Rafael del Riego

Rafael del Riego (born  April 9, 1784 or November 24, 1785 , possibly also October 24, 1785 , in Tuña Asturias ; † November 7, 1823 in Madrid ) was a Spanish revolutionary .

Rafael Riego

Life

Beginnings of the career

Del Riego came from an impoverished Asturian noble family; soon after Rafael was born, his father moved to Oviedo , where he took over the post of post office manager. Rafael enjoyed a private education and came to Madrid in 1807, where he entered the guard regiment of the Spanish king. After Napoleon I occupied Spain in the spring of 1808, an anti-French uprising broke out in Madrid on March 1, 1808, which became a beacon for similar uprisings throughout the kingdom.

Del Riego joined this movement and when the French declared the royal guard to be disbanded and its members were arrested, he fled to Oviedo, where he joined the troops of General Vicente María de Acevedo with the rank of captain . After the Spanish troops were defeated by Napoleon in the costly battle of Espinosa de los Monteros , Riego and several dozen other officers were taken prisoner by the French. There he came into contact with the ideas of the revolution . In 1814 del Riego managed to escape across the Swiss border, first to Germany and then to Plymouth . From there he returned to Spain in February 1815, where he was honored with a gold medal for bravery.

The Spanish Revolution

From 1815 to the beginning of 1817 he served as a garrison commander with the rank of brigade major in the city of Logroño , but was then assigned to one of the regiments that, as part of the policy of King Ferdinand VII, were to be shipped to Latin America to oppose the revolutionary movement of Simón Fight Bolívar . While his regiment in Las Cabezas de San Juan was waiting to be embarked for America, a group of high-ranking officers formed and prepared a conspiracy against the Spanish crown. A first plan was revealed in 1819. This group was led by members of a Masonic lodge , which included the royal diplomat Galiano and the liberal politician Count Isturis. According to the joint plan, del Riego's battalion rose in an uprising on January 1, 1820 , which sparked the Spanish Revolution . From Las Cabezas de San Juan, where he proclaimed the constitution, he moved on to Arcos de la Frontera with the insurgents . The city was captured by night without reinforcements from Seville arriving later. Several generals were arrested and interned in the Sancti Petri fortress on Isla de Leon .

Thanks to his enormous powers of persuasion, del Riego managed to pull several regiments on his side on his march to Cádiz , so that he was able to capture the Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Army, General Félix María Calleja del Rey , on January 6th . This served as a signal to the other insurgents, so that by the end of January the entire south of Spain rebelled against royal power. The rebels marched towards the capital without encountering any resistance worth mentioning and took several cities without a fight. After a popular uprising broke out in Madrid on March 7, Ferdinand VII was forced two days later to restore the constitution of 1812 and to convene the Cortes . When the new government, which was named Junta Provisional Gubernativa , was sworn in a few days later , Spain was declared a constitutional monarchy. After the victory of the revolution, del Riego was promoted to field marshal and captain general of Aragon ; at the same time he was commander in chief of the 2nd Revolutionary Army, which was billeted in Seville .

At the height of power

Riego was at the height of popularity, which worried the new government very much. Fearing a new uprising, the Cortes appointed him military governor (general captain) of the Galicia region on August 2, 1820 . When Riego came to Madrid a few weeks later to receive the certificate of appointment, his appearance provoked a sympathy demonstration from the left-wing sections of the Madrid population, which aroused great concern of the government and the king. In order to avoid the accusation of a possible military dictatorship, Riego resigned from all his offices on September 20, 1820. On the same day, the Cortes decided to demobilize the revolutionary armies and banish Riegos to Asturias . However, in November 1820 the new government appointed him Captain General of Aragon . This new climb took less than a year. After a new political castling in Madrid, Riego, who enjoyed unbroken popularity among large parts of the officer corps, was put into temporary retirement at the end of August 1821.

Riego wrote several letters to Ferdinand VII, in which he tried to prove his loyalty to the constitution, but received no answer and then withdrew to the rural province. During this time he married his cousin Tereza.

In 1822 del Riego became a member of the Cortes as MP from Asturias. At their first session, the deputies elected him honorary president of parliament. During the next few months he reached the zenith of his popularity: a memorial was erected to him in the city of Las Cabesas de San Juan and he was appointed honorary commander of an elite unit of the military guard. After the suppression of a royalist revolt in Madrid in July 1822, the mood became increasingly radical. The new Spanish government consisted only of representatives of the so-called "Exaltados", who pursued a policy of unconditional deepening of political reforms and whose goals were the abolition of the estates and a "real" liberalization.

