2023-09-07 08:19:19
The Princess of Asturias Leonor has been named this week Dame Cadet of the General Military Academy of Zaragoza as part of the military training that, like her father, should prepare her to one day assume the Spanish Crown. A deference with the Armed Forcesof which the King of Spain is captain general and supreme command as dictated by the Constitution, and also a reminder of the military role that Monarchs have played in the history of Spain.
The kings and commanders of the Middle Ages, whose power was directly related to their role as warlords, placed themselves in the front line of battle and, together with their close guard, carried out cavalry charges that were decisive on many occasions and others. so many cost them their lives or freedom. Alfonso The Fighter, one of the most bellicose medieval kings of Aragon and Pamplona, died in the summer of 1134 besieging the fortress of Fraga due to injuries caused by an attack by the Almoravids. Pedro I of Castile died in a fratricidal duel by sword with his brother Enrique de Trastámara. Not to mention the battle of Navas de Tolosa, where King Alfonso VIII of Castile, Sancho VII of Navarra and Pedro II of Aragon, the main monarchs of the Peninsula, attended.
towards a new era
Fernando El Católico, already at the dawn of the Modern Age, continued to participate in pitched battles such as that of Toro (1476) and led several charges like a classic medieval knight. Other contemporary kings of his also acted in the same way, although the risk was too high. Shot down from his mount at the Battle of Pavia (1525), Francis I of France he was captured by Spanish troops as he tried to wriggle his leg out from under the dying horse.
With France decapitated, Francisco was taken prisoner to Madrid where he remained for a year in the Torre de los Lujanes and in the Alcázar, later, until he agreed to sign the ignominious Treaty of Madrid and swear their fulfillment before the Gospels. The neighboring country experienced a period of misrule while its King was absent and was forced into forced diplomacy.
The overexposure of the commander in combat was too high a risk in the Modern Age, where military structures still depended on keeping the general’s head in place. King of Spain Carlos I led him to challenge that same Francisco I in a singular duel. His presence in key events of his reign, such as the Day of Algiers in 1541 or in the battle of Mühlberg (1547), elevated him as the stereotype of the warrior King, halfway between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age.
Painting by Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau about the battle of San Quintín. abc
When Suleiman the Magnificent threatened to go to Vienna, in 1532, Carlos himself went at the head of an army raised against time, partly with the money from Francisco’s ransom. The Turkish sultan withdrew before the arrival of the Imperial forces, depriving the world of what would have been the fight of the century: the two emperors of the planet, face to face. The chronicler Francisco Lopez de Gomara interpreted Suleiman’s withdrawal, actually logistical in nature, as motivated by fear of his illustrious rival:
«The Turk in a harsh battle did not dare to come to blows with his enemy, he feared the forces of ours, the apparatus of war, and above all the luck that our Emperor had then; he fled in short very nicely ».
behind the walls
Felipe II did not inherit the warrior ardor of his father, who was retired from so much traveling and military activity at only 56 years of age. The Prudent King became aware in 1557, at the beginning of his reign, that the combat fields were not going to be his favorite place either. Felipe, who grew up admired by the military exploits of his father, participated in situ in the military campaign against the French in the summer of that year. The one in San Quentin was the closest thing to a battle that he witnessed in his entire life.
However, the King and his English escort were not present when the Habsburg cousin, Manuel Filiberto, supported by Lamoral Egmont and other Flemish officers, defeated the forces with which the Constable of France tried to break the Spanish siege of San Quentin. At least 5,000 French soldiers perished on a day where “there were so many blue and green flies emerging from their corpses, fertilized by the humidity and the heat of the sun, that when they rose into the air they hid the sun.”
The rest of the Spanish Habsburgs, in keeping with the times, hardly exposed themselves to mortal danger outside their palaces.
It was impossible that walking through a sun hidden by flies would be to the liking of the monarch “cleanest, neatest to his person that there has ever been”, whose presence near a battle would not be repeated. The flimsy scaffolding of his inheritance also influenced this decision. If the King died in combat there was no bizarre prince to receive the crown, except for many years of the sickly and weak infant Don Carlos (1545-1568), so Felipe II could not even allow himself to return to the Netherlands to end the rebellion in this territory in person.
