The law of hereditary descent is frequently involved in great embarrassment.  Leopold, to obviate disputes which he foresaw were likely to arise, had assigned Hungary, Bohemia, and his other hereditary estates, to Joseph.  To Charles he had assigned the vast Spanish inheritance.  In case Joseph should die without male issue he had decreed that the crown of the Austrian dominions should also pass to Charles.  In case Charles should also die without issue male, the crown should then revert to the daughters of Joseph in preference to those of Charles.  Joseph left no son.  He had two daughters, the eldest of whom was but twelve years of age.  Charles, who was now in Barcelona, claiming the crown of Spain as Charles III., had no Spanish blood in his veins.  He was the son of Leopold, and of his third wife, the devout and lovely Eleonora, daughter of the Elector Palatine.  He was now but twenty-eight years of age.  For ten years he had been struggling for the crown which his father Leopold had claimed, as succeeding to the rights of his first wife Margaret, daughter of Philip IV.

Charles was a genteel, accomplished young man of eighteen when he left his father’s palace at Vienna, for England, where a British fleet was to convey him to Portugal, and, by the energy of its fleet and army, place him upon the throne of Spain.  He was received at Portsmouth in England, when he landed from Holland, with much parade, and was conducted by the Dukes of Maryborough and Somerset to Windsor castle, where he had an interview with Queen Anne.  His appearance at that time is thus described by his partial chroniclers: 

“The court was very splendid and much thronged.  The queen’s behavior toward him was very noble and obliging.  The young king charmed all who were present.  He had a gravity beyond his age, tempered with much modesty.  His behavior in all points was so exact, that there was not a circumstance in his whole deportment which was liable to censure.  He paid an extraordinary respect to the queen, and yet maintained a due greatness in it.  He had the art of seeming well pleased with every thing, without so much as smiling once all the while he was at court, which was only three days.  He spoke but little, and all he said was judicious and obliging.”

Young Charles was engaged to the daughter of the King of Portugal; but the young lady died just before his arrival at Lisbon.  As he had never seen the infanta, his grief could not have been very deep, however great his disappointment might have been.  He made several attempts to penetrate Spain by the Portuguese frontier, but being repelled in every effort, by the troops of Philip, he again embarked, and with twelve thousand troops in an English fleet, sailed around the Peninsula, entered the Mediterranean and landed on the shores of Catalonia, where he had been led to believe that the inhabitants in a body would rally around him.  But he was bitterly disappointed.  The Earl of Peterborough, who was intrusted with the command of this expedition, in a letter home gave free utterance to his disappointment and chagrin.