2023-07-14 08:15:03
It seems that Hollywood, a myth factory, now has to raise the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte to the altars. The brand new feature film Joaquin Phoenix He promises to show the high points of the Sire, and this is made clear in his new trailer. The mythical battle in front of the Egyptian pyramids, the battle of the three emperors at Austerlitz… All these key victories for France are outlined in the minute and a half of the trailer. But don’t be fooled, dear reader and movie lover, because the little Corsican also treasured countless defeats. And one of them has very traditional names and surnames: the Spanish guerrilla.
Its importance in the expulsion of the ‘Armée’ from the peninsula has been narrated a thousand times, and it is not a lie. Napoleon himself admitted during his exile on the island of st. Helen that the Spanish campaign, and therefore the guerilla, destroyed his reputation as a great strategist in old Europe. A seamless analysis. Carl von Clausewitz, A great scholar of war, he also subscribed that “the Spaniards, with their determined struggle, demonstrated that, despite their weakness and with simple national weapons and their own means of insurrection, they obtained great results.” And the same thing was argued by the French general Roguet, one of the many who entered the country through the Pyrenees: “It was a cancer that altered our organization.”
There were hundreds of guerrillas; and all of them, with their particular place in the pantheon of rojigualdos heroes. From the popular Juan Martín Díez, better known as El Empecinado, to other more local ones like Francisquete. Add up and continue. However, the pages of our history have left aside a combatant as picturesque as he was feared by the Gallic troops: Jerome Merino Cob. His nom de guerre, Cura Merino, resounded around Burgos, signed by the six thousand men under his command in 1813. And that, for a priest who had dedicated his youth to God and to masses, its alot.
A priest against Napoleon
One of the first to study the figure of this character was the 19th century historian and journalist Enrique Rodriguez-Solis. In his essay ‘The guerrillas of 1808: popular history of the War of Independence’ he confirms that Merino was born on September 30, 1769 «in the small town of Villoviado, located in the province of Burgos and dependent on the Abbey of Lerma». The second son of some farmers –Nicolás and María– with some land or other, he worked since he was seven springs looking after the family flock. He just had a dabble in the study of letters, but he abandoned the idea after the death of his older brother: his parents needed him.
His life took a turn when he was barely over two decades old. Around 1790, the priest of Villoviado expired and his parents, eager to give him a good job, insisted that he embrace the clerical collar. It was said and done, as explained by Ángel David Martín Rubio in his biography of this character prepared for the Royal Academy of History. And so the good Cura Merino spent 18 years, between cassocks and masses, until the French army betrayed Spain and, with his gaze to one side of the worthless Manuel Godoy, he crossed the Pyrenees and began the war of independence.
The Spanish people walked between surprise and indignation when a company of hunters from the Second Gironde Observation Corps arrived in little Villoviado. They were French soldiers destined to take over the surroundings of the capital, and they arrived full of pride and arrogance. “They asked for baggage to continue their march to Lerma and, not having found enough, they seized, according to their barbaric custom, several people from the town to do the service of mules,” explains the nineteenth-century author in his essay. One of those chosen was Merino, who was forced to carry the bass drum and cymbals of the musician from the unit. They did not even allow him to remove the clothing intended for the celebration of mass.
Cura Merino cried out for revenge: “I swear by this that you have to pay me!” So it was. Shortly after, he armed himself with a shotgun and “threw into the bush,” a euphemism to signify that he became a guerrilla, wow. “First he had a servant, then a nephew and, finally, a gang of young men from the town and the surrounding area,” adds Martín Rubio in this case. The expert also subscribes that his case was not the only one. Hundreds and hundreds of clergymen took up arms against Bonaparte, fueled by the desecration of temples and the excesses of the ‘Armée’ against priests.
Napoleon’s nightmare
And from there, to the war against the gabacho. The first time he was seen with evil intentions was on August 10, 1808. At that time, Merino was leading a party of six guerrillas who, without leaving the field, attacked combatants isolated from the main forces. Although, according to the service sheet that he himself wrote, it was not until five months later that he blew the trumpets of war: «On January 6, 1809, he left his home and, leading a few Spaniards, appeared in public as a determined enemy. of the French.” In any case, he did very well and it didn’t take long for him to gather around twenty countrymen under his orders.
In May 1809, Cura Merino was already an eminence among the population. So much so that the Central Supreme Board named him commander under the title of the Red Cross. “The name and emblem responded to the religious motivation evident throughout the War of Independence,” explains the article from the Royal Academy of History. Back in September he was promoted to captain of the Infantry for his accomplishments, many of which the early 19th century novelist and historian detailed. Jose Munoz Maldonado In his colossal essay ‘Political and Military History of the War of Independence’:
Napoleon Bonaparte ABC
«Inflamed with patriotic love, he appeared at the head of a party made up most of his parishioners, and after intercepting extremely important mail, he seized two carts of gunpowder on the royal road from Burgos to Lerma, escorted by 40 Frenchmen. , who went to the knife, immediately seizing the town of Lerma. He himself, with only 40 men, reconquered a wheat road at the beginning of July, which had been stolen by the enemies in Quintanar de la Sierra; and at the beginning of August he seized together with Quintana de la Puente 128 wagons of war supplies, putting to arms 60 enemy soldiers with his Commander, who were leading them ».
It is also documented that Cura Merino helped protect the riches that were hidden in the heart of the Silos Monastery. Professor Marta Negro Cobo, also director of the Burgos Museum, declared in 2015 that the temple had an indeterminate number of pieces of goldsmithing, books and liturgical objects of great value. With the arrival of the French, the abbot agreed with the guerrilla fighter for the ‘theft’ of all this material. Thus, our protagonist’s party loaded most of it into three wagons and took them away to avoid his capture. At present, and always in the words of the expert, the exact magnitude of the treasure is unknown.
guerrilla division
That of the Cura Merino ceased to be a common party to become a regularized guerrilla. That jump earned the religious the promotion to lieutenant colonel, the increase in the radius of action of his ‘razzias’ and the swelling of his acolytes up to 400 nags and 500 infants. Almost nothing… Fed up already, that year the Gauls wanted to put a stop to it, and they did it in the only way they knew how. «They took some prisoners of Merino by deception, shot them and ordered them to hang in Burgos. This made the usual reprisals even greater: the guerrilla leader took thirty prisoners in Quintanapallá, ordered them to be shot and sent the corpses to Burgos”, Martín Rubio sentenced.
His résumé increased even more—indeed, it was possible—in the coming year. In 1811, the chief general of the 7th Army, Gabriel Mendizábal, visited the game of Merino. By then, the group numbered about 2,500 troops; numbers already thick for a guerrilla. Despite this, the soldier was so surprised by the instruction of the priest’s acolytes that he ordered his army to be increased to 6,000 combatants. Shortly after, our protagonist became known as ‘Colonel and Commander of the Duero Division’. And between appointment and appointment, he did not stop the coups and indirect confrontations against Napoleon’s men.
The expert from the Royal Academy of History narrates that Merino ended the war with two positions: brigadier on the one hand, and governor and military commander of Burgos on the other. The last one, granted by General Castaños himself. But he did not last long in command. After the advent of Fernando VII to Spain with the end of the War of Independence, he was proposed as canon of the Cathedral of Valencia. It was a partial return to religious life; one that did not last long, since in the thirties he fought in favor of Carlism. Although, as they say, that is another story. For now, let Joaquin Phoenix learn.
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