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Spanish
Bust One Half Escudo Carlos III ~ 1776
Obverse:
CAROL.III.D.G. (=Dei Gratia = by the grace of God) HISP.R. (=Hispaniarum
Rex = King of Spain) around the draped bust of Carlos III facing right
with date below.
Reverse: Crowned arms of the House of Bourbon, mintmark and
assayer identification. Symbol of the order of the Golden Fleece
at bottom.
First son of Philip V and his second wife, Elizabeth Farnes of Parma,
Carlos III was considered the greatest of the Spanish Bourbons.
He
ruled as Duke of Parma, by right of his mother, from 1732 to 1734 and
then became King of Naples. On the death of his half-brother
Ferdinand VI in 1759, after a useful apprenticeship of 25 years as an
absolute ruler, Carlos became King of Spain and resigned the crown of
Naples.
Carlos III was convinced of his mission to reform Spain and restore it
once more as a world power. Though Carlos did not possess a
particularly brilliant mind, he had a good deal of common sense and was
highly effective in selecting ministers and men of outstanding quality
to improve the government.
His
frugality and application to the business of government impressed
foreign observers as well as his own subjects. His religious
devotion was accompanied by a blameless personal life and a chaste
loyalty to the memory of his wife, Maria Amalia of Saxony who died in
1760. He never remarried, rather it was said that in the best
British public school tradition, he took a cold bath or paced the floor
whenever fevers of lust assailed him.
Carlos' ecclesiastical policy was conditioned by his determination to
complete the subordination of the church to the crown.
Subsequently, he exiled the Jesuits and stripped the Inquisition of its
last vestige of power.
Carlos had a fanatical addiction to hunting, his enduring passion.
It is said he hunted all but three days of the year, rain or shine.
Slightly before his death he boasted to a foreign ambassador that he had
killed 539 wolves and 5,323 foxes.
During his reign the pillar of two-world type coinage was discontinued
in favor of the new bust type coinage. The crowned arms of Spain
remained the same. Silver coinage was struck in denominations of
8, 4, 2, 1, and 1/2 reales. Gold coins were minted in units of 8,
4, 2, 1, and 1/2 escudos. |
