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Leopoldo O’Donnell: Spanish Prime Minister
The PETER BERRESFORD ELLIS column
Irishmen and women, forced by conquest and by economics, have spread into many corners of the world. Many of them and their descendants have achieved outstanding success in the lands in which they have settled.
Many not only wound up in high positions of government in their countries of adoption but also became presidents and prime ministers.
Such a man was Leopoldo O’Donnell who became President of the Council of Ministers of Spain in 1858, the equivalent of Prime Minister.
The Spanish O’Donnells descended from the Princes of Tirconnell.
Ruaidri, The O’Donnell, Prince of Tirconnell, had been one of the Irish leaders who had fled to the continent in 1608 when they realised their lives were threatened by English agents. Ruaidri’s more famous brother, Aodh Ruadh (Red Hugh) had already been poisoned by an English agent, James Blake, while in Spain in 1603 trying to raise funds to fight the English conquest which was then taking place.
Ruaidri, only 33 years old, had barely reached Rome when he died. Poison was suspected. His tomb is to be seen in the church of San Pietro in Montorio in Rome. The inscription describes Ruaidri as a ‘prince of Ulster’. The title ‘Earl of Tyrconnell’ had been bestowed by the English on condition of Ruaidri’s surrender.
Ruaidri’s son, Hugh Albert, was sent as a page to the Infanta of Spain. He took his father’s English title: ‘Earl of Tyrconnell’. He settled in Spanish Flanders and died in 1642.
Family descendants such as ‘Balldearg’ O’Donnell became generals in the Spanish army and returned to Ireland to command as a brigade of the Irish Jacobite forces against William of Orange. He claimed the title ‘Earl of Tyrconnell’, but James gave this to his favourite Richard Talbot, also making him ‘Duke of Tyrconnell’. Nevertheless, Balldearg was still signing himself by the title. He died in 1704 in Spain having achieved the rank of Major-General.
Joseph O’Donnell (1722-1800), his grandson, became a Lt. General in the Spanish Army. He had two sons; Don José O’Donnell and Don Carlos, both became generals in the Spanish service.
Irish exiles in Spain were so highly thought of that the Spanish Government actually passed a law which granted immediate citizenship to any Irish person settling in Spain.
It was Don Carlos (1772-1830) who was to become the father of the most famous Spanish O’Donnell.
Don Leopold O’Donnell, born on January 12, 1809, in Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, entered the Spanish Army and became a divisional commander by the time the Carlist Wars erupted in 1833. Queen Maria Christiania had persuaded her husband, King Ferdinand VII, before his death, to alter the Salic Law to enable their own child, Princess Isabella, to inherit. Maria Christiana became Regent for Isabella was only three years old. This led to a civil war from the supporters of Ferdinand’s brother Prince Carlos, who had expected to inherit the throne as male heir.
O’Donnell supported Maria Christiana and was one of the best field generals under command of Baldomero Espartero, Duke of Vittoria (1792-1879).
Espartero became her first minister and brought the wars to a conclusion after seven years of fighting. O’Donnell became Espartero’s Minister of War. But Maria Christiana became autocratic as Regent and finally Espartero forced her into exile in France. O’Donnell had tried to organise a coup in her favour in Pamplona which failed.
In 1843, O’Donnell and General Narvaez led another coup and this time it was the turn of Espartero to go into exile in England. Isabella, aged only 13, was now declared Queen of Spain and her mother, Maria Christiana, returned to take a powerful role at court.
Between 1844 until 1848, O’Donnell now became Governor of Cuba, then a Spanish possession.
In his absence, Queen Isabella II, aged only 16, was forced to marry the Bourbon Prince Maria-Fernando (1822-1902). She had twelve children, only four of whom grew to adulthood. The rumours were that none of them were fathered by her husband who was known to be a homosexual. Certainly, when O’Donnell returned from Cuba, it seemed no secret that he became the young Queen’s lover.
In 1854 the now malign influence of the former Queen Maria Christiana was broken when O’Donnell again organised a coup which sent her into exile again and Espartero was invited back to Spain with O’Donnell becoming his Minister of War. The former enemies did not get on well and in 1856 O’Donnell became President of the Council of Ministers, effectively Prime Minister of Spain. He held this office for three terms.
As Field Marshal of the Spanish Army, he took personal command of the Spanish invasion of Morocco in November 1859. That year Mohammed IV (1859-1873) had become Sultan of Morocco. Stories were circulating that Morocco was helping Algiers against France. Europe was now looking at the riches of Morocco with speculative eyes. Spain decided to act first.
The first action against Morocco began with a confrontation at Ceuta with the Spanish 1st Corps, commanded by General Echague. A few days later O’Donnell arrived as commander-in-chief with the 2nd Corps to be followed by the 3rd Corps and a Reserve Corps. The Spanish army totalled 40,000 men.
Within a year Morocco was forced to sign a treaty ceding the Western Sahara and Ifni, with Ceuta and Tetuan, to Spain.
O’Donnell was now raised to a dukedom, taking the title Duke of Tetuan after his famous victory. Tetuan was a northern Moroccan city and province, an important trading centre that was subsequently controlled by Spain from 1860 to 1959. O’Donnell also bore the titles Conde (Count) de Lucerna and Visconde de Aliaga.
But intrigues forced O’Donnell to finally resign all public offices and he left for France where he died in Biarritz on November 6, 1867.
Queen Isabella did not survive him long in power and she went into exile in France in 1868 and was forced to abdicate in Paris in favour of her son Alfonso XII in 1870. She was to die in 1904.
The O’Donnells have maintained their links with Ireland and it was the Duke of Tetuan’s heir, Don Juan O’Donnell, the third Duke of Tetuan (1864-1938) who publicly campaigned for recognition of the Irish Republic in 1919. He had become a cavalry general before going into politics and becoming Spain’s Minister for War.
He was elected President of the Convention of the Irish Race in Paris in 1919, which had been set up, encompassing the Irish of the diaspora as well as from Ireland, endeavouring to get US President Woodrow Wilson to recognise Ireland’s unilateral declaration of independence of January, 1919.
Eamon de Valera recognised the contribution that the Spanish O’Donnells had made to the Irish cause of independence, when, as Chancellor of the National University of Ireland, he conferred an honorary doctorate on the then 6th Duke of Tetuan, also Leopoldo O’Donnell.
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