Juan Carlos de Areizaga

Juan Carlos de Areizaga

Juan Carlos de Aréizaga y Alduncín (born January 17, 1756 in Fuenterrabía , Guipúzcoa , † March 18, 1820 in Tolosa , Guipúzcoa) was a Spanish lieutenant general during the Napoleonic Wars .

Life

He was the son of Colonel Juan Carlos Aréizaga y Irusta and joined the army of the Mallorca Infantry Regiment as a cadet in 1775 , with whom he took part in the expedition and disembarkation from Algiers (July 8, 1775), where his left arm was badly wounded. On January 3, 1778, he was promoted to lieutenant . He served on naval ships during the war against England and received the rank of captain on January 1, 1783 . In 1790 he took part in the defense of Oran and distinguished himself in the skirmishes of October 21st and 26th. Until October 3, 1791 he was then in the local garrison.

At the beginning of the war against France he was appointed adjutant to General Ventura Caro, commander in chief of the army of Guipúzcoa and Navarre . He took part in the battle of Chateau-Pignon (June 6, 1793) and in the removal of a battery and a camp on the following July 23. He organized a battalion of volunteers from Guipúzcoa, whose leader was appointed on July 8th. At its head he fought on February 5, 1794 on the heights of Hendaya and on June 24, 18 and 16 at Punta del Diamante. He was wounded again during the bombing of Fort Biriatu (June 23). The following year he fought at Elgóibar and Azcárate (May 9 and 19, 1795), participated in the retreat from Elgóibar (May 28), fought at Elosua and Vergara (June 29 and 30), and left on July 15 back to Miranda de Ebro . At the end of the war he received the rank of lieutenant colonel in general promotion from September 4, 1795 and was appointed commander of the Mallorca regiment on February 4, 1796.

On November 12, 1797 he was promoted to commander of the 3rd Battalion of the Seville Regiment, where he remained until April 2, 1799, when he was promoted to colonel and transferred to the Cordoba regiment as chief. On September 25, 1800 he was officially appointed colonel of the regiment. During the war that followed against England he served under General Morla and led the military command on the Île de León (Cadiz). On March 27, 1802 he was given leave to marry María Ana de Magallón Armendáriz, daughter of José María Magallón, Marquis of San Adrián, with whom he married on May 5 in Tolosa.

After the war, he was made Knight of the Order of Santiago in 1802. The following year he was made colonel on June 15, 1803 in the Plaza de San Sebastián and passed two years later on November 22, 1805 in Pamplona . He spent his premature farewell until 1808 in Tolosa, after which he joined the party of Crown Prince Fernando and accompanied him on his way through Vitoria to Bayonne .

At the beginning of the War of Independence he went to Huesca and Saragossa , recruited militia troops and in November 1808 submitted to the army of General Castaños . After the defeat of Tudela he was given command of an infantry division by the commissioner of the Central Junta , Francisco Palafox .

Promoted to brigadier on March 8, 1809 , he recruited troops in Mequinenza and assembled his troops at Tortosa . He was given full powers by the central executive committee in Seville, promoted to major general on May 1st and received command of the right army department in Andalusia with the 2nd Army under General Blake .

In the battle of Alcañiz (May 23) he commanded a newly formed division and was promoted to lieutenant general on June 1 . He then fought in the Battle of Belchite (June 18) and was appointed governor of the Plaza de Lérida after the retreat . He organized the defense there under the command of General Eguía until the end of September and was assigned supreme command of the centre's army on October 22nd.

In the fall of 1809, the junta prepared a plan of attack against Wellesley's advice to drive the French out of Madrid . To this end, the armies of the Center and Extremadura, each led by Aréizaga and the Duke of Alburquerque , should act together.

Aréizaga assembled an army of about 50,000 men, 5700 horsemen and 60 artillery pieces in Sierra Morena , which was best equipped and armed in this war so far. On November 3rd he began his advance and forced the French troops to retreat to Ocaña . Part of his cavalry, commanded by Major General Bermuy, was thrown back in Ontígola on November 18. The next day he suffered a devastating defeat against the French under Soult, Mortier and Sebastiani in the Battle of Ocaña , losing almost twenty thousand dead, wounded and prisoners. The remnants of his army dispersed and withdrew to their base in the Sierra Morena, where three weeks later he was able to gather just 24,000 men. The overwhelmed Aréizaga asked the junta to resign from his command, but his request was not allowed. He kept command of the troops in Sierra Morena and had to give up the area on January 20, 1810 because of flanking maneuvers by the French. He was then forced to withdraw his decimated troops to Granada , where he handed over command to General Blake on January 27th . The central junta appointed him governor of Cartagena on August 3, 1810 . He stayed there until December 28th, the day he was assigned to the newly formed 5th Army under the command of the Marquis de la Romana . These troops marched to Cádiz to protect the government , where they arrived in early April 1811.

On September 18, 1811, due to the defeat of Ocaña, he was subsequently demoted to commander of the garrison post in Alicante until he received the order on February 15, 1813 to come back to Cádiz. He then received the post of governor of Algeciras , because he held from June to December 1813.

After the return of Ferdinand VII , he was appointed captain general of Guipúzcoa on July 23, 1814 . During the Hundred Days until June 9, 1815, he received the command of the Left Observation Army, which he then had to hand over to General Enrique O'Donnell , Count of La Bisbal.

On June 12, 1816, his application for the Military Cross of the Order of San Fernando was rejected, but he was awarded the Great Cross of the Order of San Hermenegildo according to the Gazette de Madrid on December 23rd. In his homeland of Guipúzcoa he commanded the provincial troops until his death in March 1820.

literature

• General Military Archive (Segovia), exp. A-2179, service sheet at the end of December 1815;
• Conde de Toreno: History of the uprising, war and revolution in Spain , Paris, Baudry bookstore, Paris 1838

Web links

• Alberto Martín-Lanuza: Biograsphie on dbe.rah.es/biografias (Spanish)