Bourbon claim to the Spanish throne Bourbon claim to the Spanish throne After the death of the last Habsburg monarch of Spain in 1700, the childless Charles II, the Spanish throne was up for grabs between the various dynasties of Europe despite Charles having left a will naming his heir. In this will, Charles left Philip, Duke of Anjou, grandson of the French king, the possessions of the Spanish Crown. The Austrian Habsburgs, who considered themselves the rightful heirs of Charles II, fearing that the vast domain of the Spanish Crown would be taken over by the French monarchy, formed a European coalition against the Bourbon
Bourbon Democrat Bourbon Democrats. The nickname "Bourbon Democrat" was first used as a pun, referring to bourbon whiskey from Kentucky and even more to the Bourbon Dynasty of France, which was overthrown in the French Revolution, but returned to power in 1815 to rule in a reactionary fashion until its final overthrow in the July Revolution of 1830. The term was occasionally used in the 1860s and 1870s to refer to conservative Democrats (both North and South) who still held the ideas of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson and in the 1870s to refer to the regimes set up in the South