Pío de Tristán

Pío de Tristán

Juan Pío de Tristán y Moscoso (born July 11, 1773 in Arequipa , Peru , † August 24, 1860 in Lima , Peru) was an officer and politician from Peru. He officiated for the Spaniards as the formally last Viceroy of Peru and later as President of the Republic of Southern Peru .

Life

Tristán's father worked as a corregidor (district administrator) in the colonial administration. As a child, Pío experienced the uprising of the Indians under Tupaq Amaru II and its cruel overthrow.

As an officer candidate, he joined the Spanish army, whose units had been reinforced to combat the insurgents. When the security situation had calmed down, Tristán's regiment was ordered back to Spain and Pío de Tristán came to Spain with his older brother Mariano with the rank of sub- lieutenant .

On the advice of this brother, he took the opportunity for further training that Europe offered, temporarily retired from military service and went to France to study in a Benedictine college.

With the outbreak of the French Revolution he left France and returned to the army in Spain. In the Pyrenees War from 1793 he fought on the Spanish side against the French republican. He was promoted to captain.

In 1795 he returned to South America on the Río de la Plata to serve as an adjutant for the viceroy Pedro de Melo de Portugal y Vilhena there . After Melo's death in 1797 he went to Peru and fought in the army of General José Manuel de Goyeneche from 1809 , who wanted to pacify the highlands for the Spanish crown.

In 1811, as major general, he commanded his own division in the Battle of Huaqui, in which the Spanish colonial army was able to clearly defeat the Argentine troops of the independence movement. In the further course of the campaign Tristán reached the rank of brigadier general.

On August 1, 1812, he ordered his unit to the province of Tucumán , where he met the Argentine army under Díaz Vélez . He had no orders to attack or to open the slaughter, but on September 24th he ordered the attack, trusting the superiority of his own forces. The poorly equipped Spaniards were promptly defeated.

Tristán withdrew with his troops to Salta. There the Argentine troops under General Manuel Belgrano attacked the royalists on February 20, 1813 and defeated them at the Battle of Salta . In view of the military situation, Tristán had no choice but to sign the capitulation and withdraw from the highlands with his troops under the protection of the armistice.

Viceroy José Fernando Abascál y Sousa disapproved of this submission as treason. General Goyeneche resigned as commander in chief and traveled home to Europe.

Pío de Tristán went back to his hometown Arequipa, whose royalist garrison he commanded together with Field Marshal Francisco Picoaga in 1814 in defense against the Independence Army. In 1815 he raised a new army in Arequipa.

In 1816 he briefly took over the administration of the Real Audiencia of Cuzco . Viceroy José de la Serna e Hinojosa appointed him field marshal in 1823 on the last legs of the South American War of Independence .

At the end of 1824 Tristán was in Arequipa when Viceroy Serna suffered the final and decisive defeat of the Spanish colonial rulers at the Battle of Ayacucho and was captured. After the battle, the Spanish under José de Canterac surrendered to the independence movement under Simón Bolívar . As the highest-ranking free officer in the colony, the office of viceroy was formally assigned to Tristán, who admittedly no longer conducted any government business, but only regulated the honorable withdrawal of the Spanish officers, which was agreed in the surrender.

Tristán himself stayed in Peru and was politically active. He became Prefect of Arequipa, Brigadier General and in 1836 Minister of War and the Navy. At the time of the Peruvian-Bolivian Confederation , he was President of the member state of the Republic of Southern Peru .

literature

• Manuel de Mendiburu (1805-1885): Diccionario histórico-biográfico del Perú . tape 8 . Imprenta J. Francisco Solis, Lima 1870, p. 104-106 ( Cervantes Virtual [accessed March 19, 2015]).

Web links

• Short biography (Spanish)
• Short biography (Spanish)

predecessor	Office	successor
José de la Serna e Hinojosa	Viceroy of Peru 1824–1826	End of Spanish colonial rule in Peru