern international law. Taking advantage of their extreme remoteness, the European colonists revolted when they saw their power being reduced, forcing a partial revoking of these New Laws. Later, weaker laws were introduced to protect the indigenous peoples but records show they had little effect. The restored exploited the Indians rather than taking care of them.

In 1543, the king of France Francis I of France announced his unprecedented alliance with the Ottoman empire sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, by occupying the Spanish-controlled city of Nice in concert with Ottoman Empire forces. Henry VIII of England, who bore a greater grudge against France than he held against the Emperor for standing in the way of his divorce, joined Charles in his invasion of France. Although the Spanish army was soundly defeated at the Battle of Ceresole in Savoy the French were unable to seriously threaten Spanish controlled Milan, whilst suffering defeat in the north at the hands of Henry, thereby being forced to accept unfavourable terms. The Austrians, led by Charles's younger brother Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, continued to fight the Ottomans in the east. Charles went to take care of an older problem: the Schmalkaldic League.

following the abdication of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1556) as depicted in The Cambridge Modern History Atlas (1912); Habsburg lands are shaded green. From 1556 the lands in a line from the Netherlands, through to the east of France, to the south of Italy and Sardinia were retained by the Spanish Habsburgs.

The League had allied itself to the French, and efforts in Germany to undermine the League had been rebuffed. Francis's defeat in 1544 led to the annulment of the alliance with the Protestants, and Charles took advantage of the opportunity. He first tried the path of negotiation at the Council of Trent in 1545, but the Protestant leadership, feeling betrayed by the stance taken by the Catholics at the council, went to war, led by the Saxony Prince-elector Maurice of Saxony. In response, Charles invaded Germany at the head of a mixed Dutch–Spanish army, hoping to restore the Imperial authority. The emperor personally inflicted a decisive defeat on the Protestants at the historic Battle of Mühlberg in 1547. In 1555, Charles signed the Peace of Augsburg with the Protestant states and restored stability in Germany on his principle of , a position unpopular with Spanish and Italian clergymen. Charles's involvement in Germany would establish a role for Spain as protector of the Catholic, Habsburg cause in the Holy Roman Empire; the precedent would lead, seven decades later, to involvement in the war that would decisively end Spain as Europe's leading power.

Charles had preferred to suppress the Ottomans through a considerably more maritime strategy, hampering Ottoman landings on the Republic of Venice territories in the Eastern Mediterranean. Only in response to raids on the eastern coast of Spain did Charles personally lead attacks against the African mainland (1545).

St. Quentin to Lepanto (1556–1571) Charles V's only legitimate son, Philip II of Spain (r. 1556–1598) parted the Austrian possessions with his uncle Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor. Philip treated Castile as the foundation of his empire, but the population of Castile (that was about a third of France's) was never great enough to provide the soldiers needed to support the Empire. When he married Mary I of England, England was allied to Spain.

(1559) between Spain and France

Spain was not yet at peace, as the aggressive Henry II of France came to the throne in 1547 and immediately renewed conflict with Spain. Charles's successor, Philip II, aggressively prosecuted the war against France, crushing a French army at the Battle of St. Quentin (1557) in Picardy in 1558 and defeating Henry again at the Battle of Gravelines (1558). The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, signed in 1559, permanently recognized Spanish claims in Italy. In the celebrations that followed the treaty, Henry was killed by a stray splinter from a lance. France was stricken for the next thirty years by chronic civil war and unrest (see French Wars of Religion) and removed from effectively competing with Spain and the Habsburg family in European power games. Freed from effective French opposition, Spain saw the wikt:apogee of its might and territorial reach in the period 1559–1643.

The opening for the Genoese banking consortium was the state bankruptcy of Philip II in 1557, which threw the German banking houses into chaos and ended the reign of the Fuggers as Spanish financiers.Archer, Christon et al., World History of Warfare. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 251. The Genoese bankers provided the unwieldy Habsburg system with fluid credit and a dependably regular income. In return the less dependable shipments of American silver were rapidly transferred from Seville to Genoa, to provide capital for further ventures.

Florida was colonized in 1565 by Pedro Menendez de Aviles when he founded Saint Augustine, Florida and then promptly defeated an illegal attempt led by the French Captain Jean Ribault and 150 of his countrymen to establish a French foothold in Spanish Florida territory. Saint Augustine quickly became a strategic defensive base for the Spanish ships full of gold and silver being sent to Spain from its New World dominions. On April 27, 1565, the first permanent Spanish settlement in the Philippines was founded by Miguel López de Legaspi and the service of Manila Galleons was inaugurated. The Manilla Galleons shipped goods from all over Asia across the Pacific to Acapulco on the coast of Mexico. From there, the goods were transshipped across Mexico to the Spanish treasure fleets, for shipment to Spain. The Spanish trading post of Manila was established to facilitate this trade in 1572.

(1571), marking the end of the Ottoman Empire as the dominant naval power in the Mediterranean

After Spain's victory over France and the beginning of France's religious wars, Phillip II of Spain ambitions grew. In 1565, the Spanish defeated an Ottoman landing on the strategic island of Malta, defended by the Knights of St. John. Suleiman the Magnificent's death the following year and his succession by his less capable son Selim the Sot emboldened Philip, and he resolved to carry the war to the sultan himself. In 1571, Spanish and Republic of Venice warships, joined by volunteers across Europe, led by Charles's illegitimate son Don John of Austria annihilated the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto (1571), in one of the most decisive battles in naval history. The battle ended the threat of Ottoman naval hegemony in the Mediterranean. This mission marked the height of the respectability of Spain and its sovereign abroad as Philip bore the burden of leading the Counter-Reformation.

European Conflicts (1571–1598) The time for rejoicing in Madrid was short-lived. In 1566, Calvinist-led riots in the Netherlands prompted the Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva to march into the country and restore order. In 1568, William the Silent led a failed attempt to drive Alva from the Netherlands. These battles are generally considered to signal the start of the Eighty Years' War that ended with the independence of the Dutch Republic. The Spanish, who derived a great deal of wealth from the Netherlands and particularly from the vital port of Antwerp, were committed to restoring order and maintaining their hold on the provinces. In 1572, a band of rebel Dutch privateers known as the watergeuzen ("Sea Beggars") seized a number of Dutch coastal towns, proclaimed their support for William and denounced the Spanish leadership.

