Baldomero Espartero

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Baldomero Espartero

Joaquín Baldomero Fernández Espartero Álvarez de Toro (born February 27, 1792 in Granátula de Calatrava , Province of Ciudad Real , † January 8, 1879 in Logroño ) was a Spanish general and politician .

He was the Spanish head of government several times and from 1841 to 1843 regent of the country in place of the minor Queen Isabella II. From 1837 he had the title of Count of Luchana , from 1839 he was Duke de la Victoria and from 1870 Prince of Vergara. Because of his victorious military leadership in the civil war against the Carlist , he was nicknamed "El Pacificador de España" (Eng. The pacifier of Spain ).

Although he was not the first high-ranking member of the Spanish military to intervene in Spanish politics by means of a pronunciamientos , Espartero is considered to be the most important representative and perhaps the prototype of the Spanish phenomenon of "political generals", that is, of members of the military who were unauthorized by way of a coup tried to enforce the policies they were comfortable with and thus hindered the development of political institutions. This tradition of Praetorianism by the Spanish military continued from Espartero to O'Donnell , Serrano , Prim and Miguel Primo de Rivera to Sanjurjo and Franco .

Origin and youth

Espartero was born the ninth child of a wheelwright . Because of his weak body, he was appointed to the spiritual class and attended the Almagro seminary . However, after the invasion of Napoleonic troops in 1808, he joined a battalion of volunteers, fought in the Spanish War of Independence and attended the military school on Isla de León near Cádiz . In 1812 he became a sub-lieutenant in the engineering corps in Cadiz .

In South America

In 1815 he took part in General Pablo Morillo's expedition against the colonies in South America , which were striving for independence . He was Major in the light infantry in Peru and distinguished himself several times so advantageous that it for 1817 Lieutenant Colonel , in 1822 to colonel , and in 1823 the Brigadier was promoted. After the decisive defeat of the Spanish troops in the Battle of Ayacucho (1824), in which he himself did not participate, Espartero returned to Spain, came to the garrison in Logroño ( La Rioja ) and married Jacinta Santa Cruz, the daughter of a wealthy landowner .

First Carlist War (1833-1840)

Equestrian statue of Esparteros in the Retiro Park of Madrid

After Ferdinand VII's death and the accession of his daughter Isabella to the throne in 1833, Espartero sided with the young queen. After the outbreak of the First Carlist War he was appointed General Commander of the Province of Vizcaya , but initially fought unhappily against Generals Eraso and Zumalacárregui : In June 1835, when trying to free Villafranca de Oria from a siege by Carlist troops, 2,000 soldiers came into Esparteros Captive, the besieged city was taken by Carlist units the following day.

In September 1835 the Cristinos, with Espartero leading the way (after the death of Zumalacárreguis), drove out the troops of the opposing pretender to the throne, Don Carlos , who were besieging Bilbao . Shortly afterwards, the troops left Espartero Bilbao again to attack the Carlist base in Orduña , but the project had to be canceled first. In January 1836 Espartero advanced again on Bilbao, which was again threatened by Carlist troops, but found little resistance. In March 1836, Espartero's soldiers achieved a decisive victory against the Carlist at the Battle of Orduña, which could not be fully exploited, however, as a snow storm prevented Espartero from pursuing the retreating opposing troops.

During the second siege of Bilbao at the end of 1836, Espartero was able to cross the Nervión as the commander of 22,000 soldiers with the help of British naval units and troops under de Lacy Evans , bypassing strong Carlist troop contingents. Bilbao was then liberated within two days. The regent Maria Christina gave Espartero the title of Count of Luchana , named after the place where Espartero crossed the Nervión.

In 1837 Espartero led the campaign against Don Carlos, who, as a result of the repeated defeat in Bilbao, had set out from his home countries in Navarre to Aragon and Catalonia . Before Madrid, Espartero's units beat those of Don Carlos, who was then pushed back across the Ebro .

Espartero destroyed the troops of the Carlist general Count Ignacio de Negri near Valladolid on April 27, 1838 , thereby ending the last great Carlist offensive. On June 22, 1838 Espartero General brought Guergué at Peñacerrada (south of Vitoria ) a complete defeat at. General Guergué was then replaced as commandant by the moderate Carlist General Maroto .

In the period that followed, the Carlist suffered further defeats that made victory increasingly impossible. The military successes of the Cristinos sealed Espartero by the agreement of Oñate of August 29, 1839 with the ambassadors of the Carlist general Rafael Maroto and by the two days later between Espartero and Maroto " fraternization of Vergara ". Like Espartero, Maroto had fought in South America, but the two never met there. With the fraternization of Vergara he achieved the recognition of ranks and titles for nearly 1,000 Carlist officers. In return, 20,000 Carlist fighters laid down their weapons. Only a small contingent of radical Carlist under Ramón Cabrera continued to fight. Don Carlos and de Negri fled to France. In 1870, Espartero was made Prince of Vergara by King Amadeus I shortly after his coronation for his services .

In 1840 Espartero was able to drive out the last active Carlist troops under Cabrera in the Maestrazgo (near Berga , Catalonia). They moved to France, which ended the first Carlist War.

