Pedro Henriquez de Acevedo

Contemporary portrait in the publication Atrium heroicum Caesarum, regum, […] imaginibus […] illustr [atum] , 1600–1602

Pedro Henriquez de Acevedo y Toledo, Count of (Conde de) Fuentes (born September 18, 1525 in Zamora , in older sources also * September 18, 1560 in Valladolid ; † July 22, 1610 in Milan ) was a Spanish general and statesman.

Life

At a young age, Fuentes served as a page at the court of Philip II. He made his first campaign in 1580 under the Duke of Alba in Portugal, where the Spaniards quickly asserted the Spanish king's inheritance claims to the Portuguese throne. In 1582 Fuentes was given the command of the Spanish occupation forces.

In 1591 Fuentes was sent to the revolting Netherlands by the Spanish king . After the death of the governor there, Alexander Farnese , he supported his two successors, Peter Ernst Graf von Mansfeld , and Archduke Ernst of Austria . In 1595 Fuentes took over the office of governor on an interim basis. The excessive action against the Dutch led Philip II to replace him the following year with Albrecht VII of Austria .

The Fort Fuentes ( Forte de Fuentes ) built in 1603/1604 near Colico

From 1600 until his death in 1610 Fuentes was governor and captain general of Milan . In 1603/1604 he had Fort Fuentes ( Forte de Fuentes , destroyed by French revolutionary troops) built near Colico in 1603/1604 to counter the advance of the Three Leagues in Milan. His politics of strength provoked here too, especially the Doge State of Venice .

In 1599 he achieved an alliance with Duke Charles Emanuel I of Savoy to dismember France. At the same time he is said to have wrested the (not kept) promise from the French marshal Biron to act in a conspiracy against his own king, Henry IV .

Source problem

• Dates of birth and death caused confusion in the older literature. Spanish, French and German encyclopedias (e.g. Pierer's Universal-Lexikon , 1857) named September 18, 1560, birthplace Valladolid. The year of birth 1535, with the place of birth Zamora, can also be found (without day and month, according to Meyer's Großes Konversations-Lexikon , Volume 7, Leipzig 1907). The modern literature of the 20th / 21st centuries However, the century refers to September 18, 1525 (place of birth Zamora).
• The date of death is Pierer's Universal Lexikon with May 19, 1643 ( Battle of Rocroi ). Pierer's is therefore subject to confusion with Paul Bernard, Count von Fontaine , a Spanish general of Lorraine origin. Its French name of origin ("Fontaine" = French "source") was often wrongly translated back into "Fuentes" (sp. "Source") until the middle of the 20th century (this is also the case in the Paris Army Museum, which according to an exhibition note Carrying chair of "General Fuentes", in fact Fontaines, kept). The back translation was perhaps done deliberately to disguise the French origins of this Spanish general.

predecessor	Office	successor
Ernst of Austria	Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands 1595–1596	Albrecht VII of Austria
Juan Fernández de Velasco	Governor of Milan 1595–1596	Juan Fernández de Velasco