Appendix 5: The Testimony of Doña Luisa Saenz de Viniegra de Torrijos, Vida del General José María de Torrijos y Uriarte (2v, Madrid: Manuel Minuesa, 1860)

Abstract

Like so many widows of celebrated men in the nineteenth century Mme. Torrijos spent the rest of her life promoting her husband’s reputation after his death at Malaga. Nearly thirty years later she published in two volumes the biography, parts of which are translated here. Conscious that the changed political climate had prepared her audience to regard him as a martyr, she nevertheless strove to corroborate her narrative with reputable reports from survivors of the revolution who had known him in his last years. Her narrative is the most ready source for identifying many of the principal players in Kemble’s Journal, and in the excerpts below we find versions of the two major battles in which the revolution failed to take hold.