Political life and reign (1840–1843)

Baldomero Espartero, lithograph by Gabriel Decker , 1840

Previously standing in the middle between the moderate ( moderados ) and the "exalted" party , he joined the Exaltados , elected to the constituent Cortes in 1837 . He briefly presided over a cabinet. During the last three years of the war he exerted great influence on politics in Madrid from his various headquarters and twice brought down the incumbent government in favor of his own partisans.

When, in 1840, the government passed a law that severely restricted the participation of the urban population in the occupation of the local government ( Ayuntamientos ) with the Cortes and the reigning Queen Maria Christina signed the law, but at the same time Espartero with the suppression of the uprising that broke out in Catalonia instructed, Espartero issued a manifesto on September 7th, which meant a coup. In this he demanded, as conditions for his cooperation with the government, the withdrawal of the law on the Ayuntamientos, the dissolution of the Cortes and the dismissal of the ministers.

He was then appointed regional president by Maria Christina and charged with forming a government. After a brilliant move to Madrid, Espartero and his ministers went to see Maria Christina in Valencia . The talks with the queen ended with her abdication as regent on October 10, whereupon Espartero was elected regent of Spain by the Cortes on May 18, 1841 and ruled de facto as dictator. He successfully fought the Republican forces , which were very active in Valencia , dampened the uprising in Pamplona that Leopoldo O'Donnell had instigated in favor of Maria Christina and suppressed the military conspiracy of supporters of Maria Christina that broke out in Madrid on October 7th. He later also had republican uprisings and coup attempts harshly suppressed. Among other things, he had General Diego de León , a hero of the Carlist War, executed. This crackdown on political opponents diminished support for his reign.

Due to his close political ties to England, too, he angered the French government and provoked revolutionary tendencies that broke out in blood in the repeated uprisings in Barcelona. These were sparked above all by a threatened free trade policy of Espartero, which made the Catalan textile industry in particular fear for its existence. On December 3, 1842, Espartero had over 1,000 cannon balls fired from the citadel at Barcelona and, after its surrender, executed around 100 insurgents.

On May 26, 1843, Espartero had the Cortes dissolved, as they had increasingly come into opposition to his government. The leaders of the moderate party ( Moderados ), the followers of Maria Christina, who returned to Spain due to an amnesty on May 9, 1843 , then allied themselves with more radical forces of the republicans and progressives . In Catalonia (with renewed unrest in Barcelona), Andalusia, Aragon and Galicia , an uprising against the regent broke out, headed by Ramón María Narváez , an old personal enemy of Espartero, and General Serrano . After defeating the Regent's party, Narváez entered Madrid on July 22, 1843.

Exile and Return, "Progressive Biennium"

After the triumph of his opponents, Espartero embarked in Cádiz on a ship of the line to England, where he lived in exile in London until 1848 . In 1848 he was rehabilitated and he returned to Spain. He took his seat in the Senate on January 13, 1849, but withdrew as a result of tension with the court in February to Logroño and lived here in seclusion until a progressist uprising led by O'Donnell overthrew the government in June 1854.

To save her throne, the queen had to come to terms with the former regent Espartero and on July 19 appointed him president of the government. Espartero made a brilliant entry into Madrid and tried to merge the various liberal factions under his leadership. The time of the experiment of power sharing between O'Donnell and Espartero since 1854 went down in Spanish history as the Bienio Progresista (Eng. "Progressive two years").

Retreat into private life

Since the lasting agreement of the liberals did not succeed and Espartero reform efforts and O'Donnell's claim to political leadership could not and did not want to satisfy their ideas, he resigned his office on July 14, 1856 and retired again to Logroño into private life.

In 1868, after the expulsion of Queen Isabella II and an unsuccessful search for a king, Juan Prim even offered him the royal crown; Espartero refused. Even in the years up to his death in 1878, Espartero lived withdrawn in Logroño and did not voluntarily return to the political stage, although he was repeatedly asked to do so by liberal politicians.

He was buried in the church of Santa María de la Redonda in Logroño.

literature

Web links

Commons : Baldomero Espartero  - collection of images, videos and audio files
  • Entry on the website of the Spanish Senate (Spanish)
  • Entry on the website of the Spanish Parliament (Congreso de los Diputados) (Spanish)
  • President of the Congreso de los Diputados (Spanish)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ La Revolución y bombardeo de Barcelona en 1842
  2. ↑ For more details and evidence, see Spanish Succession to the Throne 1868–1870 #Spanish Candidates
predecessor Office successor
José María Calatrava President of Spain
1837 		Eusebio Bardají Azara
Vicente Sancho President of the Government of Spain
1840 - 1841 		Joaquín María Ferrer Cafranga
Angel de Saavedra President of the Government of Spain
1854 - 1856 		Leopoldo O'Donnell
personal data
SURNAME Espartero, Baldomero
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Espartero Álvarez de Toro, Joaquín Baldomero Fernández (full name); El Pacificador de España (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish military and politician
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1792
PLACE OF BIRTH Granátula de Calatrava , Province of Ciudad Real
DATE OF DEATH January 8, 1879
Place of death Logroño