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Since Philip V was barred from the succession by the treaties confirming his Spanish throne, and since the third grandson of Louis XIV, the Due de Berry, died in 1714, only one sickly five-year-old child, the second son of the Due de Bourgogne, would separate Philip of Orleans from the crown at the old King’s death

The powers bestowed upon Orleans as Regent deflated the pride of the over-confident Du Maine and frustrated the plans of his ambitious wife

Apart from the defeated faction, which had the backing of the ultramontane party, and in particular of Madame de Maintenon (the former governess of the royal bastards and keeper of the late King’s conscience), the triumph of Orleans was greeted with enthusiasm

The personality of Philip of Orleans lives in the correspondence of his mother, Elizabeth Charlotte of Bavaria

the Regent acted as his own Beau Brummell, and directed with whimsical inconsequence the adoption of Turkish, Polish and English fashions

Nevertheless, it continued the persecution of the Huguenots instituted by the late King, and ran counter to the intentions of the tolerant and free-thinking Regent

The reaction was so strong that in January 1718 the Regent yielded to the pressure of the old order and suppressed the dixième, a minor tax levied by Louis XIV and borne in part by the nobility

Since their bargain with Philip of Orleans in the repudiation of Louis XIV’s will, the magistrates had made use of their right of remonstrance to win a permanent share of the power of the monarchy

The Due de Bourbon, encouraged by his profits, began to challenge the political power of the Regent and Dubois

In October, at the time when a similar wave of speculation in England was in the process of collapse, the Regent withdrew his support

Both the regency and the Hanoverian Whig regime in England were subject to external threats—the Regent from the designs of Philip V, abetted by the Du Maine faction, and the government of George I from the plots of the Pretender

Austria, too, was threatened in Italy by the ambitions of Philip V’s Queen, Elizabeth Famese and of his chief minister, the adventurer Alberoni. The Hapsburg Emperor, Charles VI, knew that he might count on English support

the Triple Alliance of 1717, and then with Austria in the Quadruple Alliance late in the same year

His pupil, the Regent, himself occupied the post of First Minister in the few months that were left to him

Louis XV displayed affection for no one save his former governess, the Duchesse de Ventadour; but the kindly Regent won his respect

The crises of later years were in part due to the failure of the Regent to exorcise the ghost of Louis XIV during the minority of his great-grandson.

He liked to be compared with Henry IV, that first and most humane of Bourbon Kings

The castle presented a formidable problem; the ships’ guns could not be elevated sufficiently to sweep the summit of the rock, and it was not until a number of bomb vessels had been summoned that the fortress could be brought under effective fire

resolutely determined to retain their Bourbon monarch, Philip V, grandson of Louis XIV, on the throne willed to him in 1700 by the last of the Spanish Habsburgs

The Earl of Galway’s army received a sharp defeat at Almanza some sixty miles inland from Alicante on April 25 th, 1707, and within the next twenty months the Bourbonists had recaptured the important cities of Lerida and Tortosa besides many more minor places

On the Spanish mainland, however, the forces of Philip V undoubtedly enjoyed the main initiative from Almanza onwards, while the Allied generals spent much of their time quarrelling, intriguing and splitting up their forces into ill-coordinated parts

To his disappointment, he failed to persuade the government to prosecute a major descent from the sea against Cadiz, but instead found himself landing at Alicante with his brother Michael as part of reinforcements for the Huguenot commander-in-chief, Lord Galway. Subsequently, as has already been related, he was appointed Governor of Alicante in succession to General Gorges, who returned to England

Recognizing that its defence could have only one outcome, and anxious to spare the townsfolk the fate of their compatriots at Denia where all had been put to the sword after the storm of the lower town, Richards beat a parley, and agreed to evacuate the town in return for an undertaking that the citizens should be treated by the Bourbon forces as if they had never rebelled against Philip V

On Monday, March 3rd, sentries reported at six in the morning that the townsfolk were hastily evacuating the quarter of Alicante nearest the castle

Again, the fact that he was not technically an English officer but a general in the service of Charles III, the Spanish Pretender, may have caused his act of courage to go relatively unrecognised in the history of a long war that saw many greater events than the siege of Alicante