Descent and death

This “radicalization” of the Spanish government led to the fact that the other European monarchs, who feared that they would be confronted with the same demands in their own country, decided to intervene in Spain. On October 20, 1822, representatives of Russia, Prussia, Austria and France signed a corresponding agreement during the Verona Congress . On April 7, 1823, the French troops marched into Spain under the command of the Duke of Angoulême . The poorly equipped and undisciplined Spanish army could not counter the superior strength of the French expeditionary corps (approx. 70,000 soldiers). After the flight of the Cortes from Madrid and the arrest of King Ferdinand VII, a so-called Regency Council was formed, of which Riego was one of the members. When the French had occupied almost two thirds of Spain, Riego took over the command of a volunteer army. However, he did not succeed in mobilizing the demoralized soldiers to resist and fight “for the fatherland”. After a crushing defeat at Jerez, the Spanish army effectively disbanded. Riego tried to flee to the English fortress of Gibraltar , where his family was already. On the way there he fell into the hands of the local population, who, for fear of possible reprisals, handed him and his companions over to a French unit.

At this point the royalists had already won the day. After the fall of Cadiz in September 1823, Ferdinand VII had the constitution of 1812 suspended and his political opponents persecuted. Most of them succeeded in escaping abroad or obtaining their pardon. However, this did not apply to Riego, who was brought to Madrid and there extradited to the Spanish government. In a quick process , he was sentenced to death, and on November 7, 1823 the Plazuela de la Cebada hanged ( arrastrado ). This type of death penalty , to which only ordinary people were sentenced, was intended as a humiliation of Riegos - otherwise Hidalgos were "honorably" strangled in Spain with the Garrota . Even the French are said to have protested against the Duke of Angoulême leaving Madrid for the time of Riego's execution . His wife, who was his niece, fled to London, where she died seven months later.

Culture of remembrance

Del Riego honor was in 1820 by the poet and revolutionary Ivorista San Miguel of the Himno de Riego sealed, which was still sung in subsequent revolutionary upheavals and in the Second Republic to the Spanish national anthem was raised.

Just one year after Riego's death, a play by Fernando Mejia was premiered in Philadelphia in which Riego was portrayed as a “martyr of freedom” and “symbol of the struggle against tyrants”. This hit the nerve of the American audience and marked the beginning of the heroization of Riego's personality. After just a few years, he became a symbol of the failed Spanish Revolution and in this role was known throughout Europe.

Riego became a myth […], a historical personality who, in the minds of many Spaniards, gave up their real traits. Riego became the hymn for Riego (José Comellas. Los primeros pronunciamientos en España . Madrid, 1958, p. 324.)

literature

• Carmen de Burgos: Rafael del Riego . Madrid 1958.
• Javier Fernández López: Rafael del Riego . In: Ders .: Militares contra el estado . Editorial Tauris, Madrid 2003, ISBN 84-306-0495-2 .
• Francisco D. Ojeda: Riego. Un grito de libertad . Centro Asturiano, Sevilla 2002, ISBN 978-84-9309-782-0 .
• Francisco D. Ojeda: Riego. Héroe de Las Cabezas . "Las Cabezas de San Juan" publishing house, Sévilla 1988, ISBN 978-84-5058-083-9 .

Outdated representations:

• Charles Mullié: Rafael del Riego . In: Ders .: Biography of the célébrités militaires des armées de terre et de mer 1789 à 1850 . Poignavant, Paris 1852, p. 179.
• Miguel del Riego: Memoirs of the life of Don Raffael Riego ("Memoirs of the life of Riego and his family"). Franckh, Stuttgart 1824.
• Nard and Piral: Vida militar e politica de Riego . Madrid 1844.

Web links

Commons : Rafael del Riego  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Himno de Riego , sung by Ernst Busch

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Bartolomé Bennassar, Jean-Pierre Amalric, Jacques Beyrie, Lucienne Domergue: Histoire des Espagnols XVIIIe – XXe siècle . In: Marguerite de Marcillac (ed.): Tempus . 2nd Edition. tape 2 , no. 378 . Editions Perrin, Paris 2011, ISBN 978-2-262-03441-2 , pp. 209-212 .