Pedro Gómez Labrador, Marquis of Labrador

Who was Pedro Gómez Labrador, Marquis of Labrador?

Don Pedro Gómez Labrador, Marquis of Labrador was a Spanish diplomat and nobleman who served as Spain's representative at the Congress of Vienna. Labrador did not successfully advance his country's diplomatic goals at the conference. These goals included restoring to the thrones of Spain's old Italian possessions the Bourbons, who had been deposed by Napoleon, and reestablishing control over Spanish South American colonies, which had risen in revolt during the Napoleonic invasion of Spain.

The Marquis of Labrador is almost universally condemned by historians for his incompetence at the Congress. One standard Spanish history textbook condemns him for "...his mediocrity, his haughty character, and his total subordination to the whims of the king's inner circle, by which he achieved nothing favorable." Paul Johnson calls him "a caricature Spaniard who specialized in frantic rages, haughty silences and maladroit demarches."

Labrador was born in Valencia de Alcántara, and studied at the traditionally conservative University of Salamanca. He received a bachelor's degree in law at the age of twenty-seven and an advanced degree four years later, and was named a judge on the Audiencia of Seville in 1793. In August 1798, Labrador was sent as chargé d'affaires in Florence by Charles IV of Spain to accompany Pius VI in exile, when this pontiff was forced to become a prisoner of the French, following his refusal to surrender his temporal sovereignty to the French armies commanded by General Louis Alexandre Berthier.