Spanish Brides
The first legitimate connection with Spain came with the marriage of Infanta Ana of Spain to Louis XIII. The Infanta was the daughter of Philip III of Spain. As Spanish succession laws did not prevent a female from ascending the throne, she was the heiress presumptive to the throne. Likewise, her offspring would have a legitimate, if not strong, claim to the Spanish throne. Thus, before her marriage, she was made to renounce all succession rights she had had for herself and her descendants by Louis.
Further cementing Habsburg-Bourbon relations, Philip married Elisabeth, a sister of Louis XIII. This marriage produced the desired male heir and also Maria Theresa, who was the second link between France and Spain.
Born as Archduchess María Teresa of Austria, Infanta of Spain at the Royal Monastery of El Escorial, María Teresa thus combined the blood of Philip III of Spain and Margarita of Austria, on her father's side, and that of Henry IV of France and Marie de' Medici, on her mother's side. In his turn, Philip III was the son of Philip II of Spain and Anna of Austria who was, herself, a daughter of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor and Maria of Spain. Philip II and Maria of Spain were siblings, being both children of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and Isabella of Portugal. María Teresa, therefore, like many Habsburgs, was a product of years and generations of royal intermarriage between cousins.
In 1659, as the war with France began to wind down, a union between the two royal families, of Spain and of France, was proposed as a means to secure peace. María Teresa and the French king were double first-cousins, and it was proposed that they wed. His father was Louis XIII of France, who was the brother of her mother, while her father was brother to Anne of Austria, his mother.
Such a prospect was intensely enticing to Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV and aunt of María Teresa, who desired an end to hostilities between her native country, Spain, and her adopted one, France, and who hoped this to come by her niece becoming her daughter-in-law. However, Spanish hesitation and procrastination led to a scheme in which Cardinal Mazarin, the First Minister of France, pretended to seek a marriage for his master with Margaret of Savoy. When Philip IV of Spain heard of the meeting at Lyon between the Houses of France and Savoy, he reputedly exclaimed of the Franco-Savoyard union that "it cannot be, and will not be". Philip then sent a special envoy to the French Court to open negotiations for peace and a royal marriage.
The negotiations for the marriage contract were intense. Eager to prevent a union of the two countries or crowns, especially one in which Spain would be subservient to France, the diplomats sought to include a renunciation clause which would deprive María Teresa and her children of any rights to the Spanish succession. This was eventually done but, by the skill of Mazarin and his French diplomats, the renunciation and its validity were made conditional upon the payment of a large dowry. As it turned out, Spain, impoverished and bankrupt after decades of war, was unable to pay such a dowry, and France never received the agreed sum of 500,000 écus.
Read more about this topic: Bourbon Claim To The Spanish Throne
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