Juan Prim
Juan Prim y Prats , in Catalan Joan Prim i Prats , (born December 6, 1814 in Reus , Spain , † December 30, 1870 in Madrid ) was a Catalan general and politician and Prime Minister of Spain .
Origin and career up to 1840
Prim's father Pablo was a lieutenant colonel in the Spanish army and, after retiring from military life , took over the notary's office that Prim's grandfather had run in Reus.
Juan Prim joined after his schooling at age 19 at the start of the First Carlistenkrieges 1834 a volunteer corps called Tiradores de Isabel II. (, Protect Isabella II. ') On. These free corps supported the regular army in the fight for Maria Christina of Sicily , the widow of Ferdinand VII , who, as regent, claimed rule for her daughter Isabella II .
In the following seven years of civil war, he rose level by level in the troops fighting on the side of the regent Maria Christina as a result of a series of courageous and victorious military actions in which he was injured several times and his horses were killed: After the capture of Sant Pere de Vilamajor by a company led by him against outnumbered Carlist troops and other victorious actions he was appointed captain . After the capture of Sant Miquel de Taradella , he was awarded the Cross of Saint Ferdinand First Class. He received this award again in the following years, in addition to the promotion to colonel . At the age of 26, his followers saw him as a symbol of courage and military success.
Espartero government (1840–1844)
After the liberal coup of La Granja (1840) the rift deepened between the moderados and the progressives , led by Calatrava and Mendizábal and who, with Espartero, provided the new regent. When Prim was elected to the Spanish parliament for the province of Tarragona in 1841 , he joined the progressives.
For Prim as a member of a volunteer unit, there was a risk of his military ranks not being recognized after the demobilization of the Carlist War Freikorps. In contrast to most of his fellow combatants, Prim was accepted into the official army due to his high prestige as a colonel. In addition, Espartero appointed him sub-inspector of carbines in Andalusia . As such, Prim was able to prevent conservative leaders under Ramón Narváez , who wanted to return the reign to Maria Cristina, to return to Spain via Gibraltar .
Nevertheless, Prim fell out with Espartero and accused him of granting British textiles too much import freedom through his free trade policy , in order to damage the uncompetitive Catalan textile industry and thus to be able to subordinate Catalonia more to central power. The alienation of both politicians manifested itself in the suppression of the uprising that broke out in Barcelona in 1843 against the background of the worsening economic situation of many companies as a result of Espartero's trade policy. Prim initially took part in combating them. However, after the uprising was severely suppressed by the bombing of the city from Montjuïc , which Espartero had undertaken, he was one of the critics of Espartero's politics.
Political intrigues soon began in Madrid and, in 1843 , military uprisings against Espartero in Malaga , Granada and Almería . Prim and Lorenzo Milans del Bosch simultaneously instigated an uprising against Espartero in Reus. Barcelona joined the uprising and shortly afterwards all of Catalonia. To suppress the uprising, General Martín Zurbano moved from Barcelona to Tarragona and from there to Reus. Amid protests from the citizens of his hometown, who saw themselves at the mercy of Zurbano without a defense, Prim moved to Barcelona to avoid Zurbano's bloody incursion into Reus, which enabled him to leave freely. Prim met there with a representative of a Parisian secret society of exiled military men under the leadership of O'Donnell and Narváez and forbade the conservative generals to enter via Barcelona so that they would not arrive in Madrid before him. These generals then marched via Valencia to Madrid, where they arrived before Prim. Espartero was overthrown without much resistance and fled to England , while Narváez, who arrived in Madrid the day before Prim, took over the government. Isabella II was declared of legal age at the age of 13 and proclaimed queen and regent. Under Narváez the decade of the so-called Moderados (dt. The moderates ) began in the government.
During the Moderados era (1843-1854)
Prim was first appointed governor and general commander of Barcelona by the new government or its war minister Serrano , in order to fight a radical revolutionary uprising (the Jamancia ) there. As an award for their suppression and the pacification of the city, Prim was appointed Count of Reus and Viscount ( Vizconde ) del Bruch, with the title being inheritable. Prim then returned to Madrid and was appointed military commander of Ceuta by the government . However, he refused this post, retired from civil service and left Spain. When he returned in October 1844, he was charged with allegedly plotting and attempting murder against Narváez. He was sentenced to six years' imprisonment, but pardoned in 1845. Prim withdrew again abroad.