: The Relief of Siege of Leiden (1574) after the Netherlands had broken their Dyke (construction) in the Eighty Years' War

For Spain, the war became an endless wikt:quagmire, sometimes literally. In 1574, the Spanish army under Luis de Requeséns was repulsed from the Siege of Leiden after the Dutch broke the Dyke (construction), thus causing extensive flooding. In 1576, faced with the bills from his 80,000-man army of occupation in the Netherlands, the cost of his massive fleet that had won at Lepanto, together with the growing threat of piracy in the open seas reducing his income from his American colonies Philip was forced to accept bankruptcy. The army in the Netherlands mutinied not long after, seizing Antwerp and looting the southern Netherlands, prompting several cities in the previously peaceful southern provinces to join the rebellion. The Spanish chose the route of negotiation, and pacified most of the southern provinces again with the Union of Arras in 1579.

Under the Arras agreement the southern states of the Spanish Netherlands, today in Wallonia and the Nord-Pas-de-Calais (and Picardy) régions in France, expressed their loyalty to the Spain king Philip II of Spain and recognized his Governor-General, John of Austria. In 1580, this gave King Philip the opportunity to strengthen his position when the last member of the List of Portuguese monarchs, Cardinal Henry of Portugal, died. Philip asserted his claim to the Portuguese throne and in June sent the Duke of Alba with an army to Lisbon to assure his succession. Though the Duke of Alba and the Spanish occupation, however, was little more popular in Lisbon than in Rotterdam, the combined Spanish and Portuguese empires placed into Philip's hands almost the entirety of the explored New World along with a vast trading empire in Africa and Asia. In 1582, when Philip II of Spain moved his court back to Madrid from the Atlantic port of Lisbon where he had temporarily settled to pacify his new Portuguese kingdom, the pattern was sealed, in spite of what every observant commentator privately noted: "Sea power is more important to the ruler of Spain than any other prince" wrote a commentator, "for it is only by sea power that a single community can be created out of so many so far apart." A writer on tactics in 1638 observed, "The might most suited to the arms of Spain is that which is placed on the seas, but this matter of state is so well known that I should not discuss it, even if I thought it opportune to do so." (quoted by Braudel 1984), by Zurbarán

Portugal required an extensive occupation force to keep it under control, and Spain was still reeling from the 1576 bankruptcy. In 1584, William the Silent was assassinated by a half-deranged Catholic, and the death of the popular Dutch resistance leader was hoped to bring an end to the war. It did not. In 1586, Queen Elizabeth I of England, sent support to the Protestant causes in the Netherlands and France, and Sir Francis Drake launched attacks against Spanish merchants in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean, along with a particularly aggressive attack on the port of Cadiz. In 1588, hoping to put a stop to Elizabeth’s meddling, Philip sent the Spanish Armada to attack England. Favorable weather, smaller more manœuverable English ships, and the fact that England had been warned by their spies in Netherland and were ready for the attack resulted in defeat for the outnumbered but more heavily armoured Armada of Spain. Nevertheless the defeat of the massive military attack, English Armada marked a turning point in the 1585–1604 Anglo-Spanish War in Spain's favour, and few can doubt that the Spanish fleet was the strongest in Europe until the Dutch fleet inflicted the defeat of the Battle of the Downs in 1639, when an increasingly exhausted Spain began to visibly weaken.

leaving the Bay of Ferrol (1588)

Spain had invested itself in the religious warfare in France after Henry II’s death. In 1589, Henry III of France, the last of the Valois Dynasty lineage, died at the walls of Paris. His successor, Henry IV of France, the first Bourbon Dynasty king of France, was a man of great ability, winning key victories against the Catholic League at Battle of Arques (1589) and Battle of Ivry (1590). Committed to stopping Henry of Navarre from becoming King of France, the Spanish divided their army in the Netherlands and invaded France in 1590.

"God is Spanish" (1596–1626) (1581-1640)
Red/Pink - Spanish Empire; Blue/Light Blue - Portuguese Empire.

Faced with wars against England, France and the Netherlands, each led by extraordinarily capable leaders, the insolvent empire found itself outmatched. Continuing piracy against its shipping in the Atlantic and the disruption of its vital gold shipments from the New World forced Spain to renegotiate its debts in 1596. The crown attempted to extricate itself from its several conflicts, first signing the Treaty of Vervins with France in 1598, recognizing Henry IV of France (since 1593 a Catholic) as king of France, and restoring many of the stipulations of the previous Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis. England, suffering from a series of defeats at sea and from an endless Nine Years' War (Ireland) by Catholics in Ireland, who were supported by Spain, agreed to the Treaty of London, 1604, following the accession of the more tractable House of Stuart King James I of England.

Peace with England and France gave Spain an opportunity to focus her energies on restoring her rule to the Dutch provinces. The Dutch, led by Maurice of Nassau, the son of William the Silent and perhaps the greatest strategist of his time, had succeeded in taking a number of border cities since 1590, including the fortress of Breda (Netherlands). Following the peace with England, the new Spanish commander Ambrosio Spinola, a general with the ability to match Maurice, pressed hard against the Dutch and was prevented from conquering the Netherlands only by Spain's latest Insolvency in 1607. In 1609, the Twelve Years' Truce was signed between Spain and the Dutch Republic. At last, Spain was at peace - the .

Spain made a fair recovery during the truce, putting her finances in order and doing much to restore her prestige and stability in the run-up to the last truly great war in which she would play a leading part. Philip II's successor, Philip III of Spain, was a man of limited ability, uninterested in politics and preferring to delegate management of the empire to others. His chief minister was the capable Francisco Goméz de Sandoval y Rojas, Duke of Lerma.

The Duke of Lerma (and to a large extent Philip II) had been uninterested in the affairs of their ally, Austria. In 1618, the king replaced him with Don Balthasar de Zúñiga, a veteran ambassador to Vienna. Don Balthasar believed that the key to restraining the resurgent French and eliminating the Dutch was a closer alliance with Habsburg Austria. In 1618, beginning with the Defenestration of Prague, Austria and the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, embarked on a campaign against the Protestant Union and Bohemia. Don Balthasar encouraged Philip to join the Austrian Habsburgs in the war, and Spinola, the rising star of the Spanish army in the Netherlands, was sent at the head of the Army of Flanders to intervene. Thus, Spain entered into the Thirty Years' War.

(1625) to Ambrosio Spinola, by Velazquez. This victory came to symbolize the renewed period of Spanish military vigour in the Thirty Years' War.

