Spanish novelist, playwright, and poet, the creator of Don Quixote, the most famous figure in Spanish literature. Although Cervantes' reputation rests almost entirely on his portrait of the knight of La Mancha, El ingenioso hidalgo, his literary production was considerable. William Shakespeare, Cervantes' great contemporary, had evidently read Don Quixote, but it is most unlike that Cervantes had ever heard of Shakespeare. In spite of his fame, Cervantes remained a poor man.
Much of his childhood Cervantes spent moving from town to town while his father sought work. After studying in Madrid (1568-69), where his teacher was the humanist Juan López de Hoyos, he went to Rome in the service of Guilio Acquavita, who became a cardinal in 1570. In the same year Cervantes joined a Spanish regiment in Naples. He took part in the sea battle at Lepanto (1571), during which he received a wound that permanently maimed his left hand. Cervantes was extremely proud of his role in the famous victory and of the nickname he earned, el manco de Lepanto (the cripple of Lepanto). After recuperation in Messina, Sicily, he continued his military career.
In 1575 he set out with his brother Rodrigo on the galley El Sol for Spain. The ship was captured by pirates under Arnaute Mami and the brothers were taken to Algiers as slaves. Rodrigo was ransomed in 1577. The Moors though that Cervantes was more valuable captive because he had carried letters written by important persons. Cervantes spent five years as a slave until his family could raise enough money to pay his ransom. During this period he tried to escape several times without success. Cervantes was released in 1580, with the payment of 500 escudos raised by his family and the Trinitarian order. He returned to Madrid where he held several temporary, ill-paid administrative post.
His first play, LOS TRATOS DE ARGEL (1580), was based on his experiences as a Moorish captive. In 1584 he married 18 years younger Catalina de Salazar y Palacios, the daughter of a well-to-do peasant. The marriage was childless. He had also a daughter, Isabel de Saavedra, from an affair he had with an actress, Ana Franca de Rojas (or Ana de Villafranca). Isabel worked as a servant in the family but her way of life caused him much worries. The other members of the household included his mother and two unmarried sisters.
In the late 1580s Cervantes left his wife. During the next 20 years he led a nomadic existence, also working as a purchasing agent for the Spanish Armada and a tax collector. He suffered a bankruptcy and was imprisoned at least twice (1597 and 1602) because of fiscal irregularities. It is generally believed that Cervantes was honest, but a victim of a thankless task. For a period he was excommunicated for expropriating grain from Church stores
Cervantes started his literary career in Andalusia in 1580. According to Cervantes, he wrote 20-30 plays, but only two copies have survived. His first major work was the GALATEA (1585), a pastoral romance. It received little contemporary notice and Cervantes never wrote the continuation for it, which he repeatedly promised. He also mentions the book in Don Quixote, where the priest says to the barber: "His book exhibits some faculty of invention, but it proposes things and arrives at no conclusion. In the meanwhile let us wait for the continuation which he promises us; with better luck he may give us something that his wretched circumstances have hitherto denied him."
In his play EL TRATO DE ARGEL, printed in 1784, Cervantes dealt with the life of Christian slaves in Algiers. Aside from his plays, his most ambitious work in verse was VIAJE DEL PARNASO (1614), an allegory which consists largely of a rather tedious though good-natured reviews of contemporary poets. Cervantes himself realized that he was deficient in poetic gifts. Later generations have considered him one of the world's worst poets. NOVELAS EJEMPLARES (1613, Exemplary Novels), a collection of tales, contained some of his best prose work about love, idealism, gypsy life, madmen, and talking dogs. At the time he wrote the work, the Spanish Moriscos (Muslims) were expelled from Spain.
Tradition maintains, that he wrote Don Quixote in prison at Argamasilla in La Mancha. Cervantes' idea was to give a picture of real life and manners and to express himself in clear language, "in simple, honest, and well-measured words," as he stated in the prologue to Part I of Don Quixote. The intrusion of everyday speech into a literary context was acclaimed by the reading public. The author stayed poor until 1605, when the first part of Don Quixote appeared. Although it did not make Cervantes rich, it brought him international appreciation as a man of letters. According to a story King Philip III of Spain once saw a man reading beside the road and laughing so much that the tears were rolling down his cheeks. The King said: "That man is either crazy or he is reading Don Quixote." However, Lope de Vega, the most influential playwright at that time, slaughtered Cervantes as a poet and novelist in a letter.
Further Reading:
http://www.online-literature.com/cervantes/
http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/cervante.htm
Guadalupe Victoria
Guadalupe Victoria -- and we'll call him that from now on -- was born in 1786 in Tamazula, Durango. Though little is known about his origins and early life, he was teaching school at the time the Independence War began. Serving under José Maria Morelos, he took part in the attack on Oaxaca on November 25, 1812. In 1814, on orders from the Chilpancingo Congress that declared Mexico's independence, heassumed the leadership of the rebel movement in Veracruz.
