José Ramón Rodil Campillo

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Don José Ramón Rodil y Campillo

José Ramón Rodil y Campillo Galloso (Gayoso) , from 1831 Marqués (Margrave) of Rodil (born February 5, 1789 in Santa María de Trobo , province of Lugo ; † February 20, 1853 in Madrid ), was a Spanish colonial officer, politician and military . From 1824 to 1826 he defended the last Spanish fortress in South America and became a Christian military leader in the First Carlist War . In the 1830s and 1840s he was a member of the Cortes and in 1836 served twice as Minister of War for a short time . During the reign of Espartero , he became Prime Minister of Spain for almost a year in 1842/43 . After the fall of his government, he built up the Spanish border police and became a senator for life in 1849.

Career

War of Independence in Spain

When the Spanish War of Independence broke out , Rodil Campillo was a student at the University of Santiago de Compostela , where, as at many Spanish universities, volunteer units spontaneously formed to fight against the French occupation under King Joseph Bonaparte . As today, he studied there not as long assumed law , but came as a seminarian of the Seminary of Mondoñedo to Santiago to theology to study and priests to be. In 1808, Rodil joined the Volunteer Battalion of the Literary Faculty ( Batallón Literario ) just a few months after his arrival in Santiago and took part in the battle of Espinosa de los Monteros near Burgos and other skirmishes. In July 1809 he fought as a second lieutenant under the command of Pablo Morillo in his native Galicia in the defense of Puentesampayo near Pontevedra against the troops of Marshal Ney and then took part in the march for the liberation of Santiago de Compostela and in the subsequent fighting in northern Spain to end the war in 1814, including the siege of Bayonne in southern France.

War of Independence in South America

The Battle of Maipu (1818)

In 1816 he came to South America as an officer of the Real Infante Don Carlos infantry regiment under the command of Juan Antonio Monet with Spanish reinforcements and, after arriving in Callao in the viceroy of Peru in the spring of 1817, was integrated into the army of the Spanish viceroy José de la Serna . In the same year he was promoted to major and was given the task of building a new battalion in Arequipa . To this end, he and the recruits went to the small island of Alacrán in front of the port city of Arica . After completing his training, he led the battalion to reinforce the Spanish troops in the general captaincy of Chile under the command of Mariano Osorio in the battles against the patriotic forces under Bernardo O'Higgins and José de San Martín . In March and April 1818 he took part as battalion commander in the fighting at Talca and the costly battles of Cancha Rayada and Maipú against the independentist Andean army .

After the royalists withdrew from Chile, Rodil returned to Lima and was promoted to colonel in 1820 . He took part with the viceroyal army in the battles of the war of independence , which was now also breaking out in Peru itself, and after being promoted to brigadier in 1823, he was appointed military governor of the Huamanga province , general commander and general manager of the Lima region and, in 1824, governor and commander of the Callao fortress . After the devastating defeat of the Viceroy's army in the Battle of Ayacucho on December 9, 1824, Rodil continued the struggle against the South American armies of independence as one of the last loyal Spanish commanders.

Defense of Callao

Execution of the priest Pedro Marieluz on the orders of Rodil in the besieged fortress Real Felipe.

In the spring of 1824, shortly after the capital Lima and the fortified port of Callao came into Spanish possession again after a royalist revolt among the forts' garrisons, Ramón Rodil had taken command of Callao and established a strict military regime in the area. After the surrender of the Spanish viceroy on 11 December 1824, the last Spanish associations that refused to surrender, in the fort under Rodils leadership attracted Fortaleza del Real Felipe back in the Bay of Callao, where they are hoping for relief from Enclosed Spain and besieged by an independentist army under General Bartolomé Salom . For many months, Rodil headed the practically hopeless defense of the last Spanish bastion in South America, which earned him great recognition in military circles, but also earned him the reputation of a merciless tyrant, as he led a tough regiment among the trapped and several times because of soldiers and officers Unreliability or suspected desertion plans shot. Particularly feared by friends and foe were the ruthless night raids that Rodil had carried out in the vicinity of the fortress to supply the crew. It was only when all supplies were used up and Simón Bolívar's threat not to recognize a later surrender that the defenders finally gave up. With the handover of the fortress by the 400 surviving royalists after almost fourteen months of siege on January 23, 1826, the Spanish presence in South America ended . Rodil himself was given permission to leave the country unmolested on the British frigate Briton .

