Wrote Letter L-563 of 1717-12-08 to Charles VI, Holy Roman emperor, as the dedication for Send-Brieven
No manuscript known.
In this dedication to the Send-Brieven, Leeuwenhoek recounts the visit of the Prince of Lichtenstein, the tutor of Charles, and how he missed visiting Charles when he was in the Hague. Leeuwenhoek therefore dedicates to him this volume of letters with observations made after he turned 80 years old.
Anton Florian (1656–1721), tutor of Charles, was made Prince of Liechtenstein in 1719. He would act as Charles’s administrator and prime minister in Spain.
Charles VI (1685–1740; also Carolus VI ) was the second son of Emperor Leopold I and of his third wife, Princess Eleonor Magdalene von Neuburg. After the Spanish king Carlos II, the last of the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs, died childless in 1700, Charles claimed the Spanish throne. This succession was disputed by the French king Louis XIV de Bourbon. In this conflict, Charles was supported by the Dutch Republic and the English crown, which resulted in the War of the Spanish Succession.
In 1704, a combined Dutch-English army left for Spain. During the preparations for this invasion, Charles spent some time in the spring of 1704 in Noordeinde Palace in The Hague. The conflict came to an end in 1713 when the Treaty of Utrecht stipulated that the second son of the French crown prince (“Le Grand Dauphin”) would become king of Spain as Philip V de Bourbon, but that the Spanish Netherlands and Italian possessions would go to Charles von Habsburg, who in 1711 had meanwhile succeeded his brother Joseph I as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and ruler of the Austrian dual monarchy.
