Manuel Blanco Encalada

Manuel Blanco Encalada

Manuel Blanco Encalada (born April 21, 1790 in Buenos Aires , † September 5, 1876 in Santiago de Chile ) was a Chilean officer and politician . In 1826 he served as the first temporary president of his country.

Life

Blanco was born in Buenos Aires to a Spanish father and a Chilean mother. After attending school, he entered the Naval Academy of Cádiz in Spain in 1805 , which he left in 1807 as a lieutenant . In 1808 he took part in the naval battle against the French Navy Napoléon Bonaparte , who besieged Cadiz.

His sympathies, however, were for the independence movements in Latin America ; so he had himself transferred overseas, seized the opportunity when his Spanish warship anchored in Montevideo in 1812 to go secretly ashore and from there to get to Chile.

Here he took part in Chile's War of Independence. As captain of the artillery he was captured after the Battle of Rancagua and sentenced to death by the Spaniards, not because of his participation in the war, but because of his desertion in Montevideo. The sentence was not carried out, but instead converted into exile on the Juan Fernández Islands , where several other Chilean revolutionaries (such as Agustín Eyzaguirre ) were also in exile. In 1817, after the Chilean victory in the Battle of Chacabuco , they were all able to return home.

Blanco rejoined the Chilean troops , fought in their ranks in the battles of Cancha Rayada and Maipú and was appointed commanding general and commander of the fleet in June 1818, an office which he temporarily handed over to Lord Thomas Cochrane , but then took over again when Cochrane had to leave the country after the resignation of Bernardo O'Higgins in 1823.

As the commander of the Chilean warships Galvarino and San Martín , he was charged with besieging Callao. When he ran out of provisions, however, he had to give up the blockade. A court martial saw it as a serious breach of duty and removed him from all offices. Blanco then went to Peru, fought there in the liberation war and was rehabilitated again.

In 1826 he took part in the fighting in Chiloé as commander of the navy , when the general and director Supremo Ramón Freire y Serrano defeated the remains of the Spanish royalist army, the former colonial power, entrenched there. In the power struggle between Freire and Congress, Blanco was appointed Foreign Minister and on April 9, 1826 President of the Republic, the first to hold this title, probably without his own intervention, as he had never shown political ambition before . On September 9, 1826, he resigned and left the office to Agustín Eyzaguirre , whom he had previously appointed Vice President.

In 1837 the Peruna - Bolivian Confederation, with the support of the overthrown liberal-federal head of state Ramón Freire, went to war against the conservative-centralist Chilean government. Manuel Blanco led the expeditionary army of Chile against this army. The naval officer Blanco was faced with a numerical superiority in hostile country, which was exacerbated by desertion and illness in his own ranks. In November 1837, in this position, he was forced to sign the Treaty of Paucarpata, which was unfavorable for Chile, but which his government did not ratify. Rather, Blanco found himself before a military tribunal and removed from office again. In his place, Manuel Bulnes Prieto took command of the expeditionary army and achieved a major victory for Chile and its government with the siege of Yungay.

But Blanco went to Europe, where he stayed until 1847 before he took over the office of mayor in Valparaíso . He also sat in the Chilean Senate from 1849. In 1866, at the age of 76, Blanco offered his services as an advisory naval officer again when Chile, this time allied with Peru, was engaged in a naval war with Spain. In April 1866 he negotiated the cooperation agreement and united the common fleet of Peru and Chile on board the Peruvian corvette La Unión .

At the end of 1868 he took over one last command for Chile, this time of a purely ceremonial nature. He led the delegation of the Chilean military to bring the body of the liberator Bernardo O'Higgins, who died in exile, back to Chile. The Peruvian leadership in Lima received him warmly. The coffin was ceremoniously transported by O'Higgins under the escort of several Chilean ships, but also accompanied by ships from France, England and the USA, from the Peruvian Apurimac to Valparaíso .

Manuel Blanco died in 1876 at the age of 86.

See also: History of Chile

Web links

Commons : Manuel Blanco Encalada  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Manuel Blanco Encalada - Reseña Biográfica Parlamentaria. Historia Política Legislativa del Congreso Nacional de Chile (Spanish)