Valeriano Weyler

Weyler was born in 1838 in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. His distant paternal ancestors were originally Prussians and served in the Spanish army for several generations. He was educated in his place of birth and in Granada. Weyler decided to enter the Spanish army, being influenced by his father, a military doctor. He graduated from the Infantry School of Toledo at the age of 16. In 1863, he was transferred to Cuba, and his participation in the campaign of Santo Domingo earned him the Laureate Cross of Saint Ferdinand. During the Ten Years' War that was fought between 1868 and 1878, he served as a colonel under General Arsenio Martínez Campos, but he returned to Spain before the end of the war to fight against Carlists in the Third Carlist War in 1873. In 1878, he was made general. == Canary Islands and the Philippines ==

From 1878 to 1883, Weyler served as Captain-General of the Canary Islands. In 1888, Weyler was made Governor-General of the Philippines. and conducted an offensive against the Moros in Mindanao. ==Spain==

On his return to Spain in 1892, he was appointed to command the 6th Army Corps in the Basque Provinces and Navarre, where he soon quelled agitations. He was then made captain-general at Barcelona, where he remained until January 1896. In Catalonia, with a state of siege, he made himself the terror of the anarchists and communists. ==Cuba==

After Arsenio Martínez Campos proved unable to defeat the Cuban Liberation Army, the government of Antonio Cánovas del Castillo sent Weyler to Cuba to replace him in 1897. This decision met the approval of the Spanish public, who perceived Weyler as the right man to suppress the rebellion in Cuba. Weyler was made Governor-General of Cuba and was granted full powers to suppress the rebellion and restore Spanish rule alongside Cuba's sugar industry. Initially, he faced the same challenges as his predecessor. While Spanish troops were trained in conventional warfare tactics and required substantial supplies to operate, their Cuban opponents engaged in hit-and-run tactics, lived off the land and blended in with the general population to avoid detection. This wave of American anti-Spanish sentiment was used to legitimize the United States declaration of war on Spain in 1898 and their expansionism in the Atlantic and the Pacific. Cánovas's government supported Weyler's tactics, but the Liberal Party denounced them for their toll on the Cuban people. The term "reconcentration" is thought to have given rise to the term "concentration camp". Academic Andrea Pitzer considered Weyler's camps to be the world's first concentration camps. Weyler's strategy was successful only in completely alienating the Cuban population from the Spanish as well as galvanizing international opinion against Spain. After Cánovas was assassinated on 8 August 1897 by Michele Angiolillo Lombardi and a new Liberal Party government led by Práxedes Mateo Sagasta took over, Weyler was recalled from Cuba and replaced by the more conciliatory Ramón Blanco, 1st Marquess of Peña Plata. ==Return to Spain==

He served as Minister of War three separate times (1901–1902, 1905, 1906–1907) He was charged and imprisoned for opposing the military dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera in the 1920s. He died in Madrid on 20 October 1930. He was buried the next day in a simple casket without a state ceremony, as he requested. ==References==