It is a sculptural work in the Plaza de la Independencia de Vigo.
At its highest point is Colonel Pablo Murillo, an illustrious figure in wars.
Below it shows a sailor knocking down the door of Gamboa with an ax (ultimatum battle before the French abandonment.
It went through many works, since it began at the beginning of the 20th century, but it was released in 1947.
Pablo Murillo
"He was born into a peasant family in Zamora. In 1791 he enlisted in the Royal Marine Corps and was assigned to Ferrol, where he married Joaquina Rodríguez, who died in 1805 and with whom he had no children. In the war against revolutionary France he participated, in 1793, in the landing on the island of Saint Peter in Sardinia and at the site of Toulon, where he was wounded and, in 1794, in the landing of Labrada and on the site of the castle of the Trinity in Rosas (Gerona). Against England, aboard the San Isidro,He fought in the battle of Cape San Vicente (February 14, 1797), where he was taken prisoner, being released shortly afterwards. In October of that year he was promoted to second sergeant and assigned to Cádiz, where he participated in its defense against the English attack of 1797. In the battle of Trafalgar (October 21, 1805) he was wounded fighting aboard the San Ildefonso, which would be seized by Nelson's fleet. Pablo Morillo spent the next three years garrisoned in Cádiz waiting to be assigned to one of the few surviving ships of the defeat.
With Napoleon's invasion, Pablo Morillo gave up his mediocre career in the Navy and enlisted in the Llerena volunteer corps, where, thanks to his military experience, he was appointed second lieutenant, participating in the battle of Bailén (July 19, 1808), under the orders of General Francisco Javier Castaños.
After this victory he was fighting the French for the lands of Extremadura (actions of Elvas, Almaraz and Calzada de Oropesa) and on December 20 he was promoted to lieutenant. In January 1809 he was appointed captain and sent to Galicia. He arrived in Vigo, where the commander of the French garrison, besieged by guerrilla parties, refused to surrender to civilians, demanding a high ranking military man.
Morillo was the only officer present but his rank as captain was not sufficient, so his men and the guerrillas who surrounded the square proclaimed him colonel and with this investiture he concluded the surrender negotiations of Vigo. The French reaction was immediate and Marshal Michel Ney occupied Santiago de Compostela, to go towards Vigo. Morillo got in his way on the bridge of Sampayo (June 7-8, 1809), Pontevedra, where he forced him to withdraw.
This victory was decisive for Pablo Morillo, since as a result the Spanish high command confirmed the rank of colonel, his fame spread among soldiers and guerrillas, who would know him as "the Lion of Sampayo" and was the origin of the formation of the Union Regiment, a unit that would accompany him during many campaigns. At the command of this Regiment he was assigned to Extremadura and Andalusia, where he spent the next three years recruiting men for the Army, obtaining supplies and fighting the guerrilla groups that did not obey the orders of the Spanish high command. The baptism of fire of the new regiment took place in September 1810, in Fuenteovejuna, where he was wounded in the left shoulder and his inexperience as a commander almost made him lose the fight against an enemy much inferior in number.
Although Morillo had to abandon the freedom of movement that he had enjoyed until then to join a foreign unit, in the long run, it would end up being very profitable as he would have the opportunity to learn about the functioning of a well-organized army and because it would end up granting him the trust of Wellington, which would be definitive for his career. Under Hill's command, he participated in the so-called Arroyo Molinos surprise (October 28, 1811), in which they defeated a French army corps under the command of General Jean Girard. After this victory, Morillo received orders from Castaños to return to operating on his own, a task in which he would spend more than a year and a half. 1812 would be decisive, as the invasion of Russia forced Napoleon to withdraw many of his best troops from Spain, allowing the Spanish army and its English allies to take the initiative that, after the victory of Arapiles (July 22, 1812), would lead them to enter Madrid triumphantly. Despite these good omens, it would be a short-lived success, as the English had to retreat back to Portugal when their attempt to occupy Burgos failed.
The final offensive began in mid-1813 and culminated in the battle of Vitoria (June 21, 1813), in which Morillo, commanded by his men, began the Allied attack by marching against the heavily defended French positions of the Alto de la Puebla. The intervention of Pablo Morillo was decisive for the Allied victory, his men demonstrated an iron discipline and he himself distinguished himself by remaining on the battlefield despite having been wounded at the beginning of the fight. His behavior in battle earned him promotion, just two weeks later, to field marshal, and Wellington chose him to be one of the few Spanish generals who would accompany him in the next invasion of France.
Although Morillo fully enjoyed Wellington's trust, relations between the Spanish and English troops were not always easy. The shortage of supplies during the harsh winter in the Pyrenees caused some incidents when the Spanish soldiers considered that the English high command privileged their compatriots. For Wellington, ensuring discipline was a priority as he needed the support, or at least the passivity, of the local population. Morillo was in a very delicate position, because, although he shared the complaints of his men, he could not allow any disobedience. The situation was resolved by Wellington imposing a punishment on the Spanish troops, which would be promptly lifted. In February 1814, the French, under the command of Marshal Jean de Dieu Soult, They were about to defeat the Allied advance in the vicinity of Motte de Garris, but the determined attack by Morillo's division forced them to retreat. Later he was sent to lay siege to the Plaza de Navarrenx, a task in which he was when the news of Napoleon's abdication arrived at Fontainebleau (April 6, 1814).
With the return of Fernando VII, the Spanish Administration rushed to address the multitude of problems that were on the table and, among the most urgent, to find an adequate response to the events that had happened in American lands, where the authority of the Monarch it had been questioned.
