Like Father, Like Son, 1775–1791

You do not have to be only on the defensive, but ready to set out on a sortie to annihilate them on the battlefield.

— Nicolás Arredondo

IN 1791 JOAQUÍN DE ARREDONDO went to visit his father in the Río de la Plata, a remote region of Spain's American empire. At the time, Joaquín was a young cadet in the Spanish military. His father, on the other hand, was a viceroy, meaning he was second only to the king in a region making up much of South America. Although the details of the visit between father and son are lost to time, Joaquín's future actions make clear that he learned much from the interaction. Indeed, the young officer would later conduct his affairs in northeastern New Spain in a strikingly similar manner to the way his father ran the Río de la Plata. To properly understand the future commandant general of the eastern provinces, it is necessary to look at his father, his family, and the history of the nation to which he would declare his allegiance.

Joaquín de Arredondo was born to a wealthy noble family that had called northern Spain home for centuries. The first people to use the name Arredondo lived in the province of Cantabria, where they adopted the name "de Arredondo" in reference to the rounded or "redondo" hills dotting the surrounding countryside. Of Celtic ancestry, the Arredondos had light skin and fair hair and were often blue- or green-eyed, features that would later serve the family well in a Spanish society that often limited the social mobility of persons with darker complexions. Like most in Spain, these first Arredondos were devout Catholic farmers and ranchers. They were also likely subjects of one of the many feudal Christian kings who had come to rule Iberia following the collapse of the Roman Empire.

At some point in the Middle Ages, the Arredondo family rose out of the laboring class into the landed aristocracy. This elevation in social status likely came after Arredondo men performed some form of military service for a regional ruler, as kings often bestowed land grants and hereditary titles on subjects who fought under their banner during times of war. Those who distinguished themselves in battle received special compensation. It is unclear in which conflict the first Arredondos made their name, but it was possibly one of the many wars fought between the various Christian kingdoms of Iberia. The Arredondos may also have earned military accolades in the Reconquista, an eight-century-long conflict that began in 711 C.E. when the Moors, an Islamic group from North Africa, invaded Iberia. What ever the circumstances, military service brought the Arredondos land and entry into the nobility, the latter distinction allowing Arredondo men to adopt the title "don" and Arredondo women "doña." If the fierce lions adorning the Arredondo family coat of arms are any indication, the family was proud of their military tradition.

The fifteenth century brought change for the Arredondos and Iberia when the major Iberian kingdoms united, creating the nation of Spain. The last decade of the fifteenth century also saw the expulsion of the Moors from Iberia and Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage to the Americas at the helm of a Spanish fleet. This latter event proved fortuitous for the new nation-state of Spain, as the Spanish soon subdued many New World inhabitants and used their labor to extract mineral wealth for exportation to the mother country. These riches then funded large armies and navies, which allowed Spain to colonize more land in the Americas and bring war to European rivals. By the mid-sixteenth century, Spain was the most powerful nation in Eu rope. It is unclear if the Arredondo family played an important part in the conquest of the Americas or Spain's rise to dominance, but as members of the upper class, they doubtlessly benefited from their nation's newfound prosperity.

Spain's fortunes did not last long. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Spanish Crown devoted significant resources to religious wars with Protestant Eng land and territorial wars with its northern neighbor, France. Although Spain emerged victorious in some of these conflicts, more often than not the nation lost territory and influence to its European rivals. In part, aristocratic families such as the Arredondos were to blame for Spain's misfortunes. Whereas men of merit had filled the nobility in medieval times, by the seventeenth century their unaccomplished, less efficient, and more numerous descendants held power. These subsequent generations often had more interest in accumulating titles than true military achievement. Unfortunately Spanish monarchs, needing the armies the nobility commanded, obliged these desires by handing out positions in government to unqualified aristocrats. This drained the national treasury and decreased productivity. By the start of the eighteenth century, Spain was a power in decline, weighed down by its bloated, inefficient bureaucracy. Whether or not the Arredondos contributed to Spain's decline or were among the productive aristocrats would be conjecture with present evidence.

What ever the circumstances, the Crown would look to the Arredondos to help solve Spain's woes in the eighteenth century. When enlightened Bourbon monarchs assumed the Spanish throne in 1713, they sought to return Spain to prominence by modernizing and streamlining the national government. Among many other cost-saving measures, these Bourbon Reforms, as they would come to be called, attempted to consolidate power by reducing large government departments filled with inefficient aristocrats into a single civil, military, and judicial authority. These Bourbon officials had to be loyal and were expected to reevaluate traditional ways of doing things. This included reexamining the role of the nobility in Spanish society and exploring ways to make Spain's colonies more lucrative to the home country. Nicolás Arredondo, Joaquín de Arredondo's father, was an avid proponent of these Bourbon Reforms and, as such, would become one of the highest-ranking colonial officials in Spanish America.

