Diego Vicente Cañas Portocarrero, 7th Duke Del Parque,[1][note 1] also known asVicente María de Cañas y Portocarrero[2] (1755 – 12 March 1824), was a lieutenant-general and a Spanish military commander during thePeninsular War.
The Duke was a member of the inner circle supporting thePrince of Asturias againstGodoy, as well as a member of theCortes of Bayonne, a fervent supporter of Napoleón andJoseph I of Spain's government.[1]
After theMadrid Uprising at the beginning of May 1808, the Duke issued a statement,Amados españoles, dignos compatriotas (Bayonne, 8 June 1808), in which he tried to halt the national uprising.[2]
Following GeneralFrancisco Castaños's defeat of the French army atBailen (July 1808), Del Parque changed sides and joined the patriotic fight against the French invasion.[2]
In April 1809, he was appointed Captain-general of Old Castile and given the command of theArmy of the Left, with which he fought atTamames (October 1809),[3] and, the following month, atAlba de Tormes,[2] with 32,822 troops under arms, incorporated into divisions commanded by Major-GeneralsMartín de la Carrera (Vanguard Division),Francisco Xavier Losada (1st Division),Conde de Belveder (2nd Division), andFrancisco Ballesteros (3rd Division), Brigadier-GeneralMarquis de Castrofuerte (5th Division), and thePrince of Anglona (Cavalry Division).[4]
In October 1809, the British ambassador to Spain,Richard Wellesley, tried to getMartín de Garay, secretary to theSupreme Central Junta and the person in charge of that body's international relations, to dismiss the Duke.[2]
When, in February 1810, the command of the Army of the Left was returned toMarquis of La Romana, Del Parque was appointed governor of the Canary Islands.[3]
In 1812, the Supreme Central Junta gave the Duke the command of the Army of Castile.[2]
In 1817 he was appointed ambassador in Paris,[1] a posting he turned down.[3]
In the 1820s, as a mason, where he was known "Franqulín", Del Parque would make known his liberal principles, becoming a member of societies ofExaltados ('Fanatics' or 'Extremists', in the sense of 'radicals'), the label given to the mostleft-wing orprogressive political current ofliberalism in nineteenth-centurySpain, associated with, and at times inspired by, FrenchJacobinism andrepublicanism, includingLa Fontana de Oro, one of severalsociedades patrióticas (societies of patriots), clubs at which liberal politics were open to discussion during theTrienio Liberal, and of which he would become chairman.[3]
He went on to become, in 1822, a deputy for Valladolid,[3] and, very briefly,president of Spain'sCongreso de los Diputados (November 1822 to December 1822).[1]
Following the invasion of the "Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis" (1823), a French army mobilized by theBourbon King of France,Louis XVIII, to help the Spanish Royalists restore KingFerdinand VII of Spain to the absolute power of which he had been deprived during theLiberal Triennium, the Duke went with the Cortes and the government to Seville and, from there, on to Cádiz.[3]
As soon as he had regained the throne, Fernando VII ordered that the Duke be arrested and detained in a public prison. However, given his age and illness, the French garrison at Cadiz placed him under house arrest instead. He died shortly thereafter.[3]
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