# Gregorio García de la Cuesta

Gregorio García de la Cuesta y Fernández de Celis (9 May 1741 – 25 November 1811) was a prominent Spanish army officer and commander of Spain's armies at the beginning of the Peninsular War.
Charles Oman (1902) stated that:
   Throughout the two years during which he held high command in the field, Gregorio de la Cuesta consistently displayed an arrogance and an incapacity far exceeding that of any other Spanish general. (Oman, pp. 140–141.)

## Early military career

Cuesta entered military service in 1758 as a cadet in the Toledo Infantry Regiment and was sent to Oran that June, where he would be stationed for the following four years While there, he was promoted to sub-lieutenant of the Granada Infantry Regiment in 1762.
During the Spanish invasion of Portugal (1762), he distinguished himself at the siege and storming of Almeida, remaining there as part of the garrison.
Later appointed director of the Segovia Artillery Academy for Cadets, between 1775 and 1777 Cuesta was commissioned on two occasions to raise troops in the province. In 1779 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and transferred to participate in the siege of Gibraltar, where he stayed for nineteen months, until the besieging French and Spanish troops withdrew.

## Later military career
### Campaigns in Spanish America

In 1781, he was appointed sargento mayor (second in command to the regiment's colonel) of the Extremadura Regiment and sailed for Guarico (Venezuela). Once there, he went on to spend 14 months in Santo Domingo preparing for the Spanish response to relieve Jamaica. From Santo Domingo he was transferred to La Habana, where his regiment, together with that of Soria, sailed for Porto Belo (Brazil) on their way to quash the Rebellion of Túpac Amaru II in Peru. On the voyage, Cuesta participated in the rescue of five officers and 113 soldiers shipwrecked in the Old Bahama Channel. On reaching Lima, he was stationed there for a year before being given command of the 2nd Battalion and commissioned to control the provinces of the interior of Peru. After crossing the Andes, he arrived at La Plata, where he was able to put down an uprising of the local militia, an action for which he was commended by the viceroy.
While stationed at La Plata, he married a criolla, Nicolasa López Lispergué, and in 1786 was appointed lieutenant colonel of the Extremadura Regiment and President of the Real Audiencia de Charcas (appelate court), a post which included the captaincy general of the province. In 1788 he was sent to Buenos Aires and promoted to colonel the following year. He then requested, and was granted the colonelcy of his regiment following the death of his commanding officer, Mateo Milanés.
On his return to mainland Spain, in 1791, his regiment was garrisoned at Badajoz.

### Campaigns in Europe
#### War of the Pyrenees]

He led his regiment in the capture of the towns of Cabestany and Bernet, before participating at the Battle of Perpignan, where he was wounded. Following the Battle of Peyrestortes (September 1793), he was promoted to brigadier.
Appointed second in command to the Captain-general of Catalonia, Luis Fermín de Carvajal, Conde de la Unión, Cuesta led the assaults on Ceret and Sant Ferriol, for which he was promoted to field marshal, and towards the end of December 1793, he led 8,000 Spanish and Portuguese in a successful attack at the Battle of Collioure, capturing Collioure, Fort Saint-Elme and Port-Vendres. Cuesta's force killed or captured 4,000 of the 5,000 defenders.
In March 1795, Cuesta was appointed governor of Gerona, but by May he was back in the field leading a division under José de Urrutia y de las Casas at the successful Battle of Bascara on 14 June 1795. His corps of 7,000 to 9,000 troops captured 1,500 Frenchmen at Puigcerdà on 26 July. The following day, he took the town of Bellver with its 1,000-man French garrison. Unknown to Cuesta, both actions occurred after the Peace of Basel had been signed on 22 July 1795.

#### Interim years

With the war over, he returned to his governorship of Gerona, and in September 1795 he was promoted to lieutenant general. In 1798, he was appointed captain-general of Mallorca, taking up his post in July. Appointed captain-general of New Castile and president of the Council of Castile the following October, he left the island that November. However, his confrontations with Manuel Godoy led to Cuesta being dismissed and banished, on half-pay, to the province of Santander.
In March 1808, Cuesta was brought back from banishment by Fernando VII who appointed him Captain General of Galicia, post which he did not take up, as he was appointed Captain General of Old Castile the following month. In June, he was named viceroy of New Spain, post which he was unable to assume due to the turmoil produced by the French invasion of the Iberian peninsula.