From the various options considered, it was decided to send an expeditionary force and, as its chief, Pablo Morillo was appointed in August 1814 as one of the most prestigious generals in the Spanish Army. Morillo moved to Cádiz to organize all the details and in this city two very important events would take place for his future: there he joined liberal political circles and met María Josefa de Villar, belonging to a wealthy family linked to trade with America. , with whom he married by proxy in 1816.
In just a few months more than twelve thousand men gathered, including Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery, and numerous escort and transport ships that set sail on February 17, 1815. That a Spain exhausted after several years of war against the French was capable of Such an effort proves both the priority given by the authorities to this mission and the organizational skills of Pablo Morillo.
With the intention of keeping the true objectives of the expedition secret, it had been said that their destination was Montevideo, and it would not be until they were on the high seas when Morillo informed his men that they were going to pacify Costafirme, that is, the viceroyalty of the New Granada. The fleet anchored on April 2 off the coast of Venezuela and the day before Morillo was promoted to lieutenant general.
The instructions received by Morillo established that the main objectives of the expedition were "the tranquility of Caracas, the occupation of Cartagena de Indias and the assistant to the Chief who sends in the New Kingdom of Granada" and also indicated that "the wishes of His Majesty will remain entirely satisfied if this is achieved with the slightest bloodshed from their beloved vassals ”. To achieve tranquility in Caracas, he was ordered to quell the uprising on Isla Margarita, which, under the leadership of Juan Bautista Arismendi, had become one of the main independence bastions. After a somewhat bumpy landing and after reducing a desperate, though little organized, resistance, Morillo took possession of the island on April 11, 1815. Rejecting the advice of Tomás Morales, Successor of José Tomás Boves at the command of the llaneros, Morillo forgave Arismendi and the other leaders of the insurrection and, leaving a small garrison to ensure order, set sail for the continent. In the short trip the ship caught fireSan Pedro de Alcántara, with which most of the expedition's supplies were sunk, including almost all of the artillery and the box that contained more than a million pesos. This loss would be of enormous consequences, since it forced Morillo to have to resort to the coffers of the viceroyalty to support his troops, which would lead to confrontations with the local authorities and would alienate the support of a large part of the population, especially among the more affluent layers. Morillo entered Caracas (May 8, 1815), where he stayed only the time necessary to reorganize his troops and set out to fulfill the next point of his instructions: occupy Cartagena de Indias.
Morillo had studied very well the defenses of the square and correctly extracted the lessons of the victory of Blas de Lezo against the attack of the English admiral Edward Vernon in 1741, reason why he decided that he had to surrender the square by starvation, avoiding at all costs a direct attack. He surrounded Cartagena by land and sea and, while awaiting the surrender of the city, received the news that Arismendi had rebelled again and exterminated the entire garrison on Isla Margarita. This fact would mark a before and after in Morillo's attitude towards the independentistas, to whom, from this moment on, he would apply a heavy-handed policy without contemplations.
However, when Cartagena de Indias capitulated (December 6, 1815), after a hundred and two days of siege, Morillo did everything in his power to help the inhabitants: mass graves were opened, streets were cleaned, houses were fumigated. and distributed an "economic soup" with what was obtained through a voluntary subscription between chiefs and officers. Once the square was occupied, he determined to set out towards the interior of the viceroyalty, this time he was not willing to make the same mistake as in Isla Margarita, so he dictated drastic measures to ensure his rear.
Using the same system used in the Iberian Peninsula with the Frenchified, he opened processes to the main independence leaders who had not managed to escape in the last days of the siege, and nine of them were executed (the nine martyrs of Cartagena de Indias).
In January 1816, Morillo set out to reconquer New Granada. He divided his forces into five columns that, acting in a coordinated manner, swept the entire territory from North to South, obtaining in a few months total success on all fronts. Tired of apotheosis from a population that a few months before had offered identical tributes to Bolívar's men, Morillo entered Santafé de Bogotá incognito on May 27, 1816. Convinced that only firmness would eradicate the germ of independence , He applied a harsh repression in which a large part of the social and intellectual elite of Novogranadina fell. In the six months that Morillo remained in Bogotá, ninety-six death sentences were pronounced and executed, fifty-eight of them in the capital. During this time Morillo undertook the reorganization of the expeditionary army, but he also took measures on education, the economy, public works, etc., far exceeding the powers derived from his instructions, so he did not take long to confront the local authorities and especially with Viceroy Francisco Montalvo himself. The accusations and lawsuits filed against Morillo would result in his broad powers being suspended between July 31, 1817 and June 9, 1818.
In January 1817, Morillo considered his peacekeeping mission in New Granada completed and decided that the time had come to deliver the coup de grace to the independence movement in Venezuela.
Although the return was fully justified, in the long run it would mean giving up the initiative to the enemy.
In the Llanos the situation had completely changed, since the llaneros, who under Boves had been the backbone of the royalists, had been attracted by Bolívar and José Antonio Páez, and against them Morillo sent part of his troops. On Margarita Island, the Arismendi rebellion had once again transformed it into the axis of the independence strategy, so Morillo mounted a carefully planned invasion. Supported by the squad commanded by José María Chacón, he landed on the island on July 15, 1817 and, after overcoming the fierce resistance of the defenders who even managed to defeat General José Canterac's troops in Matasiete (July 31, 1817) , managed to gain control of most of the island.
But when he was preparing to undertake the pacification of the interior and victory seemed within reach, news arrived about the realistic defeat in the battle of Mucuritas (January 28, 1817), which meant the loss of the Llanos, so that he was forced to give up the conquest of the island and return to the mainland.
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At the end of 1832, in view of the proximity of the death of Fernando VII and the weak position of Queen María Cristina and her daughter, the future Isabel II, he was called again by the Government and appointed Captain General of Galicia, where He fought the Carlist uprising, until his health forced him to retire to the spa of Baréges, in the French Pyrenees, where he died on July 27, 1837."
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