In 1621, Philip III was succeeded by the considerably more religious Philip IV of Spain. The following year, Don Balthasar was replaced by Gaspar de Guzman, Count-Duke of Olivares, a reasonably honest and able man who believed that the center of all Spain's woes rested in the Netherlands. After certain initial setbacks, the Bohemians were defeated at Battle of White Mountain in 1621, and again at Stadtlohn in 1623. The war with the Netherlands was renewed in 1621 with Spinola taking the fortress of Siege of Breda in 1625. The intervention of Christian IV of Denmark in the war worried some (Christian was one of Europe's few monarchs who had no worries over his finances), but the victory of the Imperial general Albert of Wallenstein over the Danes at Battle of Dessau Bridge and again at Battle of Lutter (both in 1626), eliminated that threat.

There was hope in Madrid that the Netherlands might finally be reincorporated into the Empire, and after the defeat of Denmark the Protestants in Germany seemed crushed. France was once again involved in her own instabilities (the famous Siege of La Rochelle began in 1627), and Spain's eminence seemed clear. The Count-Duke Olivares stridently affirmed, "God is Spanish and fights for our nation these days".(Brown and Elliott, 1980, p. 190)

The road to Rocroi (1626–1643) Olivares was a man out of time: he realized that Spain needed to reform, and to reform it needed peace. The destruction of the United Provinces of the Netherlands was added to his list of necessities, because at the root of every anti-Habsburg coalition there was Dutch money. Dutch bankers financed the East Indies merchants of Seville, and everywhere in the world Dutch entrepreneurship and colonists were undermining Spanish and Portuguese hegemony.

While Spinola and the Spanish army were focused on the Netherlands, the war seemed to go in Spain's favor. But 1627 saw the collapse of the Castilian economy. The Spanish had been debasement their currency to pay for the war and inflation in their domestic economy, just as they had in previous years in Austria. Until 1631, parts of Castile operated on a barter economy owing to the currency crisis, and the government was unable to collect any meaningful taxes from the peasantry and had to depend on revenue from its colonies. The Spanish armies in Germany resorted to "paying themselves" on the land.

Olivares had backed certain taxation reforms in Spain pending the end of the war, but was blamed for another embarrassing and fruitless War of the Mantuan Succession. The Dutch, who during the Twelve Years' Truce had made their increasingly navy a priority, (which showed its maturing potency at the Battle of Gibraltar 1607), managed to strike a great blow against Spanish maritime trade with the capture of the treasure fleet by captain Piet Pieterszoon Hein, on which Spain had become dependent after the economic collapse.

Spanish military resources were fully stretched across Europe, and also at sea as they sought to protect maritime trade against the greatly improved Dutch and French fleets, while still occupied with the Ottoman and associated Barbary pirate threat in the Mediterranean. . A Dutch takeover of much of Brazil was ejected by a Spanish-Portuguese expeditions, but the isolated and undermanned forts and shipping of the Portuguese part of the empire in Africa and the Orient proved particularly vulnerable to Dutch and English raids and takeovers.

In 1630, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, one of history's most noted commanders, landed in Germany and relieved the port of Stralsund, the last continental stronghold of German forces belligerent to the Emperor. Gustavus then marched south and won notable victories at Battle of Breitenfeld (1631) and Battle of Lützen (1632), attracting more Protestant support with every step he took. The situation for the Catholics improved with Gustavus's death at Lutzen in 1632, and a key victory at Battle of Nordlingen was won in 1634. From a position of strength, the Emperor approached the war-weary German states with a peace in 1635: many accepted, including the two most powerful, Brandenburg and Saxony. Then France entered the equation, and diplomatic calculations were thrown in to confusion.

(1643), the symbolic end of Spain's grandeur; the decline sets in.

Cardinal Richelieu of France had been a strong supporter of the Dutch and Protestants since the beginning of the war, sending funds and equipment in an attempt to stem Habsburg strength in Europe. Richelieu decided that the recently-signed Peace of Prague (1635) was contrary to French designs and declared war on the Holy Roman Emperor and Spain within months of the peace being signed. In the war that followed, the more experienced Spanish forces scored initial successes. Olivares ordered a lightning campaign into northern France from the Spanish Netherlands, hoping to shatter the resolve of Louis XIII of France's ministers and topple Richelieu. In the "", 1636, Spanish forces advanced as far south as Corbie, and such was the threat to Paris that the war came close to a conclusion on Spanish terms.

After 1636, however, Olivares halted the advance, fearful of provoking another crown bankruptcy. The hesitation in pressing home the advantage proved fateful; French forces regrouped and pushed the Spanish back towards the border. The Spanish army would never again penetrate so far. At the Battle of the Downs in 1639 a Spanish fleet carrying troops was destroyed by the Dutch navy, and the Spanish found themselves unable to supply and reinforce their forces adequately in the Netherlands. The Army of Flanders, which represented the finest of Spanish soldiery and leadership, faced a French assault led by Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé in northern France at Battle of Rocroi in realms.The Spanish Empire refer to territories formerly colonized by Spain. It was also one of the largest global empire in history.

In the 15th century and 16th century centuries Spain was in the vanguard of European global exploration and colonial expansion and the opening of trade routes across the oceans, with trade flourishing across the Atlantic Ocean between Spain and the Americas and across the Pacific Ocean between Asia-Pacific and Mexico via the Philippines. Conquistadors toppled the Aztec, Inca Empire, and Maya civilization civilizations, and laid claim to vast stretches of land in North America and South America. For a time, the Spanish Empire dominated the oceans with its experienced Spanish navy, was the foremost global power, and ruled the European battlefield with its fearsome and well trained infantry, the . Spain enjoyed a Spanish Golden Age in the 16th and 17th centuries.

From the middle of the 16th century silver and gold from the American mines increasingly financed the military capability of Habsburg Spain in its long series of European and North African wars. In the 17th and 18th centuries the Spanish empire maintained the largest territory in the world, although it suffered fluctuating military and economic fortunes from the 1640s. Confronted by the new experiences, difficulties and suffering created by empire-building, Spanish thinkers formulated some of the first Modernity thoughts on natural law, sovereignty, international law, war, and economics — they even questioned the legitimacy of imperialism — in related schools of thought referred to collectively as the School of Salamanca.