After Narváez's resignation, the incumbent war minister of one of the rapidly succeeding governments (under Florencio García Goyena ), Fernando Fernández de Córdova , a friend of Prim, appointed him Captain General of the island of Puerto Rico in 1847 . Due to his tough politics, Prim was not particularly popular in Puerto Rico, including having the guerrilla fighter El Águila shot after he broke his vow of submission and stole Prim's horse after his first liberation. Prim also put down an uprising in Santa Cruz and on the Danish Antilles island of Saint Thomas . For the latter action he received the Dannebrog Order . Nevertheless, he was recalled in 1848.
Prim then presented himself as a candidate for the Spanish Parliament in various Catalan electoral districts and was elected as a member of Vic . Since then he has worked as one of the most progressive and therefore most inconvenient leaders in the Chamber of Deputies for the moderate government. When Prim ran again as a candidate for Vic after the dissolution of parliament in the new elections of 1851, the government reappointed him as Captain General of Puerto Rico to prevent Prim's election. Prim accepted the office and stepped down from his candidacy. When his appeal was canceled after the election, Prim was left without office or function. A progressist MP who had won in two electoral districts then offered Prim one of the seats he had received in Barcelona. Not particularly popular since the Jamancia uprising in Barcelona was crushed, Prim campaigned by promising to become the most staunch advocate of civil liberties and the interests of Catalonia and was elected.
The Bravo Murillo government dissolved the Cortes again in 1852 and ruled by decree . To prevent a coup, Prim was expelled to France . Although he was only allowed to return to Spain five days before the newly convened elections, Prim was re-elected to parliament for Barcelona and again assumed his role as opposition leader. After the renewed dissolution of the parliament, Prim went again to France. At the end of 1853, when the Crimean War began, Prim asked to be sent to Turkey as a Spanish military commissioner . This was granted to him. He took part in the military operations of the Danube Army against Russia and was, among other things, strategic advisor to the artillery in the attack on the island of Totorkan . The Sultan awarded him the Medjidie Order and the Saber of Honor. In 1854 he received news of the fall of the Moderados government in Spain and he hurriedly returned to his home country.
In Morocco and Mexico (1854–1862)
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In Spain, O'Donnell and Espartero had reached an agreement to share power. Neither of them was ready to support Prim, who ran as a candidate for the Cortes, who was elected on November 8, 1854. Prim therefore increasingly turned to the interests of the democracy-oriented forces (the republicans and socialists ) and combined these in his political orientation with the ideas of the Progressist Party, to which he still belonged. Prim was elected to the congregation but had little influence there. He eventually retired and assumed the office of Captain General of Granada . Here his most important task was to secure Melilla against attacks by Berber troops . Prim defeated them in a battle at Cabrerizas . In 1856 he rose to Teniente General ( lieutenant general ), the second highest rank of general in the infantry, but resigned as captain general shortly afterwards when O'Donnell of Espartero took over government. Shortly thereafter, O'Donnell was forced to resign and with Narváez the moderados returned to government responsibility.
Prim criticized the policies of the Narváez government and was arrested for “lack of military honor”. His military trial was dragged out to prevent Prim from standing in the subsequent elections. Finally Prim was just before the elections to six months imprisonment sentenced, which he initially in Alicante served and the time was soon converted into exile. Despite the impossibility of campaigning, Prim was elected to parliament for the Reus constituency but was unable to attend its meetings. After six months of the new government, he was allowed to travel to Vichy , France.
The Narváez government fell shortly thereafter, and after two brief transitional governments, O'Donnell took over again. Prim returned to Spain in 1856 and joined the Liberal Union founded by O'Donnell, which is why he briefly left the Progressist Party.
During this time, the so-called Mexican Question , which arose from open demands by Spain against Mexico for its independence and incidents in the Mexican civil war since 1858, in which Spaniards had been killed, led to discussions about a declaration of war on the former colony. Prim spoke out against the war. He was then accused of partisanship with Mexico because he was married to a Mexican woman who was related to a minister in the liberal government of Benito Juarez in Veracruz . (At the time, the Conservatives had their own government in Mexico City , which was recognized by Spain.)
