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Pablo Morillo y Morillo, Count of Cartagena and Marquess of La Puerta, a.k.a. El Pacificador (The Peace Maker) (5 May 1775 – 27 July 1837) was a Spanish military officer who fought in the Napoleonic Wars and in the Spanish American Independence Wars. He fought against French forces in the Peninsular War, where he gained fame and rose to the rank of Field Marshall for his valiant actions.[1] After the restoration of the Spanish Monarchy, Morillo, then regarded as one of the Spanish Army's most prestigious officers,[2] was named by King Ferdinand VIII as commander-in-chief of the Expeditionary Army of Costa Firme with the goal to restore absolutism in Spain's possessions in the Americas.[3]
After the end of the war, in 1814, Morillo was named Captain General of Venezuela and given command of an Expeditionary Army to defeat the rebellions in New Granada and Venezuela. This expeditionary force of 60 ships and 10,000 men left Spain in early 1815, arriving in Venezuela in the spring of 1815. Morillo led a successful campaign to Reconquest New Granada. His victory at the Siege of Cartagena earned him the title of Count of Cartagena. He successfully reconquered New Granada in 1816 and ordered the execution of various independence leaders as well as the confiscation of their assets.
In 1817, he returned to Venezuela, where Simon Bolivar had begun a new campaign to liberate Venezuela from Spanish rule. He fought Bolivar to a stalemate, then he managed to best him at the Third Battle of La Puerta in 1818, where he was wounded and successfully defended the capital, Caracas, from Boilvar's forces. This earned him the title of Marquess of La Puerta. After the loss of New Granada in 1819, the war shifted, and in 1820 Morillo signed an armistice with Bolivar and later also signed the treaty on "War Regularization." After repeated requests for retirement, Morillo was finally given royal approval and returned to Spain in 1821.[1] After his service in South America he was appointed Captain General of New Castille in May 1821, a position from which he resigned the following year. In 1832 he was appointed captain general of Galicia, a position he left for health reasons in 1835. He died in the French city of Baregés, where he had gone to take medicinal baths, on July 27, 1837.[2]
At the Battle of Trafalgar (October 1805), he was wounded while serving on board the San Ildefonso, which was captured. Morillo then spent the following three years at the barracks at Cadiz awaiting an assignment on one of the few Spanish ships that survived the defeat.[4]
With the outbreak of the War, Morillo left the Spanish Navy to enlist in the Llerena Voluntary Corps, in which, given his military experience, he was made a sub-lieutenant. In June 1808, he saw action at the Battle of Bailen[4] and, later that year, saw action at Elvas, Almaraz and Calzada de Oropesa.[4] He was promoted to lieutenant that December.[4] The following January he was promoted to captain and sent to Vigo, in Galicia, where the commander of the French garrison, besieged by guerrilleros, refused to capitulate to civilians and demanded the presence of a high-ranking officer.[4]
Morillo's rank was not accepted, but as the only officer present, the besiegers appointed him their colonel, and he was thus able to negotiate the terms of capitulation.[4] Regarding this incident, Oman (1903), citing various sources, offers a different version of the events at Vigo.[5][note 1]
Following the capitulation of Vigo, Marshal Ney occupied Santiago de Compostela, and headed towards Vigo. Morillo's troops intercepted the French force, and at the Battle of Puente Sanpayo, forced it to retreat.[4]
Spanish American war of independence
An engraving made in 1814, with caption "Field Marshall Pablo Morillo of the Royal Armies and Commander-in-chief of the expreditionary troops destined for Montevideo"
Once the war ended and the Spanish monarchy was restored, on August 14, 1814, King Ferdinand VII of Spain appointed Field Marshall Morillo as Commander of the Expeditionary Army of the Americas with the purpose of quashing the rebellion and restoring order in the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata. This expeditionary force would be recruited and organized in the port city Cadiz, a large effort was expended to acquire a large number of troops and amount of material that would keep them well supplied, despite this however morale was low and the expedition was unpopular amongst the troops due to the long journey, tropical diseases, and the nature of warfare being conducted in Spanish America. As a result of this sentiment by December 1814 all troops bound for the Americas were restricted to their barracks and heavily monitored to prevent desertion.[6]
On February 17, 1815, Morillo aboard of the ship of the lineSan Pedro Alcántara set sail from Cadiz bound for Montevideo with a fleet of 18 warships and 42 cargo ships along with some 10,400 troops with the majority of these troops being veterans of the Peninsular War. Unknown to his troops in November 1814 Morillo had been secretly informed that his destination would be changed, the new orders from the Spanish Government were to sail to Costa Firme to put an end to the rebellion in New Granada and Venezuela, with this new mission the King named him Captain General of Venezuela in order to have all of the legal authority in order to reconquest that province.[1] Morillo did not inform his troops of this decision until February 25, 1815, with the expedition well underway at sea which caused his troops to express further discontent as they had heard about how the war in Venezuela was a war to the death, Morillo would also be promoted to Lieutenant General during this journey.[6] On 6 April the Expedition disembarked in Carupano and Isla Margarita off the coast of Venezuela, with the mission to pacify the revolts against the Spanish monarchy in the American colonies. Later, while heading to Cumaná, the San Pedro Alcántara exploded and sank between Coche and Cubagua on April 25. The loss of a thousand crew members and a million pesos that the ship was carrying meant that Morillo quickly traveled to the mainland and left a small garrison in Pampatar. He travelled to La Guaira, Caracas, Puerto Cabello, Santa Marta and Cartagena de Indias (United Provinces of New Granada) in a military campaign to fight Simon Bolívar's revolutionary armies.
