Toribio Montes facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Toribio Montes |
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| Predecessor | Manuel de Urriés |
| Successor | Melchor Aymerich |
| Predecessor | Creation of the position of Higher Political Chief |
| Successor | Melchor Aymerich |
| Born | May 7 of 1749 San Mamés de Polaciones, Spain. |
| Died | December 13, 1830 Madrid, Spain. |
Toribio Montes-Caloca y Pérez (San Mamés de Polaciones, May 7 of 1749 - Madrid, December 13 of 1830), was a soldier and Spanish colonial governor, who governed Puerto Rico between 1804 and 1809 and presided over the Royal Audience of Quito from 1811 to 1817.
Early years
Toribio Montes was born in the Cantabrian village of San Mamés, into a family of rural hidalgos with some members in the army. His father, Pedro Montes Caloca, also a native of San Mamés, became lieutenant councilor and trustee for the entire Polaciones valley. His mother, Ángela Pérez Alonso, was from the town of Valdeprado. Little is known about his childhood and youth, except that he acquired a brilliant education and, being a second boy without the right to inherit the family mayorazgo, he undertook a military career earning his degrees based on merit and seniority.
Military career
At the age of fifteen, in 1764, he enlisted as a cadet in the Prince's Infantry Regiment, then stationed in Oran. He participated in the Invasion of Algiers of 1775 (where he was mortally wounded), in the siege of Gibraltar in 1779 and in the reconquest of Menorca at the English in 1782. Being a colonel and head of the Murcia infantry battalion, he received José de San Martín as a cadet, who was only eleven years old. In 1787 he was recognized as a noble by the Royal Audience of Valladolid and in 1789 he professed as knight of the Order of Santiago.
In 1795 he was promoted to Colonel during his participation in the Roussillon War and two years later he was appointed brigadier. In 1802, after having participated in the War of the Oranges, he became Field Marshal. April 26, 1804, he was appointed to occupy the Captaincy General of Puerto Rico, where he stayed for almost five years, distinguishing himself by his good government.
In 1810 he passed to the Peru with the position of governor of Callao. On November 1, 1811, by mandate of the Regency Council of Spain and the Indies, he was appointed president of the Royal Audience of Quito and chief of the army in charge of pacifying the area after the independence riots. In 1812 he was promoted to lieutenant general.
He arrived in Guayaquil in June 1812 and headed for Guaranda, since Quito was still occupied by patriotic forces. The Montes expedition gave its first combat in the Battle of Chimbo, with advantageous results for the Quito people who forced the Spanish to retreat. The royalists also advanced from Cuenca with generals Melchor Aymerich and Juan de Sámano. The second encounter was in the Battle of Mocha, which ended with the Spanish triumph and the occupation of the city of Mocha by Montes, who then continued on Ambato and Latacunga, always in the hands of the patriots.
On November 6, 1812, he stood near Quito and issued a proclamation to the rebels full of sentiments of humanity if they handed over the city without combat. But the patriots, commanded by Carlos Montúfar, who had declared their independence from Spain in the State of Quito, decided to fight. To do this, they fortified the southern access to the city and entrenched themselves in the fort on the hill of El Panecillo, which did not prevent it from being taken by Montes and his army after the so-called Battle of El Panecillo, forcing Montúfar and a good part of the population of Quito to flee to Ibarra, where the Quito nation would finally fall after the Battle of Ibarra.
Once Quito was occupied, Toribio Montes, president of Quito's Audiencia, took charge of restoring order in the Presidency. First, he continued a successful military campaign north of the presidency in the Popayán governorate. Second, he judged the Quito insurgents rigorously, but with political tact, pardoning most of them. Many would go on to obtain political office during his presidency. Third, I would swear an oath and establish the Cádiz Constitution, establishing the Province of Quito, calling for elections in the constitutional town halls, calling the Provincial Council, and supervising the election of deputies by Quito to the Cortes of Madrid.
The resistance of the insurgents of the Confederated Cities of Valle del Cauca in the north of the governorate of Popayán forced Montes to appoint Lieutenant Colonel Vidaurrázaga for the occupation of Popayán on December 29, 1814, however, the Valle del Cauca and New Granada insurgents won the Battle of the Palo River on July 5, 1815, and the city would fall into the hands of the Republican army on July 9. Montes understanding that he required the services of Sámano, who was in Quito awaiting legal proceedings for his defeats in Palacé and Calibío, called him back to the service and had Camilo Torres Tenorio, in charge of the Federal Executive branch of the United Provinces of New Granada, an honorable surrender that was energetically rejected. Around those days, the powerful military expedition of General Pablo Morillo arrived from Spain, made up almost entirely of ex-combatants from the war against the French on the peninsula. Morillo surrounded and took Cartagena de Indias and occupied Cachirí, while Sámano, who had left Pasto with 1,400 men, was fortified a few leagues from Popayán, in the place called Cuchilla del Tambo in 1816, where defeated the insurgents under the orders of Lieutenant Colonel Liborio Mejía. Among those executed after that battle was Carlos Montúfar, former royal commissioner for Quito for the Regency Council.
Montes had to undo the orders executed during the Cadiz constitutional period, after the repeal of the Cádiz Constitution, still in 1817, days after finishing his term as president of the Royal Court. He left Quito on July 26, 1817, although he did not arrive in Spain until two years later, when he arrived in Cádiz on April 29, 1819. After appearing before the Minister of War in Madrid, he was appointed member of the orders of Isabella I of Castile and San Fernando, and later a member of the Military Junta of the Indies.
At seventy-two years of age, sixty-three of them in the army, Toribio Montes requested to retire to the city of Murcia. A few months after they were there, the invasion of the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis took place, as a result of which the liberal authorities fled from the Murcia province. After reestablishing absolutism, the elderly general Toribio Montes was placed in command of the province until he was replaced on December 31, 1827. In April 1828 he asked the king to move to Madrid, using the excuse of the poor quality of the water in Murcia that he says is not good for his health, and praising the climate of the court. His health must have deteriorated because he did not get to travel to Madrid, dying in Murcia on January 1, 1829, at the age of seventy-nine.
See also
In Spanish: Toribio Montes para niños