The rest of the Spanish Habsburgs, in keeping with the times, hardly exposed themselves to mortal danger outside their palaces. Not so Felipe V, the first Spanish Bourbon, a shy and sickly adolescent who became a tireless beast, reckless in combat and amazingly strong once the War of Succession began that led him to the throne.
During the capture of Luzzara, in northern Italy, he commanded a detachment with a “robustness and effort” that seemed inappropriate for the young man. A cannonball that killed an officer next to him caused minor injuries to him without flinching. Such contempt for life aroused the concern of Versalles, from where they advised him to take precautions because there is only one King. “Everyone sacrifices his life for me and this is the occasion for me to offer mine,” he replied without backing down an inch.
Somehow, the hyperactivity required by military life buried the sovereign’s bipolar disorder. When the conflict moved to the Iberian Peninsula, Felipe V even faced off on the battlefields with Archduke Carlos, the Habsburg claimant to the crown, and was on the verge of losing his life in several clashes. Peace would only aggravate his mental state.
One of his sons, Carlos III, the third to succeed him after Luis I y Fernando VI, was also a Warrior King in the line of his father. However, he was in his campaign to seize a throne in Italy, in a series of battles against the Austrians who occupied Parma, Naples and Sicily. When years later, Carlos changed the court of Two Sicilies For that of Spain, the Bourbon monarch put down his arms, although he never stopped dressing in military clothing, ideal for hunting. His martial air did not leave him, as did his admiration for the bellicose Frederick II of Prussia, who continued to risk his neck in battle.
Carlos III portrayed around 1765 by Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779) Museo del Prado
Nothing resembling a Warrior King arose in the Spanish Monarchy until Alfonso XII, who met the requirements of the Soldier Kings that became fashionable in the same period, from Napoleon III of France to William I of Prussia. In an attempt to take revenge on the military who did not stop meddling in politics, Cánovas del Castillo, architect of the Bourbon Restoration, ensured that the main swordsman of the kingdom was the King himself. Alfonso XII immersed himself in Austrian military tradition during his training in Vienna and later entered the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in England. He was a cadet of this institution when he was proclaimed King of Spain.
The peacemaker
As supreme commander of the Army, Alfonso XII tried to make himself respected by the Spanish troops and even took part in theto Third Carlist War. In the battle of Lácar, in the Yerri valley (Navarra), the Carlist troops stormed a town controlled by the Liberals by surprise on the afternoon of February 3, 1875. Led by the pretender Don Carlos himself, the requetés caused more than 1,000 casualties to the royal troops and forced Alfonso XII, still very young, to quickly leave the place of the fight to avoid being captured.
Two years later, Alfonso, also present in the area of operations, would make up for the Carlist attack during the Battle of San Marcial. A large part of the Carlist troops fell in this battle, which is considered the tomb of this cause. Given his youth, the Monarch was tutored by experienced commanders in these battles and never exercised sole command, but due to his romantic sense of existence he did risk his neck more than necessary.
Given his youth, Alfonso XII was supervised by experienced commanders in these battles and never exercised sole command
In the study ‘The configuration of the contemporary military mentality (1868-1909)’, Pablo González-Pola He describes Alfonso XII as a “good military king”, and emphasizes that the monarch had deep-rooted military values. In addition to trying to reform the Army, this military activity was concentrated on trips to direct maneuvers and visit barracks and academies. Not in vain, as Rafael Fernández Sirvent recalls in his monograph ‘From “Soldier King” to “Peacemaker”. Symbolic representations of Alfonso XII de Borbón’, “there were also some voices of contemporaries who criticized the monarch for showing a certain neglect of his military functions, as supreme command and visible head of the Army.
In this sense, the elderly German Emperor Wilhelm I dared to suggest to the young Alfonso de Borbón, through the mediation of his plenipotentiary in Spain, that he did not spare horses or fatigue to fulfill his duties as king ». It seems that, once the Third Carlist War was pacified, Alfonso neglected his military aspect and partially abandoned uniforms with increasing frequency.
Before him had been briefly King of Spain Amadeo de Saboya. This member of the Italian Army took part in the war against Austria with the rank of colonel, distinguished by his courage: in the unfortunate battle of Custozza (June 24, 1866) where he was wounded in the chest, which earned him the Gold Medal for Military Valor. Two years later, he entered the Navy as Vice Admiral of the Italian Fleet. Once his reign ended, the Savoy rejoined the Italian Army, in which he would assume prominent commands and reached the rank of lieutenant general.
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