Constant contention with rival powers caused territorial, commercial, and religious conflict that contributed to the slow decline of Spanish power from the mid-17th century. In the Mediterranean, Spain warred constantly with the Ottoman Empire; on the European continent, France became comparably strong. Overseas, Spain was initially rivaled by Portugal, and later by the England and Dutch Republic. In addition, English-, French-, and Dutch-sponsored piracy, overextension of Spanish military commitments in its territories, increasing government corruption, and economic stagnation caused by military expenditures ultimately contributed to the empire's weakening.

Spain's European empire was finally undone by the Peace of Utrecht (1713), which stripped Spain of its remaining territories in Italy and the Low Countries. Spain's fortunes improved thereafter, but it remained a second rate power in continental European politics.

However, Spain maintained and enlarged its vast overseas empire until the 19th century, when the shock of the Peninsular War sparked declarations of independence in Quito (1809), Colombia (1810), Venezuela and Paraguay (1811) and successive revolutions that split away its territories on the mainland (the Spanish Main) of America. Spain retained significant fragments of its empire in the Caribbean (Cuba and Puerto Rico); Asia (Philippines), and Oceania (Guam, Micronesia, Palau, and Northern Marianas) until the Spanish-American War of 1898. Spanish participation in the Scramble for Africa was minimal: Spanish Morocco was held until 1956 and Spanish Guinea and the Spanish Sahara were held until 1968 and 1975 respectively. The Canary Islands, Ceuta, Melilla are administrative divisions that have remained part of Spain and, Isla de Alborán, Isla Perejil, Islas Chafarinas, Peñón de Alhucemas, and Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera are territories which have remained part of Spain. And according to the UN "Spanish Sahara/Western Sahara," is still under Spanish Administration.

Definition The Spanish Empire generally refers to Spain's overseas colonies in America, Asia-Pacific, and Africa. However, no consensus exists among historians as to what is to be counted as part of the Spanish Empire, making it difficult to determine some of its territories in Europe. For instance, traditionally, territories such as the Low Countries were included as they were part of the possessions of the King of Spain, governed by Spanish officials, and defended by Spanish troops. However, authors like the British historian Henry Kamen contend that these territories were never integrated into a "Spanish" state and instead formed part of the wider Habsburg estate. Because of this, many historians use "Habsburg" and "Spanish" almost interchangeably when referring to the dynastic inheritance of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor or Philip II of Spain.

Similarly, it seems to be a matter of preference whether one counts as "Spanish" the House of Bourbon Kingdom of Naples in the 18th century, which, while dynastically and military aligned with Spain, remained a constitutionally separate state. The problem is compounded by the evolving definition of "Spain" itself, which, though unified by the crown, was still in some sense a collection of separate kingdoms, namely Castile, Aragon, and Navarre.

Although Spain and Portugal were united in a "personal union" between 1580 and 1640, a period now referred to as the Iberian Union, the crowns of Portugal and Spain were kept separate: Philip was Philip II of Spain and Philip I of Portugal. Portugal remained a separate stateHenry Kamen, Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492-1763, p.403 and the Portuguese empire was administered separately from the Spanish EmpireJames Maxwell Anderson, The History of Portugal, p.103James Lockhart, Stuart B. Schwartz, Early Latin America: A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil, p.250Donald F. Lach, Edwin J. Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe, p.9.

The origins of the Empire (1402–1521) .Three instances of powers that were to play an important part in the Spanish empire are to be recognized in the Aragonese Empire, the Burgundian Empire and the Portuguese Empire empires. Meanwhile, during the last 250 years of the Reconquista era, the List of Castilian monarchs, tolerated the small Moorish taifa client state of Granada in the south-east by exacting tributes of gold, the parias, and, in so doing, ensuring that gold from the Niger region of Africa entered Europe. Castile also intervened in Northern Africa itself, competing with the Portuguese Empire, when Henry III of Castile began the colonization of the Canary Islands in 1402, authorizing under feudal agreement to Normandy noblemen Jean de Béthencourt. The conquest of Canary Islands, inhabited by Guanche people, was only finished when the own armies of the Crown of Castille won in long and bloody wars, the islands of Gran Canaria (1478-1483), La Palma (1492-1493) and Tenerife (1494-1496).

The marriage of the Catholic Monarchs (Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile) created a personal union, each with their own administrations, but ruled by a common monarchy. According to Henry Kamen, Spain was created by the Empire, rather than the Empire being created by Spain.

's king in the presence of the Catholic Kings.In 1492, Spain drove out the last Moorish king of Granada. After their victory, the Spanish monarchs negotiated with Christopher Columbus, a Genoa sailor attempting to reach Cipangu by sailing west. Castile was already engaged in a Age of Exploration with Portugal to reach the Far East by sea when Columbus made his bold proposal to Isabella. Columbus instead inadvertently "discovered" Americas, inaugurating the Spanish colonization of the Americas. The Indies were reserved for Castile. taking possession of La Española.The claims of Spain to these lands was solidified by the Inter caetera papal bull of 1493, and by the immediately following Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494, in which the globe was divided into two hemispheres between Spanish and Portuguese claims. These actions gave Spain exclusive rights to establish colonies in all of the New World from History of Alaska to Cape Horn (except Brazil), as well as the westernmost parts of Asia. The Castilian Empire was the result of a period of rapid colonial expansion into the New World, as well as the Philippines and colony in Africa: Melilla was captured by Castile in 1497 and Oran in 1509.

The Catholic Monarchs decided to support the Aragonese house of Naples against Charles VIII of France in the Italian Wars from 1494. As king of Aragon, Ferdinand had been involved in the struggle against France and Republic of Venice for control of Italy; these conflicts became the center of Ferdinand's foreign policy as king. In these battles, which established the supremacy of the Spanish infantry against French knights, Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba would forge the nearly invincible Spanish army of the 16th century and early 17th century centuries. at the Battle of Ravenna (1512)

After the death of Queen Isabella, Ferdinand as Spain's sole monarch adopted a more aggressive policy than he had as Isabella's husband, enlarging Spain's sphere of influence in Italy and against France. Ferdinand's first investment of Spanish forces came in the War of the League of Cambrai against Republic of Venice, where the Spanish soldiers distinguished themselves on the field alongside their French allies at the Battle of Agnadello (1509). Only a year later, Ferdinand became part of the Catholic League (Italian) against France, seeing a chance at taking both Milan — to which he held a dynastic claim — and Navarre. The war was less of a success than that against Venice, and in 1516, France agreed to a truce that left Milan in her control and recognized Spanish control of Upper Navarre.