The King also, in 1433, made his young half-brother, Edmund, earl of Richmond, and, two years later, arranged his momentous marriage with Lady Margaret Beaufort, daughter of the Duke of Somerset. About the same time he created Jasper earl of Pembroke. Naturally, when civil war broke out, their father supported his step-son, the King. But he was taken prisoner early in the war, at the disastrous battle of Mortimer’s Cross, and was executed at Hereford. He is said to have remarked ruefully as he placed his head on the block that it was “wont to lie on Queen Catherine’s lap.” His head was placed on the market cross, where a mad woman came and combed his hair and washed his face, and set it around with lighted candles. His body was buried in the chapel of the Grey Friars at Hereford

Even his cousin, Maredudd, the only surviving son of the rebel, Glyn Dwr, is known to have become “squire of the body” to King Henry V

It would be tempting to believe that he had taken the opposite side in the revolt; this would explain many things, but it is contradicted by the known fact that his possessions, like those of his brothers, were confiscated. And yet his son became a page in the household of King Henry V, the oppressor of the family. This son, whether he was bom in exile or not, bore the name of the rebel chieftain, Owain

It was in Jasper’s great castle of Pembroke that Edmund’s son, Henry Tudor, was born posthumously on January 28th, 1457. The child’s mother, the Lady Margaret, had not then yet reached the age of fourteen.

But the defeat of the Lancastrians at Tewkesbury in 1471, and the death of both King Henry VI and his heir, Prince Edward, led to a complete reversal of fortune

Prophecy in general terms had been easy enough, but the result of a specific event was not so easy to foretell. The bard, in a quandary, consulted his wife, who told him to prophesy victory, for if the prince were successful he might reward the prophet, but if he were unsuccessful he was not likely to return.

Henry promised to deliver the Welsh from “such miserable servitudes as they have pyteously longe stand in,” that is to say, from the penal laws of King Henry IV. This he did not do, for the laws remained on the statute book till the reign of James I

In his exile, Henry had fathered a son by a Breton lady. He was called Roland Velville, and his father knighted him when he ascended the throne and made him constable of Beaumaris Castle. Velville died in 1527, five years before the marriage of his daughter Jane to Tudur ap Robert Fychan, of Berain in modem Denbighshire

He was an associate of Sir Thomas Gresham, and had made much money in trade with the Netherlands. When he did die, Catherine did take Maurice Wynn as her third husband, thereby becoming step-mother to the writer Sir John Wynn of Gwydir

By that time the Tudors had been on the throne for a hundred years, and such Welsh sentiment as they had ever possessed was already worn thin.

In 1564 the Spanish Ambassador in London, de Silva, reported to Philip II that ‘the leading men in Scotland’ had been bought by Elizabeth for eight thousand crowns

Two years later, when the English raided the Border town of Langton, the authorities in Edinburgh begged the Queen Regent, Mary of Lorraine, to appoint a nobleman ‘to have the cure and charge’ of the city, asking as their first preference for Bothwell.

The rebels sent a punitive expedition, led by Moray, in search of him, and Bothwell, in hiding nearby, had to watch while they sacked his castle at Crichton. The enmity lasted for the rest of his life, and ended by destroying both him and Mary

Bothwell now set out to see Mary in France, and took Anna with him as far as Flanders

In 1563 Anna, too, went to Scotland, using a passport from Mary which allowed her to live there and to enter and leave the country at will

Without trial, Bothwell was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle; but, knowing that he was likely to be murdered, he twisted back the bars of his cell window, climbed down the precipitous Castle Rock in darkness, made his way to the coast and set sail for France

He was, in fact, given six hundred crowns and the salary of a gentleman of the King’s chamber

Bothwell was recalled by the Queen’s pardon and urgent summons, for her marriage the month before to the treacherous Darnley threatened to spark off civil war with the Protestants, led by Moray and once again financed by the English

There followed a series of intrigues by Darnley, which he was too indiscreet to conceal, against a number of the rebels, including Moray

Bothwell dealt with both difficulties with his customary decision. In April, two months after Darnley’s murder, he assembled a force of 800 men a few miles west of Edinburgh and abducted Mary as she returned from a visit to her ten-month-old son at Stirling. Mary offered no resistance, and it was widely believed that Bothwell compelled her acquiescence in the marriage by rape; but Mary herself, in a letter to the Bishop of Dunblane, said that it was the best course she could take

There can be little doubt that they were determined to arrest Bothwell and execute him. Mary rejected their demand with indignation, and the two armies, which together numbered perhaps 8,000 men, faced each other for the rest of the day, each uncertain how to proceed

Bothwell sent a man aboard the Bjorn to explain that they were Scottish gentlemen who wished to serve the Danish king, Frederick II, in his prolonged war against Sweden, and that the only authority in Scotland who could provide papers was in prison.

