Francisco Ballesteros

Francisco Ballesteros

Francisco Ballesteros (born 1770 in Saragossa , † June 29, 1832 in Paris ) was a Spanish general .

He fought against the French in 1793. In 1804 he was dismissed for alleged misconduct, but was reinstated by Manuel de Godoy as head of customs in Asturias.

When the French invaded in 1808, he received a regiment from the junta of Asturias , which he sent to Blake and Castaños, and then fought successfully for several years in southern Spain. When he refused to serve under the Duke of Wellington as commander in chief of the Spanish troops, he was transferred to Ceuta .

Soon recalled, he commanded a corps in the mountains of La Ronda for a long time , became Lieutenant General in 1811 and Ferdinand VII's Minister of War in 1815. Overthrown by the clerical court camarilla, he was sent to Valladolid in 1816 with half his salary .

Recalled to Madrid at the outbreak of the revolution of 1820 , he appointed the king to adopt the constitution of 1812 , became vice-president of the provisional junta, and achieved great merit by closing the Inquisition dungeons and establishing municipal freedoms.

By defeating the Royal Guard ( Guardia Real ) on July 7, 1822, Ballesteros prevented the overthrow of the constitution. In 1823 he commanded the French in Navarre and Aragon , but had to capitulate at Caporla on August 21, 1823 and submit to the reign of Madrid. When on October 1st of the year Ferdinand VII declared all acts of the constitutional government to be invalid and at the same time deposed all officials and officers of the same, Ballesteros withdrew to Cádiz , from where he, as the amnesty expressly excluded him in 1824, on an English ship escaped. Living in Paris ever since, he died there on June 29, 1832.

literature

• Elizabeth Longford : Wellington: The Years of the Sword . Harper and Row Publishers, New York 1969