Castillo de la Inmaculada Concepción
The Castillo de la Inmaculada Concepción ( Spanish , in German Castle of the Immaculate Conception ) is a former fortress that was built on the Río San Juan from 1673 to 1675 during the Spanish colonial period in the General Capitol of Guatemala , now Nicaragua . The castle was built on the foundations of an older fortress, which was built during the reign of King Philip II , and is now a listed building . The fortress served to protect the inner Nicaraguan cities of Granada and León from English pirate attacks ; In 1780 it was briefly taken by sea captain Horatio Nelson in the context of the American Revolutionary War . Today's El Castillo has developed from a settlement around the fortress .
history
In 1670 Granada was attacked by a pirate Gallardino, about whom no further information is available. This induced the responsible colonial authorities of the General Captain's Office of Guatemala to protect the entrance to Lake Nicaragua with a fortress. The area was visited in 1673 by Captain General Fernando Francisco de Escobedo, accompanied by the military engineer Martín de Andújar Cantos. They decided to build the fortress at today's Raudal del Diablo (Devil's Fast) on the ruins of the Santa Cruz fortress, which had already been built under King Philip II. Construction began on March 10, 1673 and was finished in 1675. Nevertheless, the buccaneer William Dampier managed to take Granada in April 1685 and set it on fire.
During the Seven Years' War , the fortress was besieged from July 26, 1762 by an English expeditionary force supported by Miskitos and Sambos . The corps consisted of a good 2,000 soldiers and warriors on 50 boats, while the fortress was only defended by 100 Spanish troops. Their commanding officer , Lieutenant Colonel José de Herrera y Sotomayor, died on July 15th. The defense was taken over by his deputy, Lieutenant Juan de Aguilar y Santa Cruz, and the 19-year-old daughter of the deceased commandant, Rafaela Herrera (1742-1805). On August 2, an English attack was repulsed in the Battle of the Río San Juan . The English and their allies abandoned the siege and withdrew. Rafaela Herrera was later declared the national heroine of Nicaragua
In 1779, the British Governor of Jamaica , Major General John Dalling, proposed another expedition to Nicaragua in the context of the American Revolutionary War , in order to divide Spanish America by capturing Granada's Spanish America and gain brief access to the Pacific Ocean . The fortress was captured by an expeditionary force led by Sea Captain Horatio Nelson and occupied for nine months.
Even after the establishment of the Free State of Nicaragua in 1821, the fortress remained a strategically important position and was also used as a customs post . Due to its protected location inland, in the Eisenstuck affair in 1878, it could not be occupied by a landing command of the German corvette SMS Medusa , which had to be content with controlling the British-controlled free port of San Juan del Norte (Greytown). However, the commandant of the corvette, Korvettenkapitän Friedrich von Hollmann , had sent Lieutenant Harms to the fortress as a scout, who could only inform that the planned occupation of the customs station was impracticable.
In the Somoza era the fortress served as a base for the Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua , and during the Contra War the Sandinista people's army . In 1982/83, the Gröpeln ferry , a solidarity gift from Bremen to Ernesto Cardenal , had to take shelter in front of the fortress for a long time due to the war and weather conditions.
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Coordinates: 11 ° 1 ′ 9.1 ″ N , 84 ° 23 ′ 47 ″ W.