It was now essential for Bothwell to conceal the fact that he was a fugitive and an outlaw. Asked for his passport, he blustered, and asked contemptuously who could give him one, since he was himself the highest authority in Scotland and the husband of the Queen; and he was inconsistent about the purpose of his voyage: sometimes he wanted to go to Denmark, sometimes to Holland, sometimes to France.

It happened that Rosenkrands was a kinsman of Anna Throndsen, and that she was living not far away, being known as ‘the Scottish lady’ on account of her stay in Scotland

Bothwell was unable to extricate himself in face of such evidence, and could do no more than offer her a pension of £100 a year from Scotland and the smaller of his two ships. Anna accepted, not knowing that his property in Scotland had been confiscated when he was declared an outlaw and that the ship was not his to give

By now Bothwell’s detention was known in Scotland, having been reported by the merchants in Bergen; and Moray, who had established himself as Regent for James VI sought his extradition on a charge of regicide - the beginning of his protracted efforts to put Bothwell out of the way for ever

he was able to reply to Frederick with truth that he had been acquitted of the charge by a Scottish court, that the acquittal had been confirmed by the Scottish Parliament, that Mary was a prisoner, and that his accusers were guilty of treason

Frederick now came under pressure from another quarter. In December 1567 the Scottish Parliament formally condemned Bothwell to forfeiture of ‘nobility, honours, life and possessions’, and Moray sought the help of Elizabeth and of Charles IX in Paris in obtaining his extradition

When Frederick declined this gambit, Moray sent a further request, this time in the name of the infant King James, that Clerk should be allowed to execute Bothwell in Denmark and take his head back to Scotland for public exhibition ‘in the place where his crime was committed’; for there was, he said, ‘a great clamour’ in Scotland against Bothwell

Most declined to offer advice, pointing out with irony that Frederick and his Council were well equipped to take their own decisions; a few suggested, as Frederick himself had done the year before, that Bothwell should be tried in Denmark; and others counselled him to temporize without offending either England or Scotland

On condition that his surrender of Bothwell would never be held against him, that Elizabeth and Lennox would reciprocate if the need should ever arise, and that Bothwell would receive a fair trial, Frederick half-agreed to the extradition; but Charles IX, alerted by Dangay, his Ambassador in Copenhagen, and by his Minister in London, ordered Dangay to take decisive action to prevent it

For Bothwell it would have been better had Charles not intervened, for Frederick’s attitude towards him soon changed abruptly. It has been suggested that the Massacre of St Bartholomew diminished sympathy for the Catholic Mary and hence Frederick’s sympathy for her consort.

More probably it had become clear that since Mary was now in the hands of the English and her faction in Scotland had been largely destroyed by Morton, who succeeded to the Regency on the murder of Lennox, Bothwell had ceased to have any value for Frederick in his complex political manoeuvres

The Danes treated him with greater consideration in death, and gave him a modest burial in a nearby village

His religious devotion was accompanied by a blameless personal life and a chaste loyalty to the memory of his wife, Maria Amalia of Saxony, who died in 1760. On the other hand, he was so highly conscious of royal authority that he sometimes appeared more like a tyrant than an absolute monarch

Charles III improved the agencies of government through which the will of the crown could be imposed. He completed the process whereby individual ministers replaced the royal councils in the direction of affairs

Fearing that a British victory over France in the Seven Years’ War would upset the balance of colonial power, he signed the Family Compact with France—both countries were ruled by branches of the Bourbon family—in August 1761

But Charles’s opposition to papal jurisdiction in Spain also led him to curb the arbitrary powers of the Inquisition, while his desire for reform within the church caused him to appoint inquisitors general who preferred persuasion to force in ensuring religious conformity

He particularly resented the Jesuits, whose international organization and attachment to the papacy he regarded as an affront to his absolutism

By the end of his reign, Spain had abandoned its old commercial restrictions and, while still excluding foreigners, had opened up the entire empire to a commerce in which all its subjects and all its main ports could partake

Within these limits he led his country in a cultural and economic revival, and, when he died, he left Spain more prosperous than he had found it

his father Leopold I

With his death, that pre-eminence of the House was challenged

So, even if the last Habsburg's death had no sinister implications, it was potentially a catastrophe for the dynasty. Charles had no male heir, and his daughters could not succeed him to the Imperial throne. The laws of the Empire permitted only a male to sit on the throne of Charlemagne