#### Peninsular War

When war with France broke out in 1808, Cuesta was already 67 years old. He was at first reluctant to lead the insurgents who rose up in Valladolid but agreed after a gallows was erected outside his house and the indignant populace threatened to hang him. His hastily recruited force of 5,000–7,000 volunteers stood little chance against the Grande Armée of Napoleon. It was heavily defeated at Cabezón (June 1808), forcing Cuesta to retreat from his seat of command at Valladolid.
After combining what was left of his army with Lieutenant General Blake's Army of Galicia, Cuesta pulled rank and insisting on a foolhardy march on Valladolid, leaving his new force vulnerable to a French counterattack. Paralyzed by disunity of command, the pair were defeated on 14 July at the Battle of Medina de Rioseco when Cuesta failed to close the gap between his troops and Blake's.
Following the sack of Bilbao (16 August 1808) by General Merlin, troops the Central Junta called a meeting in Madrid in an attempt to decide on a single military command structure for the Spanish Army, of which Cuesta demanded to be appointed Commander-in-Chief. However, faced with the opposition of all the other military commanders, chief amongst them General general Castaños, whose recent victory at Bailén held much weight, and whom Cuesta had failed to convince to form a partnership with him with which to take full command of the government, Cuesta stormed out and, a few days later, ordered the arrest of Antonio Valdés, president of the Junta Suprema of Galicia, and Joaquín Flórez-Osorio, 7th Viscount of Quintanilla de Flórez, president of the Junta Suprema of Leon, who were both on their way to Madrid to meet with the Central Junta, and had them imprisoned at the Alcázar of Segovia.
The president of the Central Junta Count of Floridablanca, relieved Cuesta of his command and had him arrested in turn. Cuesta's command was given to Juan Pignatelli. However, following Napoleon's victory at the Battle of Somosierra (November 1808), with Madrid capitulating in early December, the situation in Spain became more desperate and popular demand in Extremadura, a region with which he was so closely associated, was insisting on Cuesta being given command of that region's army. Floridablanca was forced to appoint Cuesta captain general of Extremadura at the end of the month. In defiance of the military wisdom of the time Cuesta pursued an offensive as soon as he had raised a fighting force. This met with some early success, but any gains thus made were cancelled out by his defeat at the Battle of Medellín (March 1809), where he lost half his army, and Cuesta himself was wounded.
In June 1809, Cuesta was appointed captain general of New Castile and joined forces with the British army under Wellington. Relations with his British allies were difficult, taking into account that the British prioritized their interests before the Spanish, something that Cuesta strongly opposed. However, the Battle of Talavera (July 28), resulted in an important victory for the allies and for which Wellesley would receive the titles Viscount Wellington and Viscount Talavera de la Reina. For his part, Cuesta received the Grand Cross of Carlos III from the Central Junta.
Despite the victory at Talavera, Cuesta was forced to resign from his position the following December. Shortly afterwards, in Badajoz, he suffered a stroke and for medical reasons he was evacuated to Seville and Malaga, and then, due to the approach of the French, to Mallorca. He arrived in Palma in May 1810 and the following January took the captaincy general of the Balearisc Islands and the presidency of the Real Audiencia. There, he clashed with Samuel Whittingham, a British Cavalry commander with whom he had coincided at the Battle of Medellín and who had been the intermediary between Wellington and Cuesta at Talavera. He also clashed with the Bishop of Mallorca, Bernardo Nadal, who wrote several reports against him, requesting his dismissal.
On the island Cuesta published a manifesto in which he justified his actions during Spain's War of Independence.

## Footnotes

* 1 2 Oman, Charles (1902). A History of the Peninsula War, Vol. I, pp. 67–68140–141. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 11 April 2023. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
* 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 (in Spanish) Caimari Calafat, Tomeu. "Gregorio García de la Cuesta y Fernández de Celis". Historia Hispanica. Real Academia de la Historia. Retrieved 8 March 2023.
* ↑ Smith, p. 64.
* ↑ Smith, p. 103.
* ↑ Smith, p. 104.
* ↑ Napier, William Francis Patrick and Mathieu Dumas (1828). Histoire de la guerre dans la Péninsule et dans le midi de la France, depuis l'année 1807 jusqu'a l'année 1814, Volume I, p. 287. Treuttel et Würtz. Google Books. Retrieved 9 March 2025.
* 1 2 3 (in Spanish). Rodríquez García, Francisco (1865). Crónica del Senoría de Vizcaya, pp. 92–93. Google Books. Retrieved 9 March 2025.