CARLO III of Bourbon, king of SPAIN. — B. in Madrid on 20 January 1716, d. there on 14 December 1788. The third-born son of Filippo V of Spain and first-born son of Elisabetta Farnese, destined for a throne in Italy, he consequently received a predominantly Italian education. According to the Treaty of The Hague (1720), he was to inherit Parma and Piacenza and the grand duchy of Tuscany. In fact, he succeeded in taking possession of his paternal inheritance upon the death of his uncle Antonio Farnese (1731), but before Gian Gastone de' Medici, by dying in 1737, could make way for him in Tuscany, he was able to wrest the kingdom of the Two Sicilies from Austria by force of arms, in the name of Spain (1734), and have himself crowned in Palermo in 1735. Having renounced Parma and Piacenza (1738), he attempted to recover them in 1742, sending an army into Lombardy in support of his brother, as his mother Elisabetta wished; but the threat of an English bombardment of Naples (17 August) obliged him to recall the army. In 1744, notwithstanding the neutrality of Benedetto XIV, Austria sent an army against him, which C. defeated at Velletri; from then until 1759 C. was able to lay down his arms and devote himself to works of peace.
His government was judged in various ways; nevertheless, apart from his almost total subjection to Spain, at least until the death of Filippo V (1746), and his partial disinterest in the concerns of the state, which he left to ministers imbued with Enlightenment principles, not always astute and not always Neapolitan, he was able to set the finally independent country on the path of reform, toward a better order, and to associate his name with works deserving of much praise, such as the great constructions (the royal palace at Caserta), the excavations at Ercolano, the library, the National Museum, etc.
In 1759, upon the death of his brother Ferdinando, he was called to succeed him in Spain, and, having his son Filippo, born mentally deficient, declared incapable, he left the Neapolitan throne to his third-born son Ferdinando, who was practically in the hands of his friend and adviser Bernardo Tanucci. His foreign policy was anti-English and pro-Austrian. C. III saw Spanish prestige decline in the poorly administered American colonies and for a long time had Portugal as an enemy. Internally, untimely reforms, foreign ministers, and financial disorder disturbed the country and provoked dangerous riots (1766). Liberal historians customarily praise his ecclesiastical policy (intervention in Church affairs, suppression and expulsion of the Jesuits) and the “family compact”; in reality, however, he gained no advantages from II.