Among the Habsburgs, gender was less important than blood

among the Habsburgs, as opposed, to say, the Valois or the Bourbons, the reality of female power and authority was accepted. Thus Charles' daughters could succeed to his titles and lands but they could not become Holy Roman Emperor

Since Frederick III had been crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome in 1452, the Imperial title had become almost synonymous with the Habsburgs. They had been elected since 1438 in an unbroken succession to the most dignified and honourable office in Christian Europe. Sometimes there had been other challengers and, on occasion, it had seemed likely that the title would pass to another claimant. But the Habsburgs had always succeeded in persuading sufficient electors to favour their candidate

it obscured the real power that a Holy Roman Emperor could exercise

While the power and effectiveness of the Reich was undoubtedly waning, especially after the peace settlement at Westphalia in 1648, it was, paradoxically, becoming a more effective instrument of Habsburg power

its sanctions still carried weight

The Emperor Leopold I, in 1687 and 1705, had moved away from the notion of the equal claim towards establishing the precedence of the senior line, with males inheriting first and then females.

deprived the daughters of Joseph I, and established that the new primogeniture would begin with his own children. When Charles presented this edict he was initiating a constitutional revolution

It is worthwhile noting that Charles' concerns were for the future. In 1715, despite ten years of marriage, he had no heir

the lands ruled by the Habsburgs should never be divided, and he was mindful of the wrangles over the Spanish inheritance of his cousin Carlos II, which ultimately deprived him (he believed) of the throne of Spain

However, there was a strong body of legal opinion that suggested that so powerful were these claims ‘of blood' that no prior agreement could abrogate them, and certainly nothing could prevent their rights being transmitted to the future children of a female Habsburg

The Pragmatic Sanction assumed that males would come before females in order of inheritance, but if there were no male heirs, then a female could inherit all the powers and rights due to the head of the house of Habsburg

it was accepted that a female Habsburg could wear the Crown of St Stephen. Constitutional lawyers would insist that, technically speaking, Maria Theresa should become ‘King of Hungary’, although she was always referred to as Queen of Hungary

The sudden death of Charles produced a crisis for the Habsburgs, firstly in the political domain, but secondly, in the area of dynastic ideology

set apart from ordinary humanity, the chosen vessels of God's will

The Habsburgs had made so much of their long ancestry, of the male descent through the generations, since the time of the first Rudolf

To describe Charles VI as the ‘last of the Habsburgs’ plays to a widely-held legend of the enfeeblement of the Habsburg line

it marked their ancient heritage

his descendent Carlos II of Spain

This grotesque appearance lay behind the assumption that the Habsburgs had died out in the male line for genetic reasons, as a consequence of their deliberate policy of marrying within the family which they had followed since the middle of the sixteenth century

In fact the failure of the Habsburg line had much more to do with epidemic disease and poor standards of infant care in the Habsburg palaces than with any genetic taint

The lack of a male heir may have had a hereditary element, because there were many more female than male births in the House of Habsburg, but the disappearance of the male line was more an accident than a sign of waning procreative powers.

or this reason he never accepted that it was his elder daughter Maria Theresa who would succeed him, and had done nothing to introduce her to the complexities of government

The rules and taboos which constrained other ruling houses were transmuted by the Habsburgs' notion of their own unique collective identity

The Habsburgs, from the founder of the family's fortune, Emperor Rudolf I in the thirteenth century, had sedulously constructed a myth of their origins which set them apart from ordinary humanity

And most Habsburg rulers year by year, right up until the death of the Emperor Franz Joseph in 1916, played a solemn part in the annual Corpus Christi procession through the streets of Vienna

It was for this reason that the Darks of Habsburg identity, like the jutting jaw, were a mark of honour not a disfigurement

It had been the grimly practical Wallenstein and not the Virgin Mary who had rescued the Habsburg cause in the 1630s. In the 1740s Maria Theresa saved her inheritance with a steely will and an unswerving determination to succeed

Her response, conditioned both by her character and the exigencies of the circumstances, was very different from her fussy and pedantic father, obsessed with the lost throne of Spain

A young woman inherited the crowns and possessions of her father, but also an empty treasury and an army commanded by dotards. The process by which she stiffened the resolve of her generals, won the nobility and gentry of Hungary to her cause, and organised the resistance to the Prussian, Bavarian and French armies has itself achieved the quality of myth

