Ramón Freire y Serrano

Ramón Freire y Serrano (born November 29, 1787 in Santiago de Chile , † December 9, 1851 ) was a Chilean politician and officer . He was Head of State of Chile from 1823 to 1826 as Director Supremo and in 1827 as President .

Ramón Freire y Serrano

Signature of Ramón Freire y Serrano

Life

Freire was the son of a Spanish colonial officer; when he was sixteen his parents died. Ramón Freire then first worked in a commercial shop in Concepción and joined the Independence Army in 1816.

Under General José de San Martín he commanded a division and took the city of Talca in the War of Independence . After the Battle of Maipu (1818) he was promoted to colonel .

In 1819 he was appointed military commander of Concepción, where he faced the grueling guerrilla war against units of irregular troops. The relationship between Freire and the leader of the liberation movement, Bernardo O'Higgins , deteriorated noticeably, as the liberal Freire represented a decentralized form of government with extensive independence of the provincial administrations and thus stood in contradiction to the central government in Santiago. In 1822, Ramón Freire convened a provincial assembly and declared his resignation there, on the grounds that the government that had appointed him was not legitimized to do so. The congregation accepted his resignation and immediately thereafter called him back to office under its own authority!

Shortly afterwards, on January 28, 1823, O'Higgins had to resign and a junta (the Congreso Plenipotenciario ) took his place. Freire marched with his troops to Santiago and completed the overthrow in a federal sense: the junta had to abdicate on April 5, 1823 and Ramón Freire himself took over the post of head of state ( Director Supremo ) for four months , until power was transferred to a new junta which was composed of representatives of the three Chilean provinces at the time. But after only three weeks Freire took over the helm again as Director Supremo on September 2, 1823 .

He ordered O'Higgins into exile and set about constructing a new state order for Chile. First, he abolished slavery and reintroduced freedom of the press . He then called a new constituent congress that drafted a new constitution. When this was achieved, he effectively left the official duties to his deputy, Francisco de la Lastra, and moved south with the Chilean army to conquer the island of Chiloé , to which the last Spanish troops had withdrawn.

The constitution of 1823 met with general opposition and was eventually abandoned; in addition, the legitimacy of Freire's rule was contested by the Catholic Church. That is why a new congress started work in 1825, although it was not recognized by the regional administrations of Concepción and Coquimbo. Freire left Santiago to devote himself again to the war against the Spaniards on Chiloé; when he returned he found that Congress had rebelled against his rule and declared him deposed.

Freire managed to smooth things over and marched a third time to Chiloé at the head of a new army in 1826. This time he finally defeated the last Spanish troops and came back to the capital victorious. Regardless of his military successes, Congress had turned against him again, and this time the insurgents forced him to resign on July 9, 1826 and appointed Manuel Blanco Encalada as President of Chile to succeed him. This was replaced on September 9, 1826 by Agustín Eyzaguirre .

The liberal federalists raised their arms against the government in January 1827 and began the uprising under Colonel Enrique Campino. They achieved a quick victory and on February 1, 1827, appointed Freire as transitional president. On May 8, 1827, he resigned, handed over the office to his Vice President Francisco Antonio Pinto Díaz and retired from the political struggles to his country estate Cuchacucha.

When, under President Pinto, the antagonism between liberal federalists and conservative centralists became more and more acute and culminated in the civil war of 1829, Freire also appeared again in public. The Liberal government put him at the head of the troops that opposed the uprising of the conservative forces under José Joaquín Prieto Vial . The war culminated in the Battle of Lircay, in which the liberal army under Freire was crushed.

The Conservatives banished him into exile in Peru , from where he continued the uprising against the new government. In 1836 he launched a military advance in the Peruvian-Bolivian Confederation War , but the attack was repulsed by the Chilean expeditionary army under General Manuel Bulnes Prieto . Freire ended up in Chilean captivity and was sentenced to exile again, this time far out in the Pacific on the Juan Fernández Islands . From there he went to Tahiti .

In 1842 he was allowed to return to his homeland thanks to an amnesty from his former military adversary Bulnes, who was now Chilean President. In political life, however, he no longer played a role. He died in 1851 at the age of 64.

See also: History of Chile .

Web links

Commons : Ramon Freire  - collection of images, videos and audio files