Meanwhile, O'Donnell drew attention to Morocco , from where repeated attacks on Ceuta had been made. At the same time, this provided an opportunity to distract from domestic political crises. Although the Sultan of Morocco was ready to make amends, O'Donnell declared war on Morocco in 1859. Prim asked to serve in the expeditionary force against Morocco and was appointed commander of a reserve division that was set up in Antequera . With his units and Catalan volunteers, he crossed from Algeciras to Ceuta. Prim excelled in various battles, including Los Castillejos (January 1, 1860) and Wad Ras . In the battles of Cabo Negrón and Tetuán , the deployment of his troops was decisive. After the signing of the Peace of Tetuán on April 26, 1860, Prim returned to Spain. He received honorary receptions in Catalonia, and the Queen awarded him the title of Marquis of Los Castillejos. Prim was appointed director of the Spanish engineering corps shortly thereafter.
In Mexico, the troops of the Juarez government overthrew the Conservative Miramón government, which was recognized by Spain, and expelled the Spanish ambassador in 1861. The Juarez government unilaterally decided to suspend the repayment of public debt . The French and British governments, suffering from similar measures, decided to occupy the customs posts in Veracruz and Tampico in order to collect their debts through customs revenues. In October 1861, in the London Convention with England and France, the Spanish government agreed a corresponding joint intervention in Mexico. Prim took over the leadership of the Spanish expeditionary force, but upon his arrival in Havana found that the troop contingents there, led by Captain General Serrano, had already set out for Mexico and captured San Juan de Ulúa and Veracruz. When Prim arrived in Veracruz in early 1862, he accepted Serrano's explanations for leaving early.
The area in which the Spanish troops had set up camp had an unhealthy climate. In particular, the so-called black vomiting ( yellow fever ) decimated the troops and an expedition into the interior developed into a catastrophe. The commanders then asked the Suárez government to be allowed to move their camp to Orizaba , but received no response for a long time. After two weeks, Prim turned personally to his brother-in-law, the Minister Echevarria, and obtained the longed-for permission. After the troops had been transferred, negotiations on the so-called Convención de la Soledad began in Orizaba . The French Emperor Napoléon III. had already decided at the time to convert Mexico into an empire under the government of Archduke Maximilian and asked Prim for support in this project. During the negotiations in Orizaba, the French negotiator informed Prim on April 15, 1862 that they would support the conservative government that opposed that of Juarez. He accused Prim of wanting to crown himself emperor. Prim denied these accusations and announced (like the English) the withdrawal of his troops so as not to play into the hands of the French. This took place on April 25th with the approval of the Spanish government. Queen Isabella II had spoken out against Maximilian's candidacy for the throne, although the Spanish government apparently initially Napoleon III. could satisfy. Prim traveled back to Spain via Havana and the United States, where he was initially attacked for his demeanor and actions.
Political intrigues in Spain (1862–1868)
In Spain, Prim resigned as director general of the engineering corps after 1862 and, after the overthrow of O'Donnell, also left the Unión Liberal and rejoined the Progressist Party. The following year, Queen Isabella became the godmother of Prim's daughter Isabel. In the elections of November 14, 1863, the progressives did not run and in the period that followed they looked for other ways to get to the government, in particular by approaching the army . A coup d'état was planned for June 6, 1864, but, like another two months later, it did not materialize. Prim was then ordered by the government in August 1864 to go into exile on account of alleged conspiracies. After he refused to do so, he was placed under house arrest in Oviedo , but shortly afterwards given amnesty by a new government under Narváez. The progressives again did not take part in the election that took place at the end of 1864.
In 1865, the government's repression measures against critical forces, who, among other things, advocated democracy and criticized the sale of state property to finance budget and national debt , intensified . Various university professors, including Emilio Castelar , were banned from public expression. They reached their climax on the so-called Night of Saint Daniel (on April 10, 1864, the name day of Saints Daniel and Ezekiel ): According to information from the Civil Guard , they died in the bloody suppression of student protests initiated by progressist circles by the Guardia Civil and cavalry left press 14 people and many more were injured. Prim then instigated a new conspiracy, but had to flee outside of the country - to France - after the failure of a coup he initiated in Valencia . Prim tried in several ways to return to Spain, but at best undertook conspiratorial journeys, about which anecdotes and legends have been passed down. In his home country, he earned a reputation as the main enemy of the incumbent government.