Maria Theresa was as involved with the identity of the house of Habsburgs as he had been. She followed her father in his obsessive concern for the safe keeping of the bones of their ancestors

Maria Theresa's son Joseph II has been nicknamed ‘The Revolutionary Emperor' by one of his biographers

The transformation which she inspired and then enforced on her territories was less dramatic (and less publicised) than Joseph’s: it was also a lot more successful and longer lasting. The crisis of Maria Theresa's first years and the subsequent revival of Habsburg power is most often looked upon in external terms, both political and economic

She moved away from the reliance on the Imperial title as a principle source of Habsburg legitimacy

However, even then, she refused to be crowned as Empress, preferring the titles she held in her own right to the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia

Mother of the Country

who ruled briefly as Leopold II, knew better than either of them how to play the twin chords of coercion and free expression

But the Habsburgs, from Maria Theresa onwards, turned their backs on the tradition of grandeur and portrayed themselves as the first servants of the nation

he believed as ardently as any of his predecessors in the unique role and mission of his clan

Historians have come to regard Maria Theresa as one of the most significant and innovative of the long line of Habsburg rulers

The potential catastrophe of the 1740s was that the Habsburg lands, like Poland a generation later, might have been dismembered or at best much reduced in scale and power

with the son of Charles VII, the monarchy was to be tested yet again

The fiscal reorganization facilitated equally significant military reforms. The Peace of Arras, rather than pacifying France

the monarchy recovered much of the authority it had lost during the early stages of the Hundred Years’ War. Although its influence in Burgundy and Flanders (now united in a formidable dynastic association) had declined, its definitive recovery of Aquitaine consolidated a direct domain, again extensive enough to free the Valois royalty from anxiety about landed resources.

Louis XI (reigned 1461–83) was shamelessly impatient for his father’s death.

No French king had ever imposed himself so totally and so tyrannically as did Louis XI.

Adolf Fredrik, Gustav III’s father, was described by one English contemporary as having ‘the title of king, with hardly the privileges of a subject’. Unlike his British counterpart George II, he had no power to summon or dissolve his parliament.

Gustav was an unimpressive figure physically, weedy and foppish, and slightly lame since birth, but when he addressed the members of the Riksdag he made them flinch with his phrases of masterful contempt

The new constitution that Gustav now promulgated, in place of that of 1720-72, brought Sweden more into line with contemporary Britain.

The main difference between the British and Swedish systems was that, whereas in Britain the monarch’s executive power was in practice delegated to ministers more industrious, more  proficient and, for the most part,  more intellectually gifted than their royal master, in Sweden it was Gustav III himself who was indisputably in day to day charge

No other of the Enlightened Despots was more fond than Gustav of the time-wasting rituals of court life, the levées, formal audiences and ceremonial entries and exits.

Whereas Napoleon, in his coup d’etat of 19e Brumaire 1799 broke down and began mumbling in front of the popular assembly he was trying to overawe, Gustav III easily faced down his opponents in the Riksdag

Gustav III may well have held a record among monarchs prior to the nineteenth century for the number of other crowned heads he met. What Louis XV and Louis XVI of France or Ferdinand IV of Naples thought of him is uncertain, though none of these Bourbons were exactly noted for their insight into character. Pope Pius VI pretended to be delighted with Gustav (the first Protestant monarch ever to meet a pope) and made him a Knight of the Golden Spur. The other Enlightened Despots, Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great and Joseph II, agreed in thinking Gustav charming in a wearying sort of way, and faintly ridiculous. Leopold II, Joseph II’s brother and successor, perhaps the ablest politician among the Enlightened Despots – he was still only Grand Duke of Tuscany when Gustav met him

the Swedish king was a positive menace with his incessant scheming and readiness to interfere in other governments’ affairs

all radical improvements in national character take place during the severest wars’. Russia, having annexed the Crimea, had embarked on a titanic struggle with the Ottoman Empire which was absorbing stupendous quantities of manpower and treasure. At the beginning of 1788 he began making plans to attack Russia from the rear.

Gustav found himself far from his capital, stuck with an army that would not obey him. He was rescued  by the Danish government declaring war on him. Hurrying back to Sweden, Gustav rode to Gothenburg, 250 miles cross country in forty-eight hours – the last sixty miles quite alone and on borrowed farm horses, in blinding hailstorms – to rally the defences of the city against the invading Danes

The senior Swedish officers rejected all the courses of action proposed by Gustav and his latest discovery, William Sidney Smith, a British naval captain who had turned up without the permission of his own government; they even, according to Smith, talked of ‘proposing terms of Capitulation independent of the King’.

