Charles IV of Spain in the context of "Infante Carlos María Isidro of Spain"

The Peninsular War (1808–1814) was fought in the Iberian Peninsula by the Iberian nations Spain and Portugal, and the United Kingdom against the invading and occupying forces of the First French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. In Spain, it is considered to overlap with the Spanish War of Independence. It overlapped with the War of the Fifth Coalition (1809) and the War of the Sixth Coalition (1812-1814).

The war can be said to have started when the French and Spanish armies invaded and occupied Portugal in 1807 by transiting through Spain, but it escalated in 1808 after Napoleonic France occupied Spain, which had been its ally. Napoleon Bonaparte forced the abdications of Ferdinand VII and his father Charles IV and then installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne and promulgated the Bayonne Constitution. Most Spaniards rejected French rule and fought a bloody war to oust them. The war on the peninsula lasted until the Sixth Coalition defeated Napoleon in 1814, and is regarded as one of the first wars of national liberation. It is also significant for the emergence of large-scale guerrilla warfare.

The Mexican War of Independence (Spanish: Guerra de Independencia de México, 16 September 1810 – 27 September 1821) was an armed conflict and political process resulting in Mexico's independence from the Spanish Empire. It was not a single, coherent event, but local and regional struggles that occurred within the same period, and can be considered a revolutionary civil war. It culminated with the drafting of the Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire in Mexico City on September 28, 1821, following the collapse of royal government and the military triumph of forces for independence.

Mexican independence from Spain was not an inevitable outcome of the relationship between the Spanish Empire and its most valuable overseas possession, but events in Spain had a direct impact on the outbreak of the armed insurgency in 1810 and the course of warfare through the end of the conflict. Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Spain in 1808 touched off a crisis of legitimacy of crown rule, since he had placed his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne after forcing the abdication of the Spanish monarch Charles IV. In Spain and many of its overseas possessions, the local response was to set up juntas, ruling in the name of the Bourbon monarchy. Delegates in Spain and overseas territories met in Cádiz—a small corner of the Iberian Peninsula still under Spanish control—as the Cortes of Cádiz, and drafted the Spanish Constitution of 1812. That constitution sought to create a new governing framework in the absence of the legitimate Spanish monarch. It tried to accommodate the aspirations of American-born Spaniards (criollos) for more local control and equal standing with Peninsular-born Spaniards, known locally as peninsulares. This political process had far-reaching impacts in New Spain during the independence war and beyond. Pre-existing cultural, religious, and racial divides in Mexico played a major role in not only the development of the independence movement but also the development of the conflict as it progressed.

The abdications of Bayonne took place on May 5, 6, and 7 of 1808 in the castle of Marracq in Bayonne when the French emperor Napoleon I forced two Spanish kings—Charles IV and his son, Ferdinand VII—to renounce the throne in his favour. The move was Napoleon's response to the Tumult of Aranjuez (17–19 March), when Ferdinand VII forced his father's first abdication, and the uprising of 2 May against French troops in Spain (present in accordance with the Treaty of Fontainebleau). Napoleon in his turn handed the crown of Spain to his brother Joseph Bonaparte. The result of the abdications was further resistance to the French presence, resulting in the Peninsular War (1808–1814), a contributing factor to Napoleon's final defeat. Napoleon was eventually forced to release Ferdinand. On 11 December 1813, he reinstalled him as King of Spain (Treaty of Valençay).

The abdications were widely regarded as coerced. However, some historians have noted that neither Charles IV nor Ferdinand VII were adequately equipped to resist Napoleon's pressures and threats. Some authors have claimed they were "kidnapped" by Napoleon, though others avoid using this term to describe the events in Bayonne.

The Cortes of Cádiz was a revival of the traditional cortes (Spanish parliament), which as an institution had not functioned for many years, but it met as a single body, rather than divided into estates as with previous ones.

The General and Extraordinary Cortes that met in the port of Cádiz starting 24 September 1810 "claimed legitimacy as the sole representative of Spanish sovereignty", following the French invasion and occupation of Spain during the Napoleonic Wars and the abdication of the monarch Ferdinand VII and his father Charles IV. It met as one body, and its members represented the entire Spanish Empire, that is, not only Spain but also Spanish America and the Philippines.

