Pablo Morillo

Who was Pablo Morillo?

Pablo Morillo y Morillo, Count of Cartagena and Marquess of La Puerta, aka El Pacificador was a Spanish general.

In 1791 Morillo enlisted in the Real Cuerpo de Marina and participated in the Battle of Trafalgar in which he was wounded and made prisoner by the English in 1805. He also fought against Napoleon Bonaparte in 1808 during the Peninsular War to defend his mother country Spain against the French invasion. Once the war ended and the Spanish monarchy was restored, King Ferdinand VII of Spain appointed him Expedition Commander and General Captain of the Provinces of Venezuela on August 14, 1814. He set sail with a fleet of 18 warships and 42 cargo ships and disembarked in the Isla Margarita with the mission to pacify the revolts against the Spanish monarchy in the American colonies. He travelled to Caracas, Puerto Cabello and Cartagena de Indias in a military campaign to fight Simon Bolívar's revolutionary armies.

On August 22, 1815, Morillo surrounded the walled city of Cartagena and put it under siege, preventing any supplies from going in until December 6 of this same year when the Spanish Royal Army entered the city. With control over Cartagena, Morillo returned to Venezuela to continue the fight against revolutionaries. In June 1820 Morillo ordered under Royal mandate that everyone in the colonies obeyed the Cadiz Constitution and sent delegates to negotiate with Bolivar and his followers. Bolivar and Morillo later met in the Venezuelan town of Santa Ana and signed a truce first for six months and later a second one named "War Regularization".