Catherine, still preoccupied with the war with Turkey, was glad to patch up a compromise peace

While the Stockholm crowds stood outside cheering him, Gustav confronted the chamber of nobles with a new constitution, and when they howled it down he coolly ordered the secretary of the chamber to record their vote as yes: a piece of blatant illegality combined with intimidation that anticipates the tactics of twentieth-century dictators. In fact, apart from giving the King the power to make war without the Riksdag’s consent, the new constitution marked little advance on that of 1772

Eleven weeks after Gustav rammed his new constitution down the throats of the nobles, the Estates General met at Versailles and by the time of the peace settlement with Russia the French ancien régime was well on the way to dissolution.

I cannot allow that it is right to support rebels against their Lawful King

Despite the fact that Sweden was virtually bankrupt in the aftermath of the Russian war he now offered to land 16,000 Swedish and 8,000 Russian troops at Ostend, in Austrian territory, and to march on Paris to overthrow the Constituent Assembly, with the support of an Austrian army advancing from the Rhine. In June 1791 he went to Aachen and was greeted there as a saviour by the French royalist exiles. While he was there Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette made their bid to escape from Paris

Marie Antoinette’s brother Leopold, who had succeeded Joseph II as Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of Austria the year before, was enraged by Gustav’s interference: there were some too, including Gustav’s uncle Henry of Prussia, who believed that his schemes for an armed intervention in France were merely a cover for a secret plan to seize Norway from the Danes

On March 1st, 1792, Leopold died – poisoned, it is said, by an aphrodisiac of his own concoction – but Gustav was destined never to learn that there was no longer any challenge to his self-appointed role as leader of the monarchist opposition to the French Revolution

Gustav III was only forty-six when he died. That was at least eight years older than the most brilliant of his predecessors on the Swedish throne, Gustav II Adolf, Karl X and Karl XII – and if he had lived a normal span he would still have been king at the time of Waterloo.

The economic weakness of his country, the inveterate opposition of the social class that elsewhere might have been a king’s chief support, and the increasing influence of the revolutionary ferment in France may have meant that, even if he had lived, he would not have been able to go as far as he dreamed: he is one of the great might-have-beens of history.

The Roman Catholics, however, condemned the Augsburg Confession—the basic confession of the Lutheran doctrine faith presented to Charles at the Diet of Augsburg—and responded with the Confutation, which met with Charles’s approval.

In 1526 Charles married Isabella, the daughter of the late king Manuel I of Portugal.

In 1522 his teacher Adrian of Utrecht became pope, as Adrian VI. His efforts to reconcile Francis I and the emperor failed, and three years later Charles’s army defeated Francis I at the Battle of Pavia, taking prisoner the king himself.

Although Ferdinand, having lost his Hungarian capital in August 1541, pleaded for a land campaign against Süleyman I, Charles again decided on a naval venture, which failed dismally after an unsuccessful attack on Algiers.

North Germany was now on the brink of revolt. The new king of France, Henry II, was eagerly awaiting an opportunity to renew the old rivalry between the houses of Valois and Burgundy, while the German princes believed that the moment was at hand to repay Charles for Mühlberg.

In order to save what he could of that hegemony, Charles, already severely racked by gout, tried new paths by preparing the ground for his widowed son’s marriage with Mary I of England.

There he laid the groundwork for the eventual bequest of Portugal to the Habsburgs after the eventual death of King Sebastian (who was then still a child) with the help of his sister Catherine, grandmother of Sebastian and regent of Portugal. He aided his son in procuring funds in Spain for the continuation of the war against France, and he helped his daughter Joan, regent of Spain during Philip’s absence in the Netherlands, in persecuting Spanish heretics.

These conditions may be particularly prevalent in communities of color, who are likewise disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

Several people I know packed on quite a few pounds of health-robbing body fat this past year, and not because they lacked the ability to purchase and consume a more nutritious plant-based diet or to exercise regularly within or outside their homes. One male friend in his 50s unexpectedly qualified for the Covid vaccine by having an underlying health condition when his doctor found he’d become obese since the pandemic began.

The government subsidizes the production of both soybeans and corn, most of which is used to feed livestock.

