Francisco José de Ovando

Francisco José de Ovando y Solís Rol de La Cerda, 1st Marquis of Brindisi (* 1693 in Cáceres , Spain , † December 9, 1755 in Spain) was a Spanish soldier who was interim governor of Chile and later governor of the Philippines .

Life

Born in Extremadura , de Ovando joined the Spanish army in 1710 at the age of seventeen . Six years later he moved to the Spanish Navy and took part in the Battle of Sicily in July 1718 in the War of the Quadruple Alliance .

In the following years he worked administratively until he returned to the Spanish Navy in 1728. Two years later he was ordered to study shipbuilding in Cadiz . In 1731 he was given command of the frigate Guipúzcoa from the fleet of Admiral Conejo and took part in the Battle of Livorno .

In 1733 he was promoted to captain . De Ovando received the supreme command of the frigate Galga and took the Italian city ​​of Naples under Marquis de Clavijo in the course of the War of the Polish Succession . In the following year he conquered the fortress of Brindisi with an army of 300 men and was due to his achievement by the Spanish Infante Charles III. appointed Marquis of Brindisi .

Two years later he was sent to the New World to arrest smugglers in the Antilles . He should especially focus on English and Dutch smugglers who threatened to disrupt the order of the Spanish colonial empire.

In 1743 de Ovando was raised to the rank of naval commander by the Spanish minister Marqués de la Ensenada and was given the task of inspecting all fortresses in the viceroyalty of Peru .

With the appointment of the governor José Antonio Manso de Velasco as viceroy of Peru on June 4, 1745 Ovando was appointed interim successor. He held the office until March 26, 1746, when he handed it over to Domingo Ortiz de Rozas . After resigning from this position, he returned to the naval command. During his tenure, the preparations for the foundation of the first university in Chile, the Real Universidad de San Felipe , which took place in 1747, fell. During his time in Lima he experienced one of the worst earthquakes in Peru in the last few centuries (it is calculated at 8.5 to 9.0), which triggered a huge tsunami . Lima was about 80% destroyed by the quake and lost about 2,000 inhabitants, Lima's port city of Callao was completely destroyed by the tsunami and about 200 of its approximately 5,000 inhabitants survived, including the Marqués de Ovando and his family; In a letter to a friend, the Marquis describes the quake and its effects.

On July 20, 1750, Ovando was appointed governor of the Philippines . He held this office for about four years, until July 26, 1754. De Ovando died the following year.

literature

• Santiago Gómez: Historial del navío “Galga” ( Spanish ) In: Todo a Babor . Retrieved January 24, 2009.
• José Toribio Medina : Diccionario Biográfico Colonial de Chile . Imprenta Elziviriana, Santiago, Chile 1906, p. 635 (Spanish, memoriachilena.cl [PDF]).
• F. Ortiz de la Tabla Ducasse: El marqués de Ovando, Gobernador de Filipinas . Ed .: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos. CSIC, Seville, Spain 1974 (Spanish).
• José María Silos Rodríguez: Viaje de 1755 del Galeón “Santísima Trinidad” ( Spanish ) In: Todo a Babor . Retrieved January 23, 2009.

Remarks

1. ↑ The spelling "Obando" is occasionally found in the literature.
2. ^ Letter from Ovando to a friend, reprinted in Antonio Valladares' Semanario erudito . Madrid: Blas Roman 1799 XVI, pp. 239–264 (in Spanish)