He seized several royalist convoys but after being defeated at Palmillas in 1817 he was forced to go into hiding. His hiding place was the Paseo de Ovejas hacienda in the state of Veracruz.
Victoria reappeared in April 1821, two months after Agustin de Iturbide and Vicente Guerrero had issued the Plan de Iguala that called for Mexico to become an independent constitutional monarchy. Expressing republican views, he urged that Mexico be led by a revolutionary leader who would serve as president rather than by a king or emperor. This greatly displeased Iturbide, who stripped Victoria of his command and put him in prison. Victoria escaped and took command of the forces in Veracruz rebelling against Iturbide's imperial rule.
When Iturbide was forced to abdicate, Victoria arranged his passage into exile on the British frigate H.M.S. Rowlins. Though Mexico was now independent, a Spanish garrison remained at the Fort of San Juan de Ulua in Veracruz harbor. When the garrison opened fire on the port, Victoria organized resistance and then negotiated an armistice so that the soldiers in the garrison could be sent back to Spain.
After Iturbide's fall, Victoria, Nicolás Bravo and Pedro Celestino Negrete formed a triumvirate that held temporary executive power until October 1824, when Victoria took office as Mexico's first president.
Victoria's main distinction as president was that of being the only chief executive in the first fifty years of Mexico's history to serve out his full term. But he was hampered by severe financial problems. His expenses averaged eighteen million pesos annually but he was only collecting half that amount in revenues. So Victoria was forced to seek foreign aid -- in this case from Britain. The 19th century was a high noon of British imperialism, both military and economic. While British troops were marching through China and India, diplomatic envoys in Latin America were instructed to seek favorable trade pacts backed by loans.
The key figure in these negotiations was H. G. Hart, a competent diplomat who served as British chargé d'affaires in Mexico. Knowing how hard-pressed Victoria was (the Army alone accounted for twelve million pesos of the budget), Hart persuaded him to accept two loans, each of over three million pounds. These loans, negotiated through such banking houses as Barclay and Goldschmidt, averted bankruptcy and contributed toward social peace, factors that undoubtedly enabled Victoria to serve out his full term. At the same time, they turned Mexico into an economic satellite of the British empire.
Despite these financial problems, there were some highly positive aspects to Victoria's administration. Two of the first president's most positive achievements were establishment of the National Treasury and abolition of slavery. In addition, he improved education, accorded amnesty to political prisoners, laid plans for a canal in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, opened new ports for shipping, began construction on the National Museum, garrisoned Yucatan to thwart a contemplated Cuba-based Spanish invasion and unmasked a conspiracy led by a monk named Joaquin Arenas to restore Spanish rule.
Victoria was only forty-two when he finished his term of office. But years of strenuous military campaigning and political activity had taken their toll. Withdrawing from public life, he retired to his estate at El Jobo, on the coast of Veracruz. There he died in 1843, at the age of fifty-seven.
Horatio Nelson
Joining the Royal Navy at the age of 12, Horatio Nelson was to rise through the ranks of British sailors and enjoy being one of the greatest and most loved people of his time.
His early years of service were in the West Indies but in 1793 took the helm of HMS Agamemnon patrolling the Mediterranean. He lost the use of his right eye after it became damaged by sand at Calvi, but continued his meteoric rise to commodore after a successful two-year campaign disrupting enemy traders off the French and Ligurian coasts.
Knighted in 1797 after Cape St Vincent, the now Rear Admiral Nelson lost his right arm following an attack on a Spanish ship at Santa Cruz.
A year later he was blockading the city of Toulon when a certain General Napoleon Bonaparte managed to avoid his net and sailed off towards Egypt, only to have the angry British commander finally catch the fleet at the Nile. The following battle between Nelson, on the Vanguard, and Admiral Brueys D'Aigalliers, on the l'Orient, ended when the 120-gun French flagship exploded after sustained attacks from numerous British ships.
Nelson's star was now firmly shooting high and the victory of the Nile gained him a baroncy.
In 1801, Nelson won the battle of Copenhagen and, after several years of peace between France and Britain, renewed his maritime campaign against them.
On 21 October, Nelson caught a combined French-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar that had earlier evaded his attempts to catch them. Using a new tactic to split the numerically superior 33 enemy vessels, Nelson ordered his ships to slice through the French in two lines of vessels.It would then be a chance for the elite British to bring their superior training to bear. The plan worked brilliantly and the French and Spanish suffered horrendous losses. Eighteen enemy ships were lost and more than 14,000 men. Nelson's force did not lose a ship, but suffered 1500 casualties - including its commander.
Famed for his ostentatious uniform that was highly recognisable, Nelson was spotted on the Victory by an enemy sharpshooter and was shot through the spine during the height of the battle.Mortally wounded, he was taken below - so as not to discourage his men - and died several hours later having learnt of his great victory.
Few commanders have ever been as adored as Nelson and, despite a highly public love affair with Lady Emma Hamilton that upset higher society, he was a champion of the public.
Further Reading:
http://www.britishbattles.com/waterloo/battle-trafalgar.htm
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