Ferdinand I (Italian: Ferdinando I; 12 January 1751 – 4 January 1825) was King of the Two Sicilies from 1816 until his death. Before that he had been, since 1759, King of Naples as Ferdinand IV and King of Sicily as Ferdinand III. He was deposed twice from the throne of Naples: once by the revolutionary Parthenopean Republic for six months in 1799, and again by a French invasion in 1806, before being restored in 1815 at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

Ferdinand was born in Naples as the third son of King Charles VII and Queen Maria Amalia. In August 1759, Charles succeeded his half-brother Ferdinand VI of Spain as King Charles III, but treaty provisions made him ineligible to hold all three crowns. On 6 October, he abdicated his Neapolitan and Sicilian titles in favour of his third son, Ferdinand, because his eldest son Philip had been excluded from succession due to intellectual disability and his second son Charles was heir-apparent to the Spanish throne. Ferdinand was the founder of the cadet House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies.

Doña Carlota Joaquina Teresa Cayetana of Spain (25 April 1775 – 7 January 1830) was Queen of Portugal and Brazil as the wife of King Dom John VI. She was the daughter of King Don Charles IV of Spain and Maria Luisa of Parma.

Detested by the Portuguese court—where she was called "the Shrew of Queluz" (Portuguese: a Megera de Queluz)—Carlota Joaquina gradually incurred the antipathy of the people, who accused her of promiscuity and influencing her husband in favor of the interests of the Spanish crown. After the escape of the Portuguese court to Brazil, she began conspiring against her husband, claiming that he had no mental capacity to govern Portugal and its possessions, thus wanting to establish a regency. She also planned to usurp the Spanish crown that was in the hands of Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte. After the marriage in 1817 of her son Pedro with the Archduchess Leopoldina of Austria and the later return of the royal family to Portugal in 1821, Carlota Joaquina supported her son Miguel in his intrigues to gain the throne, but their relationship deteriorated and she ended up being confined in the Royal Palace of Queluz, where she died alone and abandoned by her children and political allies on 7 January, 1830.

A countermarked, punchmarked or counterstamped coin is a coin that has had some additional mark or symbol punched into it at some point after it was originally produced while in circulation. This practice is now obsolete.

Countermarking can be done for a variety of reasons. If the currency is reformed, existing coins may be rendered void. In this situation, coins already in circulation could be marked with the new value (according to the new currency system). The life span of existing coins could thus be extended, which might under some circumstances be a cheaper alternative to recalling the coins, melting them and striking replacements. Similarly, foreign coins could be marked as legal or accepted currency, thus allowing them to circulate in the area where they were countermarked. Countermarking can also be done for political reasons, i.e. a new state or régime demonstrating its authority by countermarking coins issued by the previous state.Some experts recommend not to use the term countermark and counterstamp as synonyms, but in different contexts. A counterstamp is applied by a die, and by machine to an existing coin, while a countermark is punched onto the coin, mostly by hand, using a punch and a hammer or a primitive hand-operated machine. Often countermarks are applied by private persons, as is the case with chops (often referred to as chopmarks), which were punched by money changers, bankers or shroffs onto foreign coins circulating in China in the 19th century. In contrast the use of counterstamps should be authorized by a local or national Government. An example of this would be post WWI in now modern day Germany to show hyperinflation.

This is a complete list of Francisco Goya's 63 large cartoons for tapestries (Spanish: cartones para tapices) painted on commission for Charles III of Spain and later Charles IV of Spain between 1775 and 1791 to hang in the San Lorenzo de El Escorial and El Pardo palaces. The word "cartoon" is derived from the Italian cartone, which describes a large sheet of paper used in preparation for a later painting or tapestry. Goya's were executed on canvas which was then woven into wool tapestry to a large mural scale. While many of the large finished works are today in the Prado Museum, the original sketches were sold as works in their own right.

In 1774, Goya was asked by the German artist Anton Raphael Mengs, acting on behalf of the Spanish crown, to undertake the series. While designing tapestries was neither prestigious nor well paid, Goya used them, along with his early engravings, to bring himself to wider attention. They afforded his first contact with the Spanish monarchy that was to eventually appoint him court painter. The works are mostly popularist in a rococo style, and were completed early in his career, when he was largely unknown and actively seeking commissions. There is evidence that he later regretted having spent so much effort and time on the pieces, and that his later darker period, which begins roughly with Yard with Lunatics, was in part a reaction against them.