Nicolás Antonio de Arredondo, Pelegrin, Ahedo Zorrilla de San Martin y Venero was born on April 17, 1726, in the small village of Bárcena de Cicero, on the northern coast of Spain. Nicolás's father was Nicolás Antonio de Arredondo y Ahedo de la Oceja, a knight of the prestigious Order of Calatrava. His mother was María Teresa Antonia de Pelegrin y Venero, a member of the powerful and influential House of Pelegrin. Nicolás had one sister, María Antonia, and one brother, Manuel Antonio, who would one day serve as viceroy of Peru. Like many of his ancestors, Nicolás joined the military at an early age, serving in the Spanish Royal Guard. In the 1740s he fought in the grueling Italian campaigns of the War of the Austrian Succession, where the young officer distinguished himself in battle and quickly rose in rank. Nicolás continued to prioritize his military career for two decades after returning from Italy, eventually earning the rank of lieutenant general.

It was not until he was nearly fifty years old that don Nicolás started a family, choosing doña Joséfa de Mioño as his bride. Nearly twenty years Nicolás's junior, Joséfa was born on May 31, 1745, in the Arroyo de Las Fraugas region in the Guadalajara province of Spain. As a member of a distinguished noble family, doña Joséfa's full name was an exhaustive list of prominent Spanish families, a distinction that led one historian to refer to her as the "woman of twenty names." In addition to having notable ancestry, Joséfa was beautiful and wealthy. Indeed, the Mioños were one of the richest families in northeastern Spain, a fact that would not have escaped Nicolás, who must have known that marriage to Joséfa would include a substantial dowry.

Although marriage to doña Joséfa offered benefits, it had downsides. According to many of her contemporaries, doña Joséfa was spoiled and demanding, and she had little tolerance for what she perceived as ineptitude. Like many in the eighteenth-century Spanish nobility, she reveled in the advantages of her social standing and demanded that those of lower classes acknowledge her superiority. In one instance, she humiliated and fired newly hired servants after they committed a minor indiscretion. Another time, she refused to attend an event unless she received as much attention as the person being honored. Doña Joséfa could also be reclusive, often citing migraines as a reason to remain at home instead of going out in public with her family. In spite of these unflattering characteristics, she seems to have been a capable mother who cared for her loved ones. Because of this, her children always looked out for her well-being.

Doña Joséfa and Nicolás wed on February 22, 1773, in Barcelona, where Nicolás was stationed at the time. The couple did not wait long to consummate their marriage, and if the frequency with which Joséfa gave birth to their children is any indication, they did their best to ensure the marriage stayed consummated. Joséfa gave birth to the couple's first child, Manuel, on February 2, 1774. A little over a year later, Joséfa delivered her second child and the subject of this work, Joaquín de Arredondo Pelegrin y Mioño. Joaquín was baptized on May 13, 1775, in the Iglesia Parroquial de San Pedro de las Puellas. Fourteen months later, Joséfa gave birth to another male, José. A fourth boy, Agustín, followed shortly thereafter.

Joaquín and his three brothers spent their childhoods in Barcelona, a cosmopolitan city in the northeastern province of Catalonia. Barcelona's location on the Mediterranean Sea just south of the French border made it a cultural and physical gateway to Spain. Travelers from Eu rope's interior passed through the town on their way to the Spanish capital of Madrid. Ships from exotic locales in Africa and the Near East filled Barcelona's docks. The Arredondos would have been among the first to see merchants arriving in Barcelona from the New World, as in 1778 the Crown lifted a restriction excluding Barcelona from direct trade with Spanish America. As a member of the upper class with money to invest, Nicolás Arredondo likely profited from the increased trade. The Arredondo children also benefited. For example, chocolate, which had been a novelty item before the opening of New World trade, was now readily available to anyone who could afford to visit one of the city's numerous chocolatiers.

In general, a sharp contrast between haves and have-nots divided Spanish society in late eighteenth-century Barcelona. The nationalization of industries under the Bourbon Reforms and other eighteenth-century economic changes had reduced the Spanish middle class substantially, leaving primarily the very rich and the very poor. Thanks to personal investments, Joséfa's dowry, the Arredondo family assets, and Nicolás's military pay, the Arredondos were among the wealthy. How wealthy is difficult to say with present evidence, but the family could afford to employ women to make up Joséfa's hair, and Joaquín had two personal servants by the time he was a teenager. This was at a time when thousands of homeless beggars clogged Barcelona's streets. Seeing this extreme divergence in wealth likely helped foster a sense of entitlement in the Arredondo boys, as did their father's regular reminders that they belonged to a noble family and were superior to the lower classes and those without titles. The Arredondo children would carry this lesson into adulthood.