Upon the settlement of Hispanola which was successful in the early 1500s, the colonists began searching elsewhere to begin new settlements. Those from the less prosperous Hispaniola were eager to search for new success in a new settlement. From there Juan Ponce de León conquered Puerto Rico and Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar took Cuba. The first settlement on the mainland was Darien in Panama, settled by Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1512.

In 1513, Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama, and led the first European expedition to see the Pacific Ocean from the west coast of the New World. In an action with enduring historical import, Balboa claimed the Pacific Ocean and all the lands adjoining it for the Spanish Crown.

The coastal villages and towns of Spain, Italy and List of islands in the Mediterranean were frequently attacked by Barbary pirates from North Africa, the Formentera was even temporarily left by its population and long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants. The most famous corsair was the Turkish Hayreddin Barbarossa ("Redbeard"). According to Robert Davis between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by North African pirates and sold as Arab slave trade in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 16th century and 19th century. When Europeans were slaves: Research suggests white slavery was much more common than previously believed

The Golden Age of Spain (1521–1643) with the motto "Plus Ultra" as symbol of the Emperor Charles I of Spain in the Town Hall of Seville (16th century)

The 16th century and 17th century centuries are sometimes called "the Golden Age of Spain" (in Spanish language, ). As a result of the marriage politics of the , their grandson Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor inherited the Castilian empire in America, the Aragonese Empire in the Mediterranean (including a large portion of modern Italy), as well as the crown of the Holy Roman Empire and of the Low Countries and Franche-Comté. Thus this Empire was constituted from the inheritance of territories, and not through conquest. After his defeat of the Castilian rebels in the Castilian War of the Communities, Charles became the most powerful man in Europe, his rule stretching over an empire in Europe unrivalled in extent until the Napoleonic era. It was often said during this time that it was The empire on which the sun never sets. The unwieldy empire of this Golden Age was controlled, not from distant inland Madrid, but from Seville.

Commercially this Castilian Empire abroad was initially a disappointment. It did stimulate some trade and industry. In the 1520s the large scale extraction of silver from the rich deposits of Mexico's Guanajuato began, but it was not until the opening of the silver mines in Mexico's Zacatecas and Peru's Potosi in 1546 that the large shipments of silver became the fabled source of wealth of legend. During the sixteenth century, Spain held the equivalent of USD1.5 trillion (1990 terms) in gold and silver received from New Spain. Ultimately, however, these imports diverted investment away from other forms industry and contributed to price revolution in Spain in the last decades of the 16th century. This situation was aggravated by the loss of many of the commercial and artisan classes with the expulsions of the Jews and Moriscos. The vast imports of silver ultimately made Spain overly dependent on foreign sources of raw materials and manufactured goods.

The wealthy preferred to invest their fortunes in public debt (juros), which were backed by these silver imports, rather than in production of manufactures and the improvement of agriculture. This helped perpetuate the medieval aristocratic prejudice that saw manual work as dishonorable long after this attitude had started to decline in other west European countries. The silver and gold whose circulation helped facilitate the economic and social revolutions taking place in the Low Countries, France and England and other parts of Europe helped stifle them in Spain. The problems caused by inflation were discussed by scholars at the School of Salamanca and arbitristas but they had no impact on the Habsburg government.

The Habsburg dynasty squandered the American and Castilian riches in wars across Europe for Habsburg interests, defaulted on their debt several times, and left Spain bankrupt (with the tensions between the Empire and the people of Castile exploding in the popular rebellion of the Castilian War of the Communities (1520–1522). The Habsburg political goals were several:

• Access to Americas (gold, silver, sugar) and Asian products (porcelain, spices, silk)
• Undermining the power of France and containing it in its eastern borders.
• Maintaining Catholic Habsburg hegemony in Germany, defending Catholicism against the Reformation. Charles attempted to quell the Protestant Reformation at the Diet of Worms but Martin Luther refused to recant his heresy. However, Charles's piety could not stop his mutinying troops from plundering the Holy See in the Sacco di Roma.
• Defending Europe against Islam, notably the Ottoman Empire.

Siege of Tenochtitlan and conquest of the Inca Empire (1521–1541) After Columbus, the Spanish colonization of the Americas was led by a series of warrior-explorers called the Conquistadors. The Spanish forces exploited the rivalries between competing local peoples and states, some of which were only too willing to form alliances with the Spanish in order to defeat their more-powerful enemies, such as the Aztecs or Incas - a tactic that would be extensively used by later European colonial powers. The Spanish conquest was also greatly facilitated by the spread of diseases (e.g. smallpox) common in Europe but unknown in the New World, which decimated the native American populations. This caused a labour shortage and so the colonists informally and gradually, at first, initiated the Atlantic slave trade. (see Population history of American indigenous peoples)

.

One of the most successful conquistadors was Hernán Cortés, who with a relatively small Spanish force but also crucially the support of around two hundred thousand Amerindian allies, overran the mighty Aztec empire in the campaigns of 1519–1521 to bring Mexico into the Spanish empire as the basis for the colony of New Spain. Of equal importance was the conquest of the Inca empire by Francisco Pizarro, which would become the Viceroyalty of Peru. After the conquest of Mexico, rumours of golden cities (Quivira and Cíbola in North America, El Dorado in South America) caused several more expeditions to be sent out, but many of those returned without having found their goal, or having found it, finding it much less valuable than was hoped. Indeed, the American colonies only began to yield a substantial part of the crown's revenues with the establishment of mines such as that of Potosí (1546).

The Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan died while in the Philippines commanding a Castilian expedition to Circumnavigation the earth in 1522. Juan Sebastián Elcano would lead the expedition to success.

Meanwhile, in Europe, Francis I of France, who found himself surrounded by Habsburg territories, invaded the Spanish possessions in Italy in 1521,and inaugurated a second round of Franco-Spanish conflict. The war was a disaster for France, which suffered defeat at Battle of Biccoca (1522), Battle of Pavia (1525, at which Francis was captured), and Battle of Landriano (1529) before Francis relented and abandoned Milan to Spain once more.

