Charles IV was King of Spain for two decades near the end of the 18th Century.

He was born on Nov. 11, 1748, in Portici, Italy. His father was King Charles VII of Naples, the future King Charles III of Spain, and his mother was Maria Amalia of Saxony.

As the second son of a monarch, Charles was not expected to inherit that monarch's throne, that honor belonging to his older brother, Philip; and so Charles, growing up, did not receive the kind of education in the ways of the affairs of state that an heir apparent would. One passion that Charles shared with his father was hunting. Long into his life, the strong and muscular Charles was known as El Cazador (The Hunter).

Philip was just a year older than Charles, and the two boys (along with their younger brother Ferdinand) spent their early years under the watchful eyes of a governess and being tutored by a friend of their father. As it turned out, Philip suffered from serious mental and physical problems. In 1759, when Spain's King Ferdinand VI died, Charles, the father of Charles and Philip and Ferdinand, was off to Spain to be king there. He had wanted to designate Philip, his oldest son, as his successor as King of Naples and Sicily. Philip's disabilities, however, made this impossible. Since young Charles was then the heir apparent to the Spanish throne and could not, according to provisions of various treaties that Spain had signed with other European powers, inherit the Italian thrones, the newly crowned Spanish King Charles III named his third son, Ferdinand, as King of Naples of Sicily.

In 1765, Charles married a cousin, Maria Luisa of Parma. Her royal connections were that she was the granddaughter of Spain's Philip V and of France's King Louis XV.

By that time, the powers of Europe had ended the Seven Years War and Spain had embarked on a period of relative peace and prosperity. Charles III had introduced a number of infrastructure upgrades, helped create a pair of significant museums, and introduced a national lottery. He was quite popular when he died, on Dec. 14, 1788. His son Charles then became King of Spain.

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