The Queen eventually dismissed the Narváez government and reinstated O'Donnell as head of government. He dropped all allegations and threats against Prim, who was returning to Spain. Contrary to the expectations of the new government, Prim again instigated a coup that went out on January 2, 1866 with the participation of regiments from Aranjuez , Leganés and Alcalá de Henares from the Madrid town of Villarejo de Salvanés . However, this did not achieve the desired effect, so that Prim and his co-conspirators had to flee again. Prim reached Portugal on January 20, but was soon deported there and went to London and shortly afterwards to Paris . He decided that he no longer wanted to bring the progressives to power through a coup, but now through a popularly supported revolution.
Nevertheless, a new coup took place in Madrid on June 21, 1866, albeit with the participation of civilians. The main starting point was the San Gil barracks, where the NCOs supported the uprising and, after some fighting, took control of the barracks. On the evening of the following day, however, troops loyal to the government had won the fighting in the capital. Many of the NCOs and corporals involved were shot. Prim, who was to be installed as the new head of government, had not yet left France. A little later he was expelled from France and went to the Switzerland to Geneva .
From Geneva, Prim convened an assembly of progressist and democratic representatives of Spain in Ostend (Belgium), which took place in August 1866. Here a committee was formed under the leadership of Prim to prepare another coup, again with the participation of civilians, for August 1867. Prim left Brussels on August 15, 1867, and went by sea to Tarragona and from there to Valencia. Since the planned uprising did not break out, Prim went to Marseille and from there to the Franco-Spanish border, from where he intended to go to Spain in due course. He returned to Geneva in September after the planned survey finally failed. In Spain, Queen Isabel, fearing the uprising, appointed a government made up of Progressist Party circles.
Within a year the old political leaders O'Donnell (the Unión Liberal) and Narváez (the Moderados ) died. General Francisco Serrano Domínguez , Duke of La Torre, became the new leader of the Unión Liberal, while the new leader of the moderate government, Luis González Bravo , with some clumsy decisions, led to the conversion of many generals and military personnel, including Juan de Zabala and Admiral Juan Bautista Topete , led to the Unión Liberal. Topete preferred a change of dynasty and the installation of the Duke of Montpensier as king. On request, however, Prim denied the support of this pretender for the progressives. Prim himself was able to move to Vichy after Napoleon III. had promised his neutrality in these domestic Spanish affairs. Soon, however, he went back to London. Finally contacts between the relevant generals were established and a new attempt at overthrow was made.
The "Glorious" Revolution (1868)
Prim left London on September 12, 1868 on board the steamship Buenaventura , disguised as servants of the befriended couple Bark. After his arrival in Gibraltar he got on the British tug Adelia to the frigate Zaragoza , which was moored with other ships of her squadron off Cádiz .
On September 17, 1868, under the direction of Admiral Topete, a pronunciamiento took place in Cádiz , which in the following days expanded to the province . On September 19th, Juan Prim appeared there and was greeted with cheers. Under the chairmanship of Topetes, a junta with equal representation was formed from members of the Unión Liberal, the Progressist and the Democratic Party. Prim moved up the Mediterranean coast with his troops and won the cities of Málaga (September 23), Almería ( September 25 ), Cartagena (September 26), and Valencia (October 2) for the insurgents, before a big crowd in Barcelona was received. Nearby, Generals Blas Pierrad , Anselm Clave , José María Orense and Mariano Rossell had proclaimed the Republic of Figueras . On October 1st, the progressist General Baldrich moved to Barcelona. Prim went from Barcelona to Reus and from there to Madrid.
He entered Madrid on October 7th, after General Serrano defeated the royal troops at Alcolea on September 28th . In the Provisional Government formed by Serrano on October 8, Prim received the Ministry of War . On October 27th he was appointed captain general of the army by Serrano. In the elections in January 1869, the progressives in league with the moderate Democrats received 160 seats, the Unión Liberal 65 seats, the Republican party 60 seats and the Carlist 30 seats. As the leader of the progressives, Prim thus played a decisive role. For the new constitution, he maintained the monarchy as a form of government and nominated Serrano as regent. By conferring this prestigious but uninfluential position on Serrano, he politically withdrew him from circulation. Prim himself was appointed by Serrano as prime minister to head the cabinet , in which Prim also occupied the war ministry. The cabinet was made up of equal numbers of ministers from the Progressist Party and the Unión Liberal.
The Search for a King (1869/70)
Regarding the replacement of the throne, the progressives preferred the candidacy of Ferdinand von Coburg , the father of the Portuguese King Ludwig I , while the Unionists continued to prefer Montpensier . Ferdinand's candidacy failed because of his morganatic marriage to a dancer and because of the candidate's resistance to the ban on a personal union of the crowns of Spain and Portugal (which many of his followers wanted to overcome).
The candidacy of Montpensier was vigorously rejected by Prim. In addition, he proposed the exclusion of all Bourbon lines from the Spanish throne. He then offered the crown to Duke Amadeus of Aosta and Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen , who both refused. Prim then offered the throne to the 16-year-old Duke of Genoa . Topete had agreed to this on the condition that the Duke of Genoa marry one of Montpensier's daughters. The candidacy was accepted in the Cortes with 128 to 52 votes. But the Duke of Genoa refused the Spanish throne.
Prim then offered the crown to the veteran general and statesman Baldomero Espartero , who also refused it. Prim then turned again to the Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, who finally declared that he would accept the crown if more than two thirds of the deputies of the Cortes voted for him (the law only provided for an absolute majority). However, Leopold's statement arrived after the end of the session, so that no vote could take place. The resistance expressed by France to the occupation of the Spanish throne by a Prussian ultimately led Leopold to withdraw his acceptance and step down from the candidacy.
From around May to June there was an intrigue between the German and French governments over the candidate for the throne that led to the Franco-Prussian War (1870/71) (occasion: Emser Depesche ).
After the unsuccessful search for a king, Prim again offered the crown to Amadeus, Duke of Aosta, who finally agreed to take the Spanish throne on condition that the European powers agree. After the consent was obtained, the Duke was elected King by the Cortes on November 26, 1870 with 191 votes and set out for Spain on December 27 to be sworn in as Amadeus I.
Prim was stopped in his carriage by several men that evening after a parliamentary session. These opened fire on the Prime Minister, who according to current opinion died of the consequences on December 30, 1870 after he had learned of Amadeus' departure.
On November 19, 2012, the Faculty of Forensic Medicine at the University of Reus published the photo-corroborated results of their examinations on the naturally mummified corpse of Prims. It was then clearly established that Prim was strangled with a string or a leather thong and thus did not die directly as a result of the injuries sustained in the attack. It seems likely that, after Prim apparently did not die immediately at the scene of the attack, the assassins followed the carriage with which the injured man fled from the scene of the attack to the Palacio de Buenavista , which was then the war ministry, and possibly followed him to it that same night Wise Killed.
The background to the attack was never fully clarified. The Republican MP José Paúl y Angulo is considered to be the client . The widely suspected involvement of Serranos and Montpensier can so far neither be substantiated nor ruled out.
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.libertaddigital.com/espana/2012-11-16/prim-fue-estrangulado-1276474475/ with numerous photos of the mummy
swell
- Juan Prim in Enciclopèdia Catálana (Catalan)
Web links
literature
- Juan Prim: El viaje militar a Oriente (original: 1855), Ministerio de Defensa, Madrid 1995 (Prim's official report on his posting as military commissioner to Turkey).
- Pere Anguera: El General Prim. Biografía de un conspirador . Edhasa, Barcelona 2003, ISBN 84-350-2625-6 .
- Juan Jaime Montón de Lama: "Quién mató a Prim?" : In: Historia 16 . Vol. 14 (1989), No. 164, pp. 21-36.
- Emeterio S. Santovenia: Prim. El caudillo estadista . Espasa-Calpe, Madrid 1933.
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| Francisco Serrano Domínguez |
Prime Minister of Spain 1869–1870 |
Juan Bautista Topete |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Prim, Juan |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Joan Prim i Prats |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Spanish general and statesman |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 6, 1814 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Reus , Catalonia |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 30, 1870 |
| Place of death | Madrid |