Manuel Belgrano

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Painting by Casimir Carbonnier, 1815
Manuel Belgrano

Manuel José Joaquín del Corazón de Jesús Belgrano (born June 3, 1770 in Buenos Aires , † June 20, 1820 ibid) was an Argentine lawyer, politician and general.

Life

Youth and Studies

Manuel Belgrano was born on June 3, 1770 in Buenos Aires as the fourth child of the Italian businessman Domingo Belgrano y Peri from his marriage to the Argentine María Josefa González Islas y Casero. He graduated from the San Carlos School in his hometown, where he studied Latin, philosophy, logic, physics, metaphysics and literature and graduated in 1786. His father was sufficiently successful as a businessman and was able to send his two sons Francisco and Manuel to Europe for training. Manuel Belgrano studied law in Spain close to the local intellectual elite and trained in living languages, political economy and public law. His main read authors were Rodríguez de Campomanes , Melchor de Jovellanos , Adam Smith and François Quesnay . Despite the influence of the French Revolution , he remained a loyal Catholic and monarchist.

Work as a consular secretary

In 1794 he returned to the Río de la Plata to work as secretary of the royal consulate of Buenos Aires, which was supposed to promote economic development in the region. In 1799 he founded the Academia de Náutica . He helped found the first Buenos Aires newspaper, Telégrafo Mercantil, published by Francisco Cabello y Mesa. The newspaper was banned in 1802 because of criticism and parodies of the authorities on the instructions of the Spanish viceroy Joaquín del Pino . When the British occupied Buenos Aires under General William Carr Beresford in 1806, Belgrano fled the city and was given asylum in the Mercedes Chapel in the Banda Oriental. The weak British troops were soon driven out by royal troops led by Santiago de Liniers and Spanish authority was restored. The whole city began to prepare to repel another British invasion. Belgrano returned to Buenos Aires after the reconquest and was appointed officer in the regiment of Cornelio Saavedra , at the same time he began to study military tactics. After the successful resistance against the British in July 1807, Belgrano resumed his work in the consulate and gave up his military studies. After his exile in Bayonne , King Ferdinand VII was ousted in motherland Spain. Belgrano then became the main proponent of the Carlotist political movement in the Rio de la Plata, a reaction to recent developments in Europe, where Spain was soon at war with France. The purpose of this unsuccessful movement was to replace the authority of the deposed king with Ferdinand's sister, Carlota Joaquina de Borbón , who was then living in Rio de Janeiro.

May uprising and campaign to Paraguay

In 1810 a new viceroy, Baltasar de Cisneros from Europe arrived in Buenos Aires to replace Liniers. Belgrano resigned from his consulate office in April 1810 and moved to the country. A short time later he received a letter from his friends asking him to return to Buenos Aires and join the revolutionary movements. Belgrano and Saavedra, representatives of the military and the intellectual class, demanded authority from Cisneros to request an open cabildo without receiving a response. Belgrano took part in the Argentine May Revolution and became the spokesman for the First Junta (government). The open cabildo met on May 22nd, and the ensuing riot ended when the old junta broke up on May 25th and was replaced by the new Primera Junta. Three months after the creation of the Primera Junta, Belgrano was appointed commander-in-chief of a small corps sent to Corrientes, Santa Fe, Paraguay and Banda Oriental. He led the so-called Paraguay expedition ( Expedición Libertadora al Paraguay ), which had the goal of forcing Paraguay to gain independence from Spain. At the same time Paraguay was supposed to join the Argentine Federation. The campaign ended in disaster: After crossing the almost 1,000 meter wide Paraná River , the "patriotic army" soon found itself without sufficient supplies. Belgrano was defeated at Paraguarí (1811) and in the Battle of Tacuarí (March 9, 1811) and Paraguay declared itself independent. Under the rule of José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia , Paraguay also broke off relations with Buenos Aires and remained isolated for several years.