Early in the pandemic, when most businesses and entertainment venues were forced to close, toilet paper was not the only commodity stripped from market shelves. The country was suddenly faced with a shortage of flour and yeast as millions of Americans “stuck” at home went on a baking frenzy. While I understood their need to relieve stress, feel productive and perhaps help others less able or so inclined, bread, muffins and cookies were not the most wholesome products that might have emerged from pandemic kitchens.

Not only is alcohol a source of nutritionally empty calories, its wanton consumption can result in reckless behavior that further raises susceptibility to Covid.

“you can’t eat just one.” (Example: Corn on the cob is unprocessed, canned corn is minimally processed, but Doritos are ultra-processed).

As Marion Nestle, professor emerita of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, says, “This is not rocket science.” She does not preach deprivation, only moderation (except perhaps for a total ban on soda). “We need a national policy aimed at preventing obesity,” she told me, “a national campaign to help all Americans get healthier.”

Scientists have said that reinfections are likely to be asymptomatic or mild because the immune system will suppress the virus before it can do much damage.

“You can certainly not rely on a past infection as protecting you from being ill again, and possibly quite ill if you are in the elderly segment,” said Steen Ethelberg, an epidemiologist at Statens Serum Institut, Denmark’s public health agency.

Rigorous estimates of second infections have generally been rare because many people worldwide did not initially have access to testing, and laboratories require genetic sequences from both rounds of testing to confirm a reinfection.

The researchers looked at the results from 11,068 people who tested positive for the coronavirus during the first wave in Denmark between March and May 2020. During the second wave, from September to December, 72 of those people, or 0.65 percent, again tested positive, compared with 3.27 percent of people who became infected for the first time.

She and other experts noted that while 80 percent might not seem superb, protection from symptomatic illness was likely to be higher.

The findings indicate that people who have recovered from Covid-19 should get at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine to boost the level of protection, Dr. Krammer added.

“I wish it had actually been broken down into specific decades over 65,” Dr. Pepper said. “It would be nice to know whether the majority of people who were getting reinfected were over 80.”

“This really does emphasize the need to cover older people with the vaccine, even if they have had Covid first.”

In the United States, the mutant virus has been spotted only in a handful of states but is expected to spread swiftly, becoming the predominant source of infections by March.

The new variant, while more contagious, is still thwarted by these measures. But only a few schools in Britain implemented them.

In the United States, the variant has only been spotted in a handful of states, and still accounts for less than 0.5 percent of infections. Schools remain open in New York City and many other parts of the country, but some have had to shut down because of rising virus infections in the community.

Adolescents and teenagers between ages 10 and 19 were more likely than younger children to spread the variant, but not as likely as adults. (The range for the older group in the study is too broad to be useful for drawing conclusions, Dr. Cevik said. Biologically, a 10-year-old is very different from a 19-year-old.)

Officials tested the nearly 300 students and staff at the end of that week, found only two cases, and decided to reopen.

The tests cost $61 per child, but schools that cannot afford it could consider testing only teachers, he added, because the data suggest the virus is “more likely to move from teacher to teacher than it is from student to teacher.”

Employers provide health insurance coverage for more than 153 million Americans. The companies and insurers in the study paid nearly $20 billion more than Medicare would have for the same care

Proponents of a so-called public option seize on such price-gouging news to argue that creating a government health plan that could use its clout to demand lower prices would help bring down the cost of care.

A public option, distinct from the more controversial “Medicare for all” proposals that would do away with private insurance, has been embraced by Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic presidential nominee. Democrats and even some Republicans seem open to the idea, according to a recent poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

What is clear, they said, is that people should consider minimizing time indoors with people outside their families. Schools, nursing homes and businesses should consider adding powerful new air filters and ultraviolet lights that can kill airborne viruses.

For the coronavirus, the definition has been more complicated. Experts agree that the virus does not travel long distances or remain viable outdoors. But evidence suggests it can traverse the length of a room and, in one set of experimental conditions, remain viable for perhaps three hours.

Aerosols are droplets, droplets are aerosols — they do not differ except in size. Scientists sometimes refer to droplets less than five microns in diameter as aerosols.

From the start of the pandemic, the W.H.O. and other public health organizations have focused on the virus’s ability to spread through large droplets that are expelled when a symptomatic person coughs or sneezes.

These droplets are heavy, relatively speaking, and fall quickly to the floor or onto a surface that others might touch. This is why public health agencies have recommended maintaining a distance of at least six feet from others

But some experts have said for months that infected people also are releasing aerosols when they cough and sneeze. More important, they expel aerosols even when they breathe, talk or sing

Scientists know now that people can spread the virus even in the absence of symptoms — without coughing or sneezing — and aerosols might explain that phenomenon.

