Bourbon claim to the Spanish throne monarchs of France and Spain, therefore starting the War of the Spanish Succession. In this article, the Bourbon claim to the Spanish Crown and its origins are explained in detail. What became parts of northern Spain and southern France had strong connections going back hundreds of years. Some dynasties that ruled in Spain had origins going back to the Frankish empire, for example, the rulers of the County of Barcelona were created by Charlemagne as counts when he conquered lands in the Iberian Peninsula north of the river Ebro, and were subservient to the Carolingian dynasty until its decline in
House of Bourbon nobles under the Direct Capetian and Valois kings. In 1589, at the death of Henry III of France, the House of Valois became extinct in the male line. Under the Salic law, the Head of the House of Bourbon, as the senior representative of the senior-surviving branch of the Capetian dynasty, became King of France as Henry IV. Bourbon monarchs then united to France the small kingdom of Navarre, which Henry's father had acquired by marriage in 1555, ruling both until the 1792 overthrow of the monarchy during the French Revolution. Restored briefly in 1814 and definitively in 1815 after