Reconquest of New Granada
Pablo Morillo (c. 1815), Colombian National Museum
On 22 August 1815, Morillo put the walled city of Cartagena under siege for 105 days,[7] preventing any supplies from going in until 6 December that year, when the Spanish Royal Army entered the city. In a letter written to the Viceroy of Peru José Fernando de Abascal y Sousa dated December 7, Morillo informed the viceroy of the victory with minimal damage done to its fortifications and the capture of a large amount of artillery pieces and ample amounts of gunpowder he also described the level of starvation within the city where estimated that some 2000 Cartagenians where suffering from starvation.[8] The victory over the republicans in Cartagena led to the King granting Morillo the title Count of Cartagena. With control over Cartagena, Morillo continued with the Reconquest of New Granada marching south from Cartagena into the interior in tandem with Brigadier Juan de Samano's troops marching north from the Royalist strongholds of Quito and Pasto along with Colonel Sebastián de la Calzada's troops marching west from Venezuela. This campaign would culminate with the fall of the capital, Santa Fe, when his second-in-command General Miguel de la Torre assaulted the practically undefended city on May 6, 1816,[9] Morillo himself entered the city on May 26.[1] Upon entering the capital an amnesty which had been granted by Brigadier de la Torre was revoked, and Morillo began a Reign of Terror in the city.[1] The various leaders and intellectuals who had participated in the Juntas of 1810 and that were part of the Neogranadine independence movement were arrested and tried before a consejo de guerra which judged the accused of treason and rebellion, this resulted in the execution of more than a hundred notable Republican officials with many being executed in the main plaza of Santa Fe such as Camilo Torres Tenorio, Francisco Jose de Caldas, and Jorge Tadeo Lozano as well as countless others.
War in Venezuela
He then returned to Venezuela to continue the fight against revolutionaries, where Simón Bolívar had just returned from his exile in Haiti in a renewed effort to liberate Venezuela from Spanish rule. The Venezuelan patriots were able to capture the city of Angostura and made it their capital establishing the Third Republic of Venezuela.
In June 1820, Morillo, under Royal mandate, ordered that everyone in the colonies obey the Cadiz Constitution and sent delegates to negotiate with Bolivar and his followers. Bolivar and Morillo later met in the Venezuelan town of Santa Ana and signed a six-months' armistice followed by a second one named "War Regularization".
Post-war career
Morillo returned to Spain, was named General Captain of New Castile, and supported the Liberal Constitution during the Liberal Triennium. He prevented a coup against the Constitution in 1822, and fought in 1823 the French invasion under Louis-Antoine, Duke of Angoulême in the north of Spain, where he was defeated.
When King Ferdinand VII restored the absolute regime in 1823, Morillo went to France. A few years later, he returned to Spain and participated in some military operations during the Carlist Wars. He felt ill and went back to France where he died on 27 July 1837, in Barèges.
^"When Soult had passed out of sight on the way to Orense, the Galicians of the coast-land, headed by Pablo Morillo, a lieutenant of the regular army whom La Romana had sent down from the interior, and by Manuel Garcia del Barrio, a colonel dispatched by the Central Junta from Seville, had taken arms in great numbers, and blockaded Vigo. The French commander, Colonel Chalot, found himself unable to defend the whole extent of the fortifications for sheer want of men, and could not prevent the insurgents from establishing themselves close under the walls and keeping up a continual fire upon the garrison. He believed that a serious assault would infallibly succeed, and only refused to surrender because he was ashamed to yield to peasants. On March 23 two English frigates, the Lively and Venus, appeared off the harbour mouth, and began to supply the insurgents with ammunition, and to land heavy naval guns for their use. On the twenty-seventh one of the gates was battered in, and the Galicians were preparing to storm the place, when Chalot surrendered at discretion, only stipulating that he and his men should be handed over to the British, and not to the Spaniards. This request was granted, and Captain Mackinley [captain of HMS Lively] received twenty-three officers and nearly 800 men as prisoners, besides a number of sick and several hundred non-combatants...". (Oman 1903, pp. 264–5.)
^ abCalvo Stevenson, Haroldo; Meisel Roca, Adolfo, eds. (2011). "El sitio de Cartagena por el general Pablo Morillo en 1815". Cartagena de Indias en la Independencia (in Spanish) (1. ed.). Cartagena: Banco de la República. pp. 412–413. ISBN978-958-664-238-5.
^Lemaitre, Eduardo (1994). A Brief History of Cartagena. Medellin: Compania Litografica Nacional S.A. p. 56. ISBN9789586380928.
^Calvo Stevenson, Haroldo; Meisel Roca, Adolfo, eds. (2011). "El ejército expedicionario de Tierra Firme en Nueva Granada". Cartagena de Indias en la Independencia (in Spanish) (1. ed.). Cartagena: Banco de la República. p. 362. ISBN978-958-664-238-5.
Bibliography
Costeloe, Michael P. (1986). Response to Revolution: Imperial Spain and the Spanish American Revolutions, 1810-1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN0-521-32083-6
Earle, Rebecca (2000). Spain and the Independence of Colombia, 1810-1825. Exter: University of Exter Press. ISBN0-85989-612-9
Stoan, Stephen K. (1959). Pablo Morillo and Venezuela, 1815-1820. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