(1525)

Charles's victory at the Battle of Pavia, 1525, surprised many Italians and Germans and elicited concerns that Charles would endeavor to gain ever greater power. Pope Clement VII switched sides and now joined forces with France and prominent Italian states against the Habsburg Emperor, in the War of the League of Cognac. In 1527, Charles grew exhausted with the pope's meddling in what he viewed as purely secular affairs, and Sack of Rome itself, embarrassing the papacy sufficiently enough that Clement, and succeeding popes, were considerably more circumspect in their dealings with secular authorities. In 1533, Clement's refusal to annul Henry VIII of England's marriage was a direct consequence of his unwillingness to offend the emperor and have his capital sacked for perhaps a second time. The Peace of Barcelona, signed between Charles and the Pope in 1529, established a more cordial relationship between the two leaders. Spain was effectively named the protector of the Catholic cause and Charles was crowned as King of Italy (Lombardy) in return for Spanish intervention in overthrowing the rebellious Florence Republic.

In 1528, the great admiral Andrea Doria allied with the Emperor to oust the French and restore Genoa's independence, opening the prospect for financial renewal: 1528 marks the first loan from Genoese banks to Charles (Braudel 1984).

Further Spanish settlements were progressively established in the New World: Viceroyalty of New Granada (modern Colombia)in the 1530s, Lima in 1535 the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru, Buenos Aires in 1536 and Santiago, Chile in 1541.

New Laws to the Peace of Augsburg (1542–1555) Spain did pass some laws for the protection of the indigenous peoples of its American colonies, the first such in 1542; the legal thought behind them was the basis of modern international law. Taking advantage of their extreme remoteness, the European colonists revolted when they saw their power being reduced, forcing a partial revoking of these New Laws. Later, weaker laws were introduced to protect the indigenous peoples but records show they had little effect. The restored exploited the Indians rather than taking care of them.

In 1543, the king of France Francis I of France announced his unprecedented alliance with the Ottoman empire sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, by occupying the Spanish-controlled city of Nice in concert with Ottoman Empire forces. Henry VIII of England, who bore a greater grudge against France than he held against the Emperor for standing in the way of his divorce, joined Charles in his invasion of France. Although the Spanish army was soundly defeated at the Battle of Ceresole in Savoy the French were unable to seriously threaten Spanish controlled Milan, whilst suffering defeat in the north at the hands of Henry, thereby being forced to accept unfavourable terms. The Austrians, led by Charles's younger brother Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, continued to fight the Ottomans in the east. Charles went to take care of an older problem: the Schmalkaldic League.

following the abdication of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1556) as depicted in The Cambridge Modern History Atlas (1912); Habsburg lands are shaded green. From 1556 the lands in a line from the Netherlands, through to the east of France, to the south of Italy and Sardinia were retained by the Spanish Habsburgs.

The League had allied itself to the French, and efforts in Germany to undermine the League had been rebuffed. Francis's defeat in 1544 led to the annulment of the alliance with the Protestants, and Charles took advantage of the opportunity. He first tried the path of negotiation at the Council of Trent in 1545, but the Protestant leadership, feeling betrayed by the stance taken by the Catholics at the council, went to war, led by the Saxony Prince-elector Maurice of Saxony. In response, Charles invaded Germany at the head of a mixed Dutch–Spanish army, hoping to restore the Imperial authority. The emperor personally inflicted a decisive defeat on the Protestants at the historic Battle of Mühlberg in 1547. In 1555, Charles signed the Peace of Augsburg with the Protestant states and restored stability in Germany on his principle of , a position unpopular with Spanish and Italian clergymen. Charles's involvement in Germany would establish a role for Spain as protector of the Catholic, Habsburg cause in the Holy Roman Empire; the precedent would lead, seven decades later, to involvement in the war that would decisively end Spain as Europe's leading power.

Charles had preferred to suppress the Ottomans through a considerably more maritime strategy, hampering Ottoman landings on the Republic of Venice territories in the Eastern Mediterranean. Only in response to raids on the eastern coast of Spain did Charles personally lead attacks against the African mainland (1545).

St. Quentin to Lepanto (1556–1571) Charles V's only legitimate son, Philip II of Spain (r. 1556–1598) parted the Austrian possessions with his uncle Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor. Philip treated Castile as the foundation of his empire, but the population of Castile (that was about a third of France's) was never great enough to provide the soldiers needed to support the Empire. When he married Mary I of England, England was allied to Spain.

(1559) between Spain and France

Spain was not yet at peace, as the aggressive Henry II of France came to the throne in 1547 and immediately renewed conflict with Spain. Charles's successor, Philip II, aggressively prosecuted the war against France, crushing a French army at the Battle of St. Quentin (1557) in Picardy in 1558 and defeating Henry again at the Battle of Gravelines (1558). The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, signed in 1559, permanently recognized Spanish claims in Italy. In the celebrations that followed the treaty, Henry was killed by a stray splinter from a lance. France was stricken for the next thirty years by chronic civil war and unrest (see French Wars of Religion) and removed from effectively competing with Spain and the Habsburg family in European power games. Freed from effective French opposition, Spain saw the wikt:apogee of its might and territorial reach in the period 1559–1643.

The opening for the Genoese banking consortium was the state bankruptcy of Philip II in 1557, which threw the German banking houses into chaos and ended the reign of the Fuggers as Spanish financiers.Archer, Christon et al., World History of Warfare. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 251. The Genoese bankers provided the unwieldy Habsburg system with fluid credit and a dependably regular income. In return the less dependable shipments of American silver were rapidly transferred from Seville to Genoa, to provide capital for further ventures.

Florida was colonized in 1565 by Pedro Menendez de Aviles when he founded Saint Augustine, Florida and then promptly defeated an illegal attempt led by the French Captain Jean Ribault and 150 of his countrymen to establish a French foothold in Spanish Florida territory. Saint Augustine quickly became a strategic defensive base for the Spanish ships full of gold and silver being sent to Spain from its New World dominions. On April 27, 1565, the first permanent Spanish settlement in the Philippines was founded by Miguel López de Legaspi and the service of Manila Galleons was inaugurated. The Manilla Galleons shipped goods from all over Asia across the Pacific to Acapulco on the coast of Mexico. From there, the goods were transshipped across Mexico to the Spanish treasure fleets, for shipment to Spain. The Spanish trading post of Manila was established to facilitate this trade in 1572.

