Francisco Javier de Reina

Francisco Javier de Reina Fernández (* 1762 in Barcelona , Spain , † probably in 1815 in Chile ) was a Spanish officer and member of the first government junta that ruled Chile from September 1810 to July 1811.

He was married to María Damiana de los Dolores Pizarro, with whom he had two sons and two daughters.

Life

Reina was born as the son of the officer Vicente Antonio de Reina Vásquez and his wife María Josefa Joaquina Fernández de Cáceres in Barcelona, ​​where his parents stopped on the way to Buenos Aires . He had five siblings.

As usual in the family, Francisco Reina pursued a career in the military. In 1789 he became an adjutant in the artillery corps and was deployed in this role at various locations in the Viceroyalty of Peru . He reached the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1802 and took command of the artillery in Chile in 1804.

Member of the government junta

With Napoleon's invasion of Spain, the imprisonment of King Ferdinand and the formation of the Junta Suprema Central , the urge to set up a junta also arose in Chile. On September 18, 1810, the governor of Chile, Mateo de Toro Zambrano y Ureta , called a meeting to deliberate on the government of the country.

At the assembly that marked the beginning of Chile's independence , a government junta was elected, chaired by Toro Zambrano. Among the dignitaries who belonged to the body (for example, as Vice-President the Bishop of Santiago, José Martínez de Aldunate ) was Reina - regardless of his royalist sentiments and probably after some hesitation. Reina was considered a moderating force: he had refused to use military force to chase Toro Zambrano's predecessor, Francisco Antonio García Carrasco , out of office.

Reina was seen by the more radical representatives of the junta, who pushed for independence more and more, as a supporter of the Spaniards and an insecure cantonist. When José Miguel Carrera launched a coup in the fall of 1811 to bring Congress to a more radical line, Reina was relieved of his command and exiled to Los Andes .

death

With the exile, Reina's track is lost. When the Spanish rebuilt colonial administration after the Battle of Rancagua in the fall of 1814, they rehabilitated the royalists who had been deposed by the Carrera government. Reina's name can not be found in the relevant trial files. Reina does not appear in the archives of the emigration of officials loyal to Spain to Lima , given the final victory of the independence movement following the victory in the Battle of Chacabuco in February 1817.

Hence, it seems most likely that he died around 1815.

Web links

Biography at Icarito (Spanish)