Francisco Espoz y Mina

Portrait of General Espoz y Mina.

Francisco Espoz y Mina

Francisco Espoz y Mina (born June 17, 1781 in Idocin, Navarra , Spain , † December 24, 1836 in Barcelona , Spain), also known as Francisco Espoz Ilundáin, was a Spanish guerrilla leader and general .

Life

Espoz y Mina came from a family of free farmers and worked on his parents' farm until Napoleon's invasion of Spain in 1808. During the Napoleonic Wars on the Iberian Peninsula , Espoz y Mina joined the guerrilla force of his nephew Francisco Javier Mina as a simple soldier . After his capture in March 1810, he led the force and in the same year became the leader of the guerrillas of Navarre. In 1813 his army consisted of 11,000 infantry and 2,500 horsemen and Espoz y Mina was in command of Navarre, Upper Aragon and the Basque provinces. When Wellington crossed the Pyrenees and invaded France in the autumn of 1813 , Espoz y Minas troops were also involved in the campaign. So they took Mina Jacas, advanced to the island of Oleron and besieged St.-Pied de Port until the armistice . After the Restoration of Ferdinand VII , Espoz y Mina fell out of favor when he and his nephew tried to restore the constitution of 1812 in September 1814 . Because of his failure, he had to flee abroad.

After the uprising of 1820 he returned to Spain, gathered his guerrillas again in Navarra, was appointed captain general in 1821 and generalissimo in 1822 . With his troops he fought against the religious army in Catalonia . At first he succeeded in pushing the French back across the Pyrenees, despite the complete inadequacy of the means at his disposal. In November he occupied Seo d'Urgel and organized a general uprising against the incursion of the French army in 1823 . The uprising failed, however, and Espoz y Mina had to withdraw to Barcelona, ​​which he had to hand over to Marshal Moncey in November.

Espoz y Mina then went to England, where he wrote his memoirs in 1825. In 1830 he organized another uprising in Navarre with Cayetano Valdés , but this was again put down shortly afterwards. From 1831 he lived again in London as part of the liberal emigre movement under Agustín Argüelles Álvarez . After the death of Ferdinand VII, civil war broke out in the Basque provinces and Queen Christina allowed Espoz y Mina to return to Spain. On September 23, 1834 she appointed him Commander in Chief of the Spanish Northern Army. Already at that time he was ill from numerous wounds and the strain of his years of service, and he was physically and mentally deteriorated. The troops made available to him were also weak and demoralized - his rival, the guerrilla leader Tomás de Zumalacárregui , also achieved great success at the same time. So he resigned on April 8, 1835 from the command. In October he was reappointed Captain General of Catalonia by Prime Minister Juan Álvarez Mendizábal . In August 1836 he helped, together with mutinous guards of the Palacio Real , to force Queen Christina to adopt a constitution before he died in December 1836.

aftermath

Espoz y Minas memoirs were published by his widow after his death. The Plaza de Mina in Cádiz is named after him.

Fonts

• Breve extracto de la vida del General Mina , London, 1825.

literature

• Francisco Espoz y Mina. In: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon . Bibliographisches Institut, 6th edition, 1905–1909.