Honors and ennobling

The pardon and return to Spain had been enforced by Simón Bolívar, among others, although the republican commanders had demanded the execution of Rodil as a rebel during the surrender negotiations, since the continuation of the military resistance beyond the official surrender of the Spanish viceroy as a rebellion against the legitimate government was rated. Rodil traveled back to his homeland via Rio de Janeiro , where he arrived in August 1826. In Brazil, he and his British travel companions were interviewed by journalists, so reports of his behavior spread across Europe and helped create a personal fama . He was honored by King Ferdinand VII for bravery with the title of Field Marshal ( Mariscal de Campo ) , awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella of the Catholic and other orders, and in 1831 raised to the nobility .

Carlist war

Rodil as an officer

When the Carlist War broke out after Isabella II was elevated to Queen of Spain, Ramón Rodil was promoted to lieutenant general by her mother, the regent Maria Christina of Sicily , and on October 16, 1833, as commander-in-chief of the observation army on the border with Portugal with the pursuit and arrest of the pretender to the throne Don Carlos , who considered himself the legal successor of his deceased brother Ferdinand and did not recognize the child queen Isabella's claim to the throne. Rodil penetrated with his 6,000-strong force in three divisions across the borders into Portugal and moved into his headquarters in Gouveia . At the same time the Miguelistenkrieg came to an end in Portugal , in which the Portuguese king Michael, who was allied with Carlos, lost the throne to his niece Maria , who was close to the liberal camp and was supported by Spain. The capture of Carlos von Bourbon did not succeed, however, so that he was able to flee from Portugal to England with British help . On the march back to Spain, Rodil's army dragged the cholera , which was rampant in Portugal and Extremadura at the time , into the area around Madrid, about which contemporary witness reports from Buitrago exist.

Rodil then marched first to Burgos and was appointed commander in chief of the Northern Army. To this end, he received the title of General Captain ( Capitán General ) of the Basque provinces and was installed on July 1, 1834 as Viceroy of Navarre . In addition to fighting the rebellious Carlists, the task was again connected with the task of bringing Don Carlos, who had returned to northern Spain under the protection of the triumphs of his followers, into his power. When, after numerous failures and defeats in the fighting against the Carlist troop leader Zumalacárregui, the overall situation became increasingly critical and a victory for the Carlist seemed in sight, Rodil was recalled from his command and on March 11, 1835 appointed Inspector General of the Infantry. Baldomero Espartero , who succeeded in liberating Bilbao at the end of 1836 and who in the following years was able to push Don Carlos and the Carlist generals more and more into a corner and ultimately persuade them to give up, took over as military leader of the Christian associations in northern Spain . Rodil became minister in 1836 and in the same year also served as captain general of Aragon and commander in chief of the army in central Spain.

Political career

Memorial to the surprise victory of the Spanish guerrillas against the French army at the Pontesampaio river crossing on July 7, 1809, which initiated the liberation of Galicia from Napoleonic rule. Ramón Rodil, who himself came from Galicia, took part in the battle as a young officer.

Rodil was a member of the Senate as the Queen's representative from 1834 and initially until 1836 , and in 1834 he held the office of Viceroy of Navarre for a few months . On April 27, 1836, he was appointed Minister of War in the cabinet of Juan Álvarez Mendizábal . He held this office until the end of Mendizábal's tenure on May 15, 1836, before he was again a member of the government of José María Calatrava as Minister of War from August 20 to November 26, 1836 .

On July 24, 1839 and February 1, 1841 he was also elected a member of the Congress , where he represented the constituency of Lugo . From October 29, 1840 to June 17, 1842 he was again Inspector General of the Infantry and the Army in Northern Spain. In 1841 he was promoted to general captain.

Due to his close association with General Espartero, who was elected regent by the Cortes Generales , Rodil was appointed Prime Minister ( Presidente del Gobierno ) on June 17, 1842 . In his cabinet he also took over the office of Minister of War. In the electoral term from 1842 to 1843 he was also a member of the Senate again as a representative of the province of Avila. After he had alienated himself from the increasingly dictatorial ruling Espartero, who shortly before his overthrow lost approval in the liberal camp and was ultimately in a personal dispute with Rodil, Rodil had to give up his office on May 9, 1843 after almost a year in government and withdrew back to politics.

Police General under Isabella II.