(1571), marking the end of the Ottoman Empire as the dominant naval power in the Mediterranean

After Spain's victory over France and the beginning of France's religious wars, Phillip II of Spain ambitions grew. In 1565, the Spanish defeated an Ottoman landing on the strategic island of Malta, defended by the Knights of St. John. Suleiman the Magnificent's death the following year and his succession by his less capable son Selim the Sot emboldened Philip, and he resolved to carry the war to the sultan himself. In 1571, Spanish and Republic of Venice warships, joined by volunteers across Europe, led by Charles's illegitimate son Don John of Austria annihilated the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto (1571), in one of the most decisive battles in naval history. The battle ended the threat of Ottoman naval hegemony in the Mediterranean. This mission marked the height of the respectability of Spain and its sovereign abroad as Philip bore the burden of leading the Counter-Reformation.

European Conflicts (1571–1598) The time for rejoicing in Madrid was short-lived. In 1566, Calvinist-led riots in the Netherlands prompted the Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva to march into the country and restore order. In 1568, William the Silent led a failed attempt to drive Alva from the Netherlands. These battles are generally considered to signal the start of the Eighty Years' War that ended with the independence of the Dutch Republic. The Spanish, who derived a great deal of wealth from the Netherlands and particularly from the vital port of Antwerp, were committed to restoring order and maintaining their hold on the provinces. In 1572, a band of rebel Dutch privateers known as the watergeuzen ("Sea Beggars") seized a number of Dutch coastal towns, proclaimed their support for William and denounced the Spanish leadership.

: The Relief of Siege of Leiden (1574) after the Netherlands had broken their Dyke (construction) in the Eighty Years' War

For Spain, the war became an endless wikt:quagmire, sometimes literally. In 1574, the Spanish army under Luis de Requeséns was repulsed from the Siege of Leiden after the Dutch broke the Dyke (construction), thus causing extensive flooding. In 1576, faced with the bills from his 80,000-man army of occupation in the Netherlands, the cost of his massive fleet that had won at Lepanto, together with the growing threat of piracy in the open seas reducing his income from his American colonies Philip was forced to accept bankruptcy. The army in the Netherlands mutinied not long after, seizing Antwerp and looting the southern Netherlands, prompting several cities in the previously peaceful southern provinces to join the rebellion. The Spanish chose the route of negotiation, and pacified most of the southern provinces again with the Union of Arras in 1579.

Under the Arras agreement the southern states of the Spanish Netherlands, today in Wallonia and the Nord-Pas-de-Calais (and Picardy) régions in France, expressed their loyalty to the Spain king Philip II of Spain and recognized his Governor-General, John of Austria. In 1580, this gave King Philip the opportunity to strengthen his position when the last member of the List of Portuguese monarchs, Cardinal Henry of Portugal, died. Philip asserted his claim to the Portuguese throne and in June sent the Duke of Alba with an army to Lisbon to assure his succession. Though the Duke of Alba and the Spanish occupation, however, was little more popular in Lisbon than in Rotterdam, the combined Spanish and Portuguese empires placed into Philip's hands almost the entirety of the explored New World along with a vast trading empire in Africa and Asia. In 1582, when Philip II of Spain moved his court back to Madrid from the Atlantic port of Lisbon where he had temporarily settled to pacify his new Portuguese kingdom, the pattern was sealed, in spite of what every observant commentator privately noted: "Sea power is more important to the ruler of Spain than any other prince" wrote a commentator, "for it is only by sea power that a single community can be created out of so many so far apart." A writer on tactics in 1638 observed, "The might most suited to the arms of Spain is that which is placed on the seas, but this matter of state is so well known that I should not discuss it, even if I thought it opportune to do so." (quoted by Braudel 1984), by Zurbarán

Portugal required an extensive occupation force to keep it under control, and Spain was still reeling from the 1576 bankruptcy. In 1584, William the Silent was assassinated by a half-deranged Catholic, and the death of the popular Dutch resistance leader was hoped to bring an end to the war. It did not. In 1586, Queen Elizabeth I of England, sent support to the Protestant causes in the Netherlands and France, and Sir Francis Drake launched attacks against Spanish merchants in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean, along with a particularly aggressive attack on the port of Cadiz. In 1588, hoping to put a stop to Elizabeth’s meddling, Philip sent the Spanish Armada to attack England. Favorable weather, smaller more manœuverable English ships, and the fact that England had been warned by their spies in Netherland and were ready for the attack resulted in defeat for the outnumbered but more heavily armoured Armada of Spain. Nevertheless the defeat of the massive military attack, English Armada marked a turning point in the 1585–1604 Anglo-Spanish War in Spain's favour, and few can doubt that the Spanish fleet was the strongest in Europe until the Dutch fleet inflicted the defeat of the Battle of the Downs in 1639, when an increasingly exhausted Spain began to visibly weaken.

leaving the Bay of Ferrol (1588)

Spain had invested itself in the religious warfare in France after Henry II’s death. In 1589, Henry III of France, the last of the Valois Dynasty lineage, died at the walls of Paris. His successor, Henry IV of France, the first Bourbon Dynasty king of France, was a man of great ability, winning key victories against the Catholic League at Battle of Arques (1589) and Battle of Ivry (1590). Committed to stopping Henry of Navarre from becoming King of France, the Spanish divided their army in the Netherlands and invaded France in 1590.

"God is Spanish" (1596–1626) (1581-1640)
Red/Pink - Spanish Empire; Blue/Light Blue - Portuguese Empire.

Faced with wars against England, France and the Netherlands, each led by extraordinarily capable leaders, the insolvent empire found itself outmatched. Continuing piracy against its shipping in the Atlantic and the disruption of its vital gold shipments from the New World forced Spain to renegotiate its debts in 1596. The crown attempted to extricate itself from its several conflicts, first signing the Treaty of Vervins with France in 1598, recognizing Henry IV of France (since 1593 a Catholic) as king of France, and restoring many of the stipulations of the previous Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis. England, suffering from a series of defeats at sea and from an endless Nine Years' War (Ireland) by Catholics in Ireland, who were supported by Spain, agreed to the Treaty of London, 1604, following the accession of the more tractable House of Stuart King James I of England.

Peace with England and France gave Spain an opportunity to focus her energies on restoring her rule to the Dutch provinces. The Dutch, led by Maurice of Nassau, the son of William the Silent and perhaps the greatest strategist of his time, had succeeded in taking a number of border cities since 1590, including the fortress of Breda (Netherlands). Following the peace with England, the new Spanish commander Ambrosio Spinola, a general with the ability to match Maurice, pressed hard against the Dutch and was prevented from conquering the Netherlands only by Spain's latest Insolvency in 1607. In 1609, the Twelve Years' Truce was signed between Spain and the Dutch Republic. At last, Spain was at peace - the .

