Paragraph: (History-Anthropology/oanc-HistoryMallorca-4.txt)
Sent 1: French and British Ties and Occupation: The daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella married the son and heir of the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian of Hapsburg.
Sent 2: The Spanish crown duly passed to the Hapsburgs, and Spain remained in their hands until the feeble-minded Carlos II died in 1700, leaving no heir.
Sent 3: France seized the chance to install the young grandson of Louis XIV on the Spanish throne.
Sent 4: A rival Hapsburg claimant was supported by Austria and Britain, who saw a powerful Spanish-French alliance as a major threat.
Sent 5: In the subsequent War of the Spanish Succession (1702 –1713) most of the old kingdom of Aragón, including the Balearics, backed the Hapsburgs.
Sent 6: Britain seized Gibraltar — in the name of the Hapsburg claimant — and retained it when the war was over.
Sent 7: In 1708 Britain captured Menorca, and the magnificent harbor of Mahón (Maó), for the Royal Navy.
Sent 8: England clung to it even when Bourbon forces captured Mallorca at the end of the war.
Sent 9: Menorca changed hands between Britain, France, and Spain five more times in less than a century.
Sent 10: Britain finally ceded the island to Spain in the year 1802, under the terms of the Treaty of Amiens.
Sent 11: By 1805, Spain was once more aligned with France, and Spanish ships fought alongside the French against Nelson at Trafalgar.
Sent 12: Napoleon came to distrust his Spanish ally and forcibly replaced the king of Spain with his own brother, Joseph Bonaparte.
Sent 13: A French army marched in to subdue the country.
Sent 14: The Spanish resisted and, aided by British troops commanded by the Duke of Wellington, drove the French out.
Sent 15: What British historians call the Peninsular War (1808–1814) is known in Spain as the War of Independence.
Sent 16: In the 19th century, practically all of Spain’s possessions in the Americas broke away in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, and the few that remained were lost at the end of the 19th century.
Sent 17: The Balearics, further neglected, were beset with poverty and outbreaks of disease.
Sent 18: However, toward the 20th century, things began to improve on the islands, with Mallorca reaping the rewards of successful agricultural crops and Menorca launching an export shoe industry.