After the fall of Espartero and the return of the Queen, who was declared of legal age in 1843, Rodil became General Commander of the Royal Palace Guard ( Cuerpo de Alabarderos ). At the same time he was involved in building up the Karabinerkorps ( Cuerpo de Carabineros ), a border and fiscal police, of which he became the first general inspector. He had developed the concept during his tenure as Prime Minister and had already partially implemented it. The carbines, originally built as a paramilitary militia with border protection and police tasks, were completely militarized by Rodil and placed under the Ministry of War and converted into a standing force . The corps remained in existence until it was transferred to the Guardia Civil in 1940. In addition, Rodil temporarily acted as an inspector of the people's militias.

For his services, Rodil was appointed Senator for Life ( Senador Vitalicio ) on October 17, 1849 .

aftermath

José Ramón Rodil went down in history above all as the heroic defender of Callao against the Peruvian liberators, an episode in his life that overshadows all of Rodil's other acts in the historiography. In Peruvian historiography, he was mostly judged negatively (for example by Paz Soldán and especially Mendiburo ), but he was still respected for his stubbornness and his military heroism and skill. For example, the 19-year-old poet Ricardo Palma dedicated a transfiguring, romantic play with the simple title Rodil to him while he was still alive , which was premiered in 1852, the year before Rodil's death, at the Teatro Principal in Lima. In his story El secreto de confesión ("The Confessional Secret ") from 1886, which deals with the shooting of the priest Pedro Marieluz on the orders of Rodil in the final phase of the siege, Palma dealt again with Rodil and this time characterized him as irascible, paranoid and ruthless tyrants.

Rodil himself was prompted by the ongoing criticism of his role in the defense of Callao to write a justification in which he describes his view of the siege with numerous carefully edited documents, plans and military historical testimonies and explains his actions in detail. The font Memoria del sitio del Callao was stored unpublished for more than 100 years in the library of the Royal Palace in Madrid and was only published in Seville in 1955 as a document of "great historical interest" . With the title Las últimas banderas the siege of Fortaleza Real Felipe was filmed under the direction of Luis Marquina in 1957 in Madrid (camera: Enrique Guerner ); Rodil is played in the civil war drama by Fernando Fernández de Córdoba (1897-1982), an actor who became known as a radio announcer in the Spanish Civil War for reading the daily war bulletins from General Franco's headquarters on Radio Nacional de España .

swell

Sketch of the Real Felipe fortress in Callao (1825); personal drawing by José Ramón Rodils from his memories

literature

Web links

Commons : José Ramón Rodil y Campillo  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d José María Díaz Fernández: El Marqués de Rodil, alumno de teología en Compostela. In: ders .: Desde Santiago: personas y aconteceres (Colección Vilarnovo / Ideas e realidades. Ámbito hispano). 3C3 Editores, A Coruña 2003, pp. 57-59.
  2. ^ British agency report of May 7, 1834, in: Allgemeine Zeitung , Munich edition of May 20, 1834, No. 140, p. 558.
  3. ^ Carmen Requejo Sánchez: Villavieja del Lozoya en el recuerdo. Edited by the municipality of Villavieja del Lozoya, Madrid 2016, ISBN 978-84-617-6335-1 , p. 29.
  4. ↑ Manuel P. Villatoro: La batalla del puente Sampayo, cuando España aplastó a Napoleón en Galicia. In: ABC , June 27, 2014, accessed March 11, 2017.
  5. ↑ a b c Rodils personnel file as a member of the Spanish Senate , accessed on March 10, 2017.
  6. ^ List of Congressmen 1810-1977 , accessed March 10, 2017.
  7. ↑ Real decreto de organización del Cuerpo de Carabineros del Reino. Kgl. Decree on the organization of the Imperial Carabiners Corps of November 12, 1842, published in the semi-official Gaceta de Madrid from December 9 to 13, 1842.
  8. ↑ Las últimas banderas (1957) in the Internet Movie Database (English).
  9. ↑ Parece que fue ayer. Fernández de Córdoba's voice reading out the famous last bulletin Franco's La guerra ha terminado of April 1, 1939, accessed on June 7, 2017.
predecessor Office successor
Antonio González González Prime Minister of Spain
June 17, 1842 - May 9, 1843 		Joaquín María López López
personal data
SURNAME Rodil Campillo, José Ramón
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rodil y Campillo Galloso, José Ramón; Rodil y Campillo Gayoso, José Ramón
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish colonial officer, politician and military
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1789
PLACE OF BIRTH Santa Maria de Trobo
DATE OF DEATH February 20, 1853
Place of death Madrid