Spain made a fair recovery during the truce, putting her finances in order and doing much to restore her prestige and stability in the run-up to the last truly great war in which she would play a leading part. Philip II's successor, Philip III of Spain, was a man of limited ability, uninterested in politics and preferring to delegate management of the empire to others. His chief minister was the capable Francisco Goméz de Sandoval y Rojas, Duke of Lerma.

The Duke of Lerma (and to a large extent Philip II) had been uninterested in the affairs of their ally, Austria. In 1618, the king replaced him with Don Balthasar de Zúñiga, a veteran ambassador to Vienna. Don Balthasar believed that the key to restraining the resurgent French and eliminating the Dutch was a closer alliance with Habsburg Austria. In 1618, beginning with the Defenestration of Prague, Austria and the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, embarked on a campaign against the Protestant Union and Bohemia. Don Balthasar encouraged Philip to join the Austrian Habsburgs in the war, and Spinola, the rising star of the Spanish army in the Netherlands, was sent at the head of the Army of Flanders to intervene. Thus, Spain entered into the Thirty Years' War.

(1625) to Ambrosio Spinola, by Velazquez. This victory came to symbolize the renewed period of Spanish military vigour in the Thirty Years' War.

In 1621, Philip III was succeeded by the considerably more religious Philip IV of Spain. The following year, Don Balthasar was replaced by Gaspar de Guzman, Count-Duke of Olivares, a reasonably honest and able man who believed that the center of all Spain's woes rested in the Netherlands. After certain initial setbacks, the Bohemians were defeated at Battle of White Mountain in 1621, and again at Stadtlohn in 1623. The war with the Netherlands was renewed in 1621 with Spinola taking the fortress of Siege of Breda in 1625. The intervention of Christian IV of Denmark in the war worried some (Christian was one of Europe's few monarchs who had no worries over his finances), but the victory of the Imperial general Albert of Wallenstein over the Danes at Battle of Dessau Bridge and again at Battle of Lutter (both in 1626), eliminated that threat.

There was hope in Madrid that the Netherlands might finally be reincorporated into the Empire, and after the defeat of Denmark the Protestants in Germany seemed crushed. France was once again involved in her own instabilities (the famous Siege of La Rochelle began in 1627), and Spain's eminence seemed clear. The Count-Duke Olivares stridently affirmed, "God is Spanish and fights for our nation these days".(Brown and Elliott, 1980, p. 190)

The road to Rocroi (1626–1643) Olivares was a man out of time: he realized that Spain needed to reform, and to reform it needed peace. The destruction of the United Provinces of the Netherlands was added to his list of necessities, because at the root of every anti-Habsburg coalition there was Dutch money. Dutch bankers financed the East Indies merchants of Seville, and everywhere in the world Dutch entrepreneurship and colonists were undermining Spanish and Portuguese hegemony.

While Spinola and the Spanish army were focused on the Netherlands, the war seemed to go in Spain's favor. But 1627 saw the collapse of the Castilian economy. The Spanish had been debasement their currency to pay for the war and inflation in their domestic economy, just as they had in previous years in Austria. Until 1631, parts of Castile operated on a barter economy owing to the currency crisis, and the government was unable to collect any meaningful taxes from the peasantry and had to depend on revenue from its colonies. The Spanish armies in Germany resorted to "paying themselves" on the land.

Olivares had backed certain taxation reforms in Spain pending the end of the war, but was blamed for another embarrassing and fruitless War of the Mantuan Succession. The Dutch, who during the Twelve Years' Truce had made their increasingly navy a priority, (which showed its maturing potency at the Battle of Gibraltar 1607), managed to strike a great blow against Spanish maritime trade with the capture of the treasure fleet by captain Piet Pieterszoon Hein, on which Spain had become dependent after the economic collapse.

Spanish military resources were fully stretched across Europe, and also at sea as they sought to protect maritime trade against the greatly improved Dutch and French fleets, while still occupied with the Ottoman and associated Barbary pirate threat in the Mediterranean. . A Dutch takeover of much of Brazil was ejected by a Spanish-Portuguese expeditions, but the isolated and undermanned forts and shipping of the Portuguese part of the empire in Africa and the Orient proved particularly vulnerable to Dutch and English raids and takeovers.

In 1630, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, one of history's most noted commanders, landed in Germany and relieved the port of Stralsund, the last continental stronghold of German forces belligerent to the Emperor. Gustavus then marched south and won notable victories at Battle of Breitenfeld (1631) and Battle of Lützen (1632), attracting more Protestant support with every step he took. The situation for the Catholics improved with Gustavus's death at Lutzen in 1632, and a key victory at Battle of Nordlingen was won in 1634. From a position of strength, the Emperor approached the war-weary German states with a peace in 1635: many accepted, including the two most powerful, Brandenburg and Saxony. Then France entered the equation, and diplomatic calculations were thrown in to confusion.

(1643), the symbolic end of Spain's grandeur; the decline sets in.

Cardinal Richelieu of France had been a strong supporter of the Dutch and Protestants since the beginning of the war, sending funds and equipment in an attempt to stem Habsburg strength in Europe. Richelieu decided that the recently-signed Peace of Prague (1635) was contrary to French designs and declared war on the Holy Roman Emperor and Spain within months of the peace being signed. In the war that followed, the more experienced Spanish forces scored initial successes. Olivares ordered a lightning campaign into northern France from the Spanish Netherlands, hoping to shatter the resolve of Louis XIII of France's ministers and topple Richelieu. In the "", 1636, Spanish forces advanced as far south as Corbie, and such was the threat to Paris that the war came close to a conclusion on Spanish terms.

After 1636, however, Olivares halted the advance, fearful of provoking another crown bankruptcy. The hesitation in pressing home the advantage proved fateful; French forces regrouped and pushed the Spanish back towards the border. The Spanish army would never again penetrate so far. At the Battle of the Downs in 1639 a Spanish fleet carrying troops was destroyed by the Dutch navy, and the Spanish found themselves unable to supply and reinforce their forces adequately in the Netherlands. The Army of Flanders, which represented the finest of Spanish soldiery and leadership, faced a French assault led by Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé in northern France at Battle of Rocroi in

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