In 1779 Joaquín and his brothers saw their father head off to war. In June of that year, Spain joined France in declaring war on Britain in a conflict that would come to be known as the American Revolution. Inspired by the literature of the Enlightenment, British colonists in North America declared independence from their mother country after it imposed new taxes and duties and denied the colonists representation in the British Parliament. The colonists then installed a republican government without a king. By siding with the revolutionaries, Spain was ostensibly helping an antimonarchal government, something that possibly troubled the royalist, conservative Arredondos. The family, however, may have been comforted in knowing that Spain's true aim in joining the war was not to help the republican colonial upstarts but to hurt the nation's British rivals and recover lost territory.

In 1779 don Nicolás and his Royal Guard received orders to join with a French force to retake the Straits of Gibraltar in southern Iberia, which the British had captured in a previous conflict. It is unclear what role the Arredondo patriarch played in this Great Siege of Gibraltar, but he likely served in one of the two royal guard artillery battalions bombarding entrenched British garrisons. Although these attacks limited British access to the Mediterranean, the Spanish and French had yet to take Gibraltar by late 1780. At that point, don Nicolás received new orders: he was to proceed to the Americas to assist in capturing British West Florida.

It would be impossible to reconstruct don Nicolás's thoughts on his first journey across the Atlantic, but they may have drifted to his brother, Manuel Antonio, who, in 1780, was in the process of suppressing an Indian insurrection in Spanish Peru. The revolution in Peru differed from the one being fought in the British colonies. It was led by Tupac Amaru, a man of mixed European and Indian ancestry who had united many of Peru's indigenous population to revolt against the Spanish who had oppressed them since the sixteenth century. Although don Nicolás would not have known at the time, Manuel Antonio proved vital in the Spanish efforts to defeat Amaru. He also served on the jury that convicted the indigenous leader. This earned Manuel Antonio a number of accolades, and his actions would later contribute to the Arredondo brother being promoted to viceroy of Peru.

Don Nicolás would see a similar rise to prominence for his service to Spain. Shortly after arriving in Cuba, the Spanish officer departed for Florida, a sparsely populated peninsula at the edge of the Spanish Empire. The foreignness of the New World may have offered the elder Arredondo pause, the vibrant flora and fauna of Cuba and Florida standing in sharp contrast to his subtle Mediterranean Catalonian countryside home. Combat in the Americas was also strange. On arriving in Florida in 1781, don Nicolás joined some 7,000 Spaniards in laying siege to a British fort only to have their efforts interrupted by unincorporated "barbarous" Indian tribes attacking their supply lines. Torrential rain also bogged down troops, and swarms of mosquitoes pestered. In spite of these hardships, Spanish artillery units — possibly under the leadership of don Nicolás — moved from one redoubt to another until they reached a position from which they could fire into the British fort, eventually forcing its inhabitants to surrender. Victory in the Battle of Pensacola was welcome news in Spain, as the nation had lost the Great Siege of Gibraltar in don Nicolás's absence.

Although little information is available on his activities in Florida, it seems that the elder Arredondo performed his duties admirably, as he received a promotion to military and political governor of Santiago de Cuba in 1781. It is unclear if the rest of the Arredondo family joined Nicolás in Cuba, but Joséfa's respite from childbearing may indicate they did not. If Joaquín did live in Santiago de Cuba with his father, he may have joined his father in touring the San Pedro de la Roca Castle, a massive fortification constructed to defend the city from foreign attack.

Unfortunately for Joaquín's education, such opportunities would have been limited, as don Nicolás's official duties took up much of his time. As a military man in charge of civilians, he had to implement Bourbon Reforms and confront Santiago de Cuba's numerous economic, social, and political problems. For example, don Nicolás had to issue paper money when faced with a shortage of hard currency, increase security on hearing that African slaves were planning an insurrection, and implement measures to curtail contraband trading. The elder Arredondo even had to stand trial over accusations that he had participated in contraband trade. A guilty conviction would end the Spaniard's long career. After a protracted trial, a court determined that two aldermen were the true perpetrators of the crime and cleared don Nicolás of all charges. This trial does not seem to have had negative repercussions to the elder Arredondo's career, as in 1788 don Nicolás received a promotion to president of the Real Audiencia of Charcas, a governing body in modern-day Bolivia.

Before he could arrive in Bolivia to assume his new duties, news arrived that the king had assigned don Nicolás to an even more prominent position: viceroy of the Río de la Plata. As viceroy, Nicolás would be subordinate only to the king, with the Spanish term for viceroy, virrey, literally meaning vice-king. The position afforded the Arredondo patriarch an enormous amount of power. He would be responsible for military and civic matters in a Spanish territory made up of parts of present-day Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Chile. Don Nicolás accepted the promotion, traveled to the capital of the Río de la Plata viceroyalty, Buenos Aires, and took office on December 4, 1789. Joséfa and the two youngest Arredondo children, José and Agustín, joined don Nicolás in Buenos Aires. Joaquín did not, as he had begun training at a military academy in Spain.