Because aerosols are smaller, they contain much less virus than droplets do. But because they are lighter, they can linger in the air for hours, especially in the absence of fresh air. In a crowded indoor space, a single infected person can release enough aerosolized virus over time to infect many people

“We should be placing as much emphasis on masks and ventilation as we do with hand washing,” Dr. Marr said. “As far as we can tell, this is equally important, if not more important.”

As for how long is safe, that is frustratingly tough to answer. A lot depends on whether the room is too crowded to allow for a safe distance from others and whether there is fresh air circulating through the room.

What does airborne transmission mean for reopening schools and colleges?This is a matter of intense debate. Many schools are poorly ventilated and are too poorly funded to invest in new filtration systems. “There is a huge vulnerability to infection transmission via aerosols in schools,”

When indoors, one simple thing people can do is to “open their windows and doors whenever possible,” Dr. Marr said. You can also upgrade the filters in your home air-conditioning systems, or adjust the settings to use more outdoor air rather than recirculated air.

If none of those things are possible, try to minimize the time you spend in an indoor space, especially without a mask. The longer you spend inside, the greater the dose of virus you might inhale.

authors on the new paper, ran a pilot study in another group of volunteers under similar conditions in 2009: After just two days of bunking up, about 8 percent of the recipients were infected.

In this new experiment, the researchers doubled the number of days the study participants were allowed to mingle. But they found only one new case of flu among the 75 volunteers who hadn’t been intentionally dosed with the virus — an infection rate of just 1.3 percent.

The biggest difference between the two experiments, Dr. Milton said, was their backdrop. In its first iteration, the study took place in poorly ventilated hotel rooms; in its second, the researchers housed their participants in a research facility with much improved air flow. In the new study, “we had at least seven times more ventilation per person,”

“We’ve been studying the flu for 102 years and still don’t know for sure how it’s transmitted,”

While good ventilation can dilute aerosols, it is far less effective against droplets, which are much wider and heavier

Part of the problem is the continuum on which aerosols and droplets exist. Though they go by different names, the two categories really belong to the same group: globs of fluid that come in varying sizes. Blobs less than five micrometers in diameter are termed aerosols, which can exit the airway at the slightest breath and waft away; anything larger is a droplet, hefty enough to fall to the ground within a few feet of its source. The boundary between them is somewhat arbitrary, though generally speaking, the smaller the particle, the farther it travels.

When people expel fluid from their airway, it tends to manifest in a mixture, some bigger, some smaller and everything in between,

Even after they exit an individual, these fluidic blobs remain dynamic. Large droplets, for instance, can disperse or evaporate into little aerosols in midair. Others might scatter onto a surface or a hand, lingering for minutes or hours before encountering someone new. And the rates at which all these events occur can shift, depending on the force with which someone, maybe a loud talker, expels these droplets or the amount of air flow in an area,

“The reality is that there is a continuum of aerosols.”

Federal health officials also offered two new ways to shorten quarantine periods. Those without symptoms may end quarantine after seven days if they are tested for the virus and receive a negative result, or after 10 days without a negative test.

“We are at the point now, even before Christmas, that there may not be room at your hospital, because we don’t have enough health care workers to take care of you,”

Some patients may not develop symptoms until two weeks after exposure, and even longer in a very small fraction of cases. Infected individuals may pass the virus to others before they develop symptoms; recent studies show they are most infectious two days before symptoms begin, and for about five days afterward.

Daily deaths have been exceeding 2,000 for the first time since early May, and close to 100,000 Americans are already hospitalized.

Until now, the C.D.C. has recommended a 14-day quarantine period following potential exposure, and Dr. Walke stressed that the full two weeks is still considered ideal and the surest way to curb transmissions.

Federal health officials also offered two new ways to shorten quarantine periods. Those without symptoms may end quarantine after seven days if they are tested for the virus and receive a negative result, or after 10 days without a negative test.

“We can safely reduce the length of quarantine, but accepting that there is a small residual risk that a person who is leaving quarantine early could transmit to someone else if they became infected,”

Some patients may not develop symptoms until two weeks after exposure, and even longer in a very small fraction of cases. Infected individuals may pass the virus to others before they develop symptoms; recent studies show they are most infectious two days before symptoms begin, and for about five days afterward.