In the war of independence

In order to mark the troops of the Argentine independence movement, General Belgrano designed a white and light blue flag , which was initially not approved by the government. Only later was it accepted as the flag of the Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata (around 1816 the name of today's Argentina and Uruguay ) by the Congress of Tucumán . Belgrano created a flag that was first hoisted on February 27, 1812 in Rosario near the Paraná River. On the same day he was appointed to succeed General Pueyrredon and was given authority over the Northern Army, which was stationed in San Salvador de Jujuy . When the royal troops began the offensive, he ordered the exodus from Jujuy (Éxodo Jujeño). In August 1812, the invasion of the Spanish army, which consisted of 3,000 men, was under the command of General Pío Tristán. In Tucumán on September 24, 1812 he gave the order to attack the royal troops. On February 11, 1813, the majority of his troops had crossed the Pasaje River, unexpectedly after a difficult march through the Chachapoyas Gorge in the north and isolating the royal troops under Tristán from their bases, and on February 20 they achieved victory in the battle at Salta . The constituent assembly decided March 8th to reward Belgrano with 40,000 pesos and a golden saber for the brilliant triumph.

After the triumphs of Tucumán and Salta, the government demanded in June 1813 that a campaign should be carried out in ancient Peru . Belgrano, who was just recovering from malaria fever, led a corps to Potosi, then failed on October 1, 1813 in the Battle of Vilcapugio against troops of the new Spanish commander Joaquín de la Pezuela . Belgrano's troops were pushed towards the Pampa plateau and were completely defeated by Pezuela's troops on November 14 at the Battle of Ayohuma after three hours of fighting.

Last period of life

The head of government Gervasio Posadas called on Belgrano to return to Buenos Aires and answer for the defeats at Vilcapugio and Ayohuma. The newly arrived General San Martín refused to extradite Belgrano because of his poor health, but eventually agreed to send Belgrano to Cordoba for the time being to await the outcome of the trial. During this time the Spanish King Ferdinand VII returned to the throne and began his absolutist restoration , which had serious consequences for the governments in America. In 1814 Belgrano was sent on a diplomatic mission to Europe with Bernardino Rivadavia to negotiate the establishment of an independent, constitutional monarchy on the Río de la Plata. When he returned in 1816 and took part in the Congress of Tucumán (July 6th) in the same year , he proposed there that the government of independent Argentina be designed as a moderate monarchy in the style of the Incas . On July 9th, Congress signed the Declaration of Independence from Spain. The flag designed by Belgrano, used without a statutory law, was accepted as the national flag.

The mausoleum of Manuel Belgrano in the Convento de Santo Domingo in Buenos Aires

In 1819 Buenos Aires was at war with José Gervasio Artigas and Estanislao López and asked Belgrano to take part in the conflict. Before his arrival, Governors Estanislao López and Juan José Viamonte signed an eight-day truce to begin peace negotiations. Belgrano's troops concentrated on the border between Santa Fe and Córdoba, from where he could move either to the littoral or to the north if necessary. His health deteriorated to such an extent that he was given a full leave of absence from the chief director. He handed over the command to Fernández de la Cruz and moved to Tucumán, where he was briefly detained by the governor Feliciano de la Motta. When Bernabé Araoz took over the government of Tucumán, Belgrano was immediately released. He returned to Buenos Aires, to his parents' house. By this time the Battle of Cepeda had ended the Supreme Directors' authority and a period of perennial anarchy had begun. On June 20, 1820, Belgrano died of dropsy at the age of 50. Juan Sullivan performed the autopsy, the finding showed high amounts of fluid in multiple edema and a tumor in the right epigastrium.

Honors

Web links

Commons : Manuel Belgrano  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lutz D. Schmadel : Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . Fifth Revised and Enlarged Edition. Ed .: Lutz D. Schmadel. 5th edition. Springer Verlag , Berlin , Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 978-3-540-29925-7 , pp.  186 (English, 992 pp., Link.springer.com [ONLINE; accessed September 15, 2019] Original title: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . First edition: Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg 1992): “1976 HS. Discovered 1976 Apr. 23 at the Carlos U. Cesco Observatory at El Leoncito. "
personal data
SURNAME Belgrano, Manuel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jesús Belgrano, Manuel José Joaquín del Corazón de (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Argentinian lawyer, politician and general
DATE OF BIRTH June 3, 1770
PLACE OF BIRTH Buenos Aires
DATE OF DEATH June 20, 1820
Place of death Buenos Aires