Baltasar Calvo

Baltasar Calvo ( – 3 July 1808) was a Spanish canon and rebel. He was executed by rebel authorities on 3 July 1808 for organizing a massacre of French civilians and leading an attempted insurrection in Valencia during the French occupation of Spain in the Napoleonic Wars.

Biography Situation pre-massacre The British Royal Military Chronicle wrote of Calvo that "he was ambitious, bold, subtle, and sanguinary. His person corresponded with his mind. His features, being ravaged by disease, were large, dark, and fierce; and his frame athletic and powerful."

Born in Jérica, Province of Castellón, Calvo was a canon from the Collegiate Church of San Isidro, Madrid, After the Napoleonic invasion and conquest of Spain in 1808, French General Joachim Murat sent the clergyman to Valencia to quell the uprising there against French rule. After arriving in Valencia on 1 June, however, Calvo revealed his true goals: to seize control of the city and province for himself. Calvo denounced the French Valencians as a fifth column that were trying to help Murat take over the city. However, the French community had largely assimilated into Spanish society, and according to the Royal Military Chronicle, "were in every respect but the name Spaniards." He went to the citadel and offered to move the French to a group of six convents, but they refused, as they felt that their security was strong enough to protect them. overpowering the guards. Every Frenchperson was taken to a room where they were forced to recite their confessions to a group of monks who had been forcefully escorted by Calvo to the citadel. The victims were walked out of the room and then knocked to the ground by bludgeon-wielding men and then stabbed to death by the mob. An estimated 170 people were killed in this fashion, according to the Royal Military Chronicle. The bodies had not yet been dated by 2011.

Imprisonment and execution Baltasar Calvo was imprisoned in Palma de Mallorca. On 3 July 1808, he was declared guilty by the courts of murder and high treason against the Spanish state. He was about forty years old.

Legacy Calvo has been denounced as a "Valencian Robespierre."

The story of Baltasar Calvo and the massacre of the French residents of Valencia has been overlooked, according to some writers, in favour of narratives portraying the Spanish cause in a less guilty light. Spanish historian Jesus Maroto de las Heras noted that the 1808 Battle of Valencia, in which Spanish forces defeated French General Moncey, is rarely noted in the context of the massacre of